This year the italians celebrate the anniversary of its Constitution, which entered into force on 1 January 1948. To celebrate, the Italian Government launched the Il viaggio della Costituzione, a project of touring exhibition that between 2017 and 2018 takes the Italian Constitution to 12 cities to explain the first 12 articles. A trip that started in Milan in September 2017 with the celebration of the concept of democracy enshrined in article 1 and that will close this month in Reggio Emilia with a tribute to the tricolor flag, contained in article 12, in its city of origin. An educational program that follows the trail of the famous program carried out in the RAI by Roberto Benigni, called La più bella del mondo, in which the comedian tuscan explained the same 12 fundamental principles of the Constitution.
it May not exist in Europe a constitutional text which has been the subject of highest praise by his countrymen as the Italian. However, this degree of sacralization of the text of the constitution has also produced a political dynamic, ambivalent. For this devotion to the constitution, linked to the degree of abstraction of its fundamental principles, allows both the left and the derechainstrumentalicen politically the text accusing him of treason on a permanent adversary. Indeed, the Italian Constitution is the legal expression of a complex political commitment and ideological post-war between christian democrats, socialists and communists. After the elections of 18 April 1948, the Constitution served the absolute majority of the Christian Democracy to anchor Italy in the western world in the context of the Cold War. But, as says the political scientist Angelo Panebianco, the abstraction of its principles could also have been useful to a people’s democracy led by socialists and communists.
In the Italian Constitution is very aware of the weight of History, particularly of the experience of fascism, to the point that is reflected in your birth and determines its evolution. As pointed out by the historian Ernesto Galli della Loggia, one of the main features of the distribution of powers who designs the text is the vocation to neutralize the possibility of a president of the Council of Ministers strong. To the point that the space it occupies is that of a primus inter pares with no ability, even, to dismiss a minister in his Government. This constitutional set-up is, in good measure, on the basis of the instability endemic to the Italian government, where only De Gasperi (1948-1953) and Berlusconi (2001-2006) have been able to complete a legislature. The numbers speak for themselves: Giuseppe Conte, the current chairman, is the 29th since the post-war period and the Government-run number 65. Here that from Craxi to Renzi some proposals of reform of the Constitution more ambitious, have a built-in sense presidential.
The other side of the coin in the system of Italian politics is the central role that the Constitution reserves to the president of the Republic. According to article 92, is the one who appoints the president of the Council of Ministers, at the proposal of the latter, the ministers. When the cameras voters expressed a clear choice of government and the political parties share a culture of loyalty to the constitution, its role is reduced to the symbol and representative of the national unity. However, when the opposite happens, and it is up to the tonic in Italian politics, all the tensions of the system discharging to the head of State, forcing his intervention.
The predecessor of the current president of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, had to face the first symptoms of decomposition of the traditional parties in the scenario of the economic crisis, was nicknamed Il Re for their marked decisionism.
Sergio Mattarella, who has been touched to deal with the Cabinet’s populist M5S-Lega, has never lost the occasion to assert his power and make clear that in Italy “the head of State is not a notary”. However, there seems to have been sufficient to stop a Government that makes the challenge to the institutions, the trademark of his style. And that will force Mattarella to remain active guarantor of the più bella del mondo.
According to the criteria of
Learn more
