La democrazia manomessa: riformare, deformare, conformare

Autore: Alfio Mastropaolo
In: Meridiana. 50-51, 2004
doi:10.1400/78392
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Abstract

The violation of democracy: reforming, deforming, conforming
The project of radical reform of the 1948 Constitution has formed part of the Italian political landscape since the mid-1970s. Over the last three decades, however, the issue of «constitutional reform» has more often than not resembled an interminable political soap opera. The initial reason for the proposal was very simple: the political system was too unstable and too inefficient to fulfill the needs of a large and advanced democracy. The only way to overcome this problem therefore was to reduce the number of parties by means of constitutional and electoral engineering. Of course, there were also other less explicit and less noble reasons. In particular, constitutional reform reflected the ambitions of a number of actors to change! the rules of the game, thus improving their prospects of electoral success. In addition, some saw in the project the possibility of forcing Italian politics down the path of neo-liberalism, which, as things stood, was impeded by the veto-powers attributed by the Constitution and the electoral laws to a wide range of actors. This article has three main purposes: (1) to elucidate the gap between public arguments and unavowed projects; (2) to underline the unexpected effects of the various reforms that have been approved; (3) to demonstrate the continuity between the anti-democratic and anti-political ambitions of the Berlusconi government’s reform proposals and those proposed and approved by the centre-left during its time in government from 1996 to 2001.