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The "Cabinet of Experts" (Italian: governo tecnico) is an expression connected solely to the Italian Parliament.
Contents
This term describes the Government consisting of a non political body, usually supported by the political forces and functioning in the situations of emergency (especially in the particular politically-economic circumstances), when the party system does not have success in embodying a completely functional cabinet. When this happened, in the history of the republic, there was a need to form a Government consisting of people with Expert skills, with no connection to those political forces and the goal to handle the emergency situation by overcoming the idleness of the political parties in the Parliament.
The term "expert" is occasionally associated with the political conception of a State governance, also known as Technocracy. This is "the government of experts", an attempt with a more scientific, rational and rigorous intention to resolve the problems of one country, as opposed to the ideology.
Terminology
This expression is similar to the caretaker government, "institutional government", "grand coalition", "presidential government", "bridging government", "objective government", "government of running affairs", "truce government" and "transitional government", with which it shares several similar characteristics, but it doesn't have to be their synonym.
The government of experts is a «transitional government, established for handling the running affairs, while waiting for the clarification of the political situation». This «government is lacking a solid political base and is destined to last a limited amount of time, with the goal of solely performing administrative tasks, while waiting for the resolution of the running political crisis».
Similar on a semantic level, but completely or only partially different, is the government of technicians, in which people independent from political parties assume governing roles. These people have the specialist professional or academic skills.
Context
The Italian form of Government is a parliamentary government of a weak rationalisation. This means that the Constitution of Italy makes a little concrete progress, when settling the stability of the trust relationship between the parliament and the government. Furthermore, it can not guarantee to the government the power of a political leadership.
Italian constitutional regulations, related to the confidential relationship, foresee two possibilities: the Motion of no confidence and the Motion of Confidence. The first was practically applied only once in the Italian parliament history (the Prodi II Cabinet crisis in 2008, as a consequence of a positive outcome of the motion of confidence), while the latter had more significance in the Italian history. It foresees that each government should, within ten days from the moment of the line-up, present itself to the chambers to obtain (via Constructive vote of no confidence or by a secret ballot) the approval of their own political course.
The majority won by the "motion of confidence" is the "political" majority. The other type of majority is the "arithmetic" majority, foreseen by the Constitution (art. 64.3) for approving the particular resolutions.
During the phases of peculiar political turmoil, it may happen that the political parties decide not to ally by affirming one with confidence transitional government, whose members can reconcile when the time is right, even about the possible new elections, and form the majority able to follow one clear political course. These "temporary" governments, the presence of the "expert" ministers, or the non-politically active experts and executives therefore no deputies, utterly renders the peculiar character of the political neutrality. In such a manner, the fact that the members of the "expert" cabinet do not appertain to the Parliament, is just a consequence of them not taking part in the every day political life. It is not a discriminating factor that qualifies one government as the "cabinet of experts", since the Constitution (art. 92-96) does not foresee electing the President of the Council of Ministers and the other ministers from the members of the Parliament.
We talk about a "government of experts" in relation to Dini Cabinet, serving the 1995-1996 term and about the Monti Cabinet, serving from November 16, 2011. Very often it is declared as expert or "made of experts" like the Ciampi Cabinet (1993-1994), the first cabinet chaired by a non-parliamentary; Carlo Azeglio Ciampi assumed the prime minister position directly from the position of the Governor of the National Bank of Italy, albeit his governing body was mostly made out of the politicians.