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.