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³ Richard Rose, Understanding Big Government, London, Sage, 1984, pp. 84–5; Pasquino (ed.), Opposizione, governo ombra, alternativa, p. 15; Pasquino, La oposición, p. 63.Google Scholar

⁴ Cazzola, Franco, ‘Consenso e opposizione nel parlamento italiano. Il ruolo del PCI dalla I alla IV Legislatura’, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, 2: 1 (1972), pp. 71–96.Google Scholar

⁵ Tosi, Silvano, ‘Italy: Anti-System Opposition within the System’, in Rodney Barker (ed.), Studies in Opposition, London, McMillan St Martin's Press, 1971, pp. 153–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Di Palma, Giuseppe, Surviving without Governing, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1977, pp. 55 ff.Google Scholar

⁷ Rose, Richard, Do Parties Make a Difference?, London, Macmillan, 1980, pp. 80–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹⁰ Thomas Saalfeld, ‘The West Bundestang after 40 Years: The Role of Parliament in a Party Democracy’, in Philip Norton (ed.), Parliaments in Western Europe, London, Frank Cass, 1990, pp. 77–8.Google Scholar

¹¹ See, for example, the case of Bangladesh; Ahmed, Nizam, ‘Parliamentary Opposition in Bangladesh: A Study of its Role in the Fifth Parliament’, Party Politics, 3: 2 (1997), pp. 147–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² We can only calculate the percentage of consensus for all laws in the V legislature (1993–96): from data provided by Guerrero, we can deduce that 63 per cent of all laws were approved with the vote of the main opposition party. See Enrique Guerrero, Crisis y cambios en las relaciones parlamento-gobierno (1993–1996), Madrid, Tecnos, 2000, p. 163. On the other hand, Capo has shown that during the first four legislatures, the average number of positive votes for all laws was 214 (in a chamber of 350 members), the average number of negative votes was only 36, and the average number of abstentions was 15. We can reasonably infer from this that in order to produce these averages, most laws had to be approved with a high degree of consensus. See Capo, Jordi, ‘Oposición y minorías en las legislaturas socialistas’, in Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 66 (1994), p. 96.Google Scholar

¹³ Maurizio Cotta, ‘Parliamenti e rappresentanza’, in Gianfranco Pasquino (ed.), Manuale di scienza della politica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1986, pp. 300–1.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Franco Cazzola, Governo e opposizione nel parlamento Italiano, Milan, Giuffrè Editore, 1974.Google Scholar

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¹⁷ Rose uses a similar definition of consent: ‘consent is given to laws by the approval of Parliament’, see his Understanding Big Government, p. 90.Google Scholar

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¹⁹ Pasquino (ed.), Opposizione, governo ombra, alternativa, p. 17.Google Scholar

²⁰ Guerrero, Crisis y cambios en las relaciones parlamento-gobierno (1993–1996), p. 159. This scholar concludes that during the first four legislative terms, organic laws accounted for 15.5 per cent of all new legislation. We have extended his analysis to include the sixth legislative term and the figure is slightly lower, 14.6 per cent. These percentages are similar to those in other Western democracies, where constitutional laws represent between 11 and 22 per cent of all laws; see Rose, Understanding Big Government, p. 88.Google Scholar

²¹ Capo's formula is , where vf stands for the number of votes for the law, n is the number of MPs of the main party, v is the total number of cast votes, and N is the size of the assembly. If the index has a value of 1, the incumbent party does not obtain support from any other parliamentary group. If the index has a value over 1, the incumbent gets support from other groups: the more so, the greater the number. Theoretically, the index can have a value under 1, for those rare cases in which the incumbent party is unable to obtain a yes vote from its own MPs. See Capo, ‘Oposición y minorías en las legislaturas socialistas’, pp. 96–7.Google Scholar

²² See, among others, Joe D. Hagan, Political Opposition and Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993; Lynn M. Maurer, ‘Legislative–Executive Relations in a Newly-Consolidated Democracy: The Case of Spain’, PhD dissertation, Columbus, Ohio State University, 1995Google Scholar; José María Maravall, ‘Accountability and Manipulation’, in Adam Przeworski, Susan C. Stokes and Bernard Manin (eds), Democracy, Accountability and Representation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 154–96; Altman, David and Pérez-Liñán, Aníbal, ‘Más allá de la poliarquía: una aproximación a la calidad de las democracias’’, Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia Política, 11 (1999), pp. 83–105.Google Scholar

²³ Palma, Giuseppe Di, ‘Disaffection and Participation in Western Democracies: The Role of Political Oppositions’, Journal of Politics, 31: 4 (1969), pp. 987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²⁵ Klaus von Beyme, ‘Elite Input and Policy Output: The Case of Germany’, in Moshe M. Czudnowski (ed.), Does Who Governs Matter?, DeKalb, Northern Illinois University Press, 1982, p. 63; Barreiro, Belén, ‘Justificaciones, responsabilidades y cumplimiento de promesas electorales’, Revista Española de Ciencia Política, 1: 1 (1999), p. 167.Google Scholar

²⁶ Belén Barreiro, Democracia y conflicto moral: la política del aborto en España e Italia, Madrid, Istmo, 2000; ‘Judicial Review and Political Empowerment: Abortion in Spain’, West European Politics, 21: 4 (1998), pp. 147–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁷ As the number of organic laws dealing with foreign affairs is quite limited (10 laws) we have been forced to create a single category combining issues, regional governments and supranational institutions.Google Scholar

²⁸ See Berta Úlvarez-Miranda, Sur de Europa y la adhesión a la Comunidad: los debates políticos, Madrid, Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 1996.Google Scholar

²⁹ These analyses are available on request.Google Scholar