Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni came a step closer to achieving her goal of overhauling Italy’s electoral system this month, after her ‘Stabilicum’ bill cleared a vote in the lower house.

The centre-left opposition have denounced the reform as an “unacceptable” power grab, with Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein saying it would “severely distort” representative democracy.

READ ALSO: Italy's electoral reform clears first vote as coalition splits deepen

But the bill is now just one vote away from becoming law, with the Senate expected to give its approval after the summer recess.

What’s changing?

It’s a switch from a voting system that’s roughly two thirds proportional representation, one third first-past-the-post to fully proportional representation with a ‘majority bonus’.

The coalition that wins at least 42 percent of the vote would be awarded 70 extra seats in the lower house and 35 in the Senate, giving them a comfortable majority.

The bill however introduces a cap of 220 seats in the lower house and 113 in the Senate, meaning the government won’t be able to reach the two-thirds parliamentary 'supermajority' that would be needed under the current system to change the constitution without holding a public referendum.

READ ALSO: Will Meloni's government call early elections in Italy?

Parties would also be required to name their candidate for prime minister in advance of elections, though (unlike the more ambitious ‘premierato’ reform Meloni had initially envisioned) Italians won’t directly vote for them on their ballot papers.

Meloni claims the law will increase stability as the country is less likely to end up with a hung parliament; critics say it’s designed to hand her a firmer grip on power.

How could it affect the outcome of Italy’s next election?

The requirement for parties to name a prime ministerial candidate would work against Italy’s centre-left coalition, since “they still do not have a shared platform and they do not have a leader,” says Vincenzo Emanuele, an associate professor of political science at Luiss University in Rome.

This will be even more of a problem for them if Meloni calls early elections in April, as reports suggest she will.

Meloni’s right-wing coalition doesn't have the numbers to win the majority bonus, meaning it would need to ally with Roberto Vannacci’s new far-right Futuro Nazionale (National Future) party – an outcome most analysts currently see as likely.

READ ALSO: ‘A Salvini error’: What is Italy’s National Future party?

Vannacci has gained ground by positioning himself as a radical right alternative to Meloni’s government: “so by making an alliance with them, it could somehow backfire”, says Alessandro Chiaramonte, a professor of political science at the University of Florence.

For Meloni’s part, Vannacci is a problem because he “represents something new” to disaffected voters, he adds; and “we can be certain of this: Vannacci wants to become the new leader.”

Despite these issues, the right in the past has “proved to be very pragmatic and to understand what is needed in order to win elections, and in this case, it will probably be to make a coalition”, says Chiaramonte.

If the two don’t join forces, the right would be out of the running, giving the centre-left a boost.

“It could even lead to a victory and a parliamentary majority for the center-left,” says Chiaramonte. “They can’t say this very loud, but they’re not unhappy”.

While Chiaramonte describes the reform as a “bet” on Meloni’s part, analysts agree that she would prefer a definitive loss to a hung parliament that would require her to govern with the left.

“If there is a characteristic trait of Meloni's leadership, it’s that she will make clear choices”, says Emanuele. “She wants either to have the majority to rule, or she prefers to stay in opposition.”

A third possibility is that neither coalition reaches the 42 percent threshold.

In this case, “a government would be made after the election based on parliamentary negotiations and bargainings among parties that have run one against the other, much as in the terms between 2013 and 2018 and 2018 and 2022”, Chiaramonte says.

“We cannot rule out any of these possible outcomes right now.”

What does the law mean for Italy beyond the elections?

Very different things depending on who you ask.

Nadia Urbinati, a professor of political theory at Columbia University, draws comparisons between Meloni’s bill and Mussolini’s 1923 Acerbo Law.

“It is a system of elections that gives a prize to the majority, which means the minority doesn't fight on the same foot and doesn't fight under the same rules”, she tells The Local.

“It’s an anti-democratic approach: it's the majority, not the minority that should rule”, she adds, pointing out that a coalition with 42 percent of the vote would win close to 60 percent of the seats.

Chiaramonte sees things differently.

“This is going to be an electoral law not much different from those that Italy had for the past 30 years or so”, he says, noting that in 2013 the centre-left was awarded 55 percent of the seats in the lower house with less than 30 percent of the vote, under a different majority bonus system.

That electoral law was ruled unconstitutional that same year and replaced in 2015 – something Urbinati believes could happen again in this case.

In effectively introducing direct elections of the prime minister (despite their name not appearing on the ballot, which critics say is a legally dubious workaround), Meloni’s reform entails “a break of the constitution, and this will be a problem in my view”, she argues.

Emanuele disagrees. “The potential problem was the creation of super majorities able to change the constitution”, he says.

“This risk has been mitigated by the cap at 220 seats. So I don't think that the law will be judged as unconstitutional.”

But for Urbinati, who sees the bill as marking a major shift towards authoritarianism, “this is not the end of the story. This is the end of the parliamentary process, yes, but I don't think it's the end of the story concerning the constitutional legitimacy of this law.”

“Unfortunately, the opposition is not strong in parliament because they don't have the numbers, and so the only hope is the Constitutional Court.”