To me the Constitution republican that's fine, indeed as it was before the changes it had to undergo over the decades: from the wretched one reform of Title V up to the pruning of the Chambers. I am also convinced that the Constitutions have a life of their own - like all norms - and evolve together with the history of a country. In this regard, treatises could be written on how the 1948 institutions contained in themselves ample margins of interpretation appropriate to the passage of time and political processes, without thereby failing to implement the norms. For these reasons, I have always voted NO in the referendums confirming the reforms that have followed one another over time, because in my opinion, in all circumstances, a complex parliamentary procedure was entrusted to obtain the greater efficiency of the system that could have been achieve through a revision of the regulations of the Chambers. En passant, I believe that the most dated part of the 1948 Constitution is not the second, but the first, in which the weight of the ideologies of the parties is felt - especially in the Section on Economic Relations. So much so that, barring surprises in the new manifesto of the values of the Democratic Party, none of the current would now rewrite those same rules as then.
Constitution reform: fiscal federalism and differentiated autonomy
The question of constitutional reform it has entered the electoral debate and is part of the program of the majority parties, albeit in a logic of summation (presidentialism + autonomy) and not of coherent synthesis. Therefore it is appropriate (at least to get away with a ''dixi et servavi animam meam'') to participate in the open debate on reforms da Ernesto Auci on FIRSTonline. Preliminarily - given that Roberto Calderoli has already circulated texts - it is appropriate to deal with the CD differentiated autonomy which is the last remnant of federalism. If the First Republic was obsessed by the ''southern question'', the Second was born under the growing threat of a force that declared itself secessionist - the League or rather the Leagues established in each of the northern regions - and which wanted to free those industrious populations from 'oppression of thieving Rome and exorbitant taxation to the advantage of the populations of the South who ''didn't want to work''.
In a few years, almost all the parties became federalist and the Chambers began to legislate in this sense. To counter theideology of the Northern League and dividing the consents collected by the Carroccio in the North, the policy adapted to the federalist miracleism, along with a large number of questionable but undisputed corollaries; first of all, the mystique of the Regions, self-proclaimed as the excellence of the institutions of the Republic. There reform of Title V tried once again to save the goat of the State and the cabbages of the Regions by introducing, instead, a greater confusion, in a maze of competing skills. The dominant mystic, having failed in the political/institutional objective, set out in search of an intermediate one: the so-called fiscal federalism. But the operation has always walked on a fault line: the management of health care. The Regions have never agreed to take full charge of it, on both sides of revenue and expenditure, but have continued to claim to be covered by the umbrella of the state budget.
Fiscal federalism: the weak point is health care
This is the reality: the rest belongs only to political skirmishes. And how far this goal is has become clear – in the emergency of the pandemic – not only in the central-southern regions. Even differentiated autonomy risks blocking the distribution of resources. The Regions that are candidates to do more on their own have fallen – like the famous Mrs. Longari – on defending the historical level of spending available to them in transfers (which is the main advantage compared to other Regions, starting from the southern ones). In the meantime, the cyclone of anti-politics had demanded the end of the Provincial Authority, reducing it, in the name of efficiency and simplification, to a geographical expression and stripping away the protection and governance of the territory. Fortunately, the Senate of the Autonomies, conceived as a railwaymen's after-work club for the presidents of the Region and the mayors of the main cities, was overwhelmed in the 2016 referendum. Much better (indeed less worse, in my opinion) the mutilated equal bicameralism now in force.
Presidentialism or direct election of the Head of State?
As for the presidentialism (the legacy that – as she said – Giorgia Meloni intends to leave to the Italians). it is good to put a few dots on the ''i'' of the ongoing debate. First of all, it must be clarified whether the centre-right proposes ''presidentialism'' or the direct election by universal suffrage of the Head of State. These are radically different institutional models. In a presidential regime, the president is elected and is simultaneously head of state and administration, in an accentuated logic of division of powers. A reform of this magnitude could not be implemented by making use of the procedures envisaged by article 138 of the Constitution. The election of a constituent assembly would be necessary because such a revision would affect the entire institutional structure and an enormous number of articles. No Parliament would be empowered to change (with a Zan-type law?) the identity of the Republic.
It would be different for thedirect election of the Head of State, an absolutely compatible reform in the context of a parliamentary regime. The direct popular election of the Head of State is present in the great majority of European countries: Austria, Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Finland, France (albeit with the characteristic of semi-presidentialism), without counting the new states of central-eastern Europe such as Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and others. Where this type of election is not contemplated, a monarchical regime usually applies. But there's more. If the cabinets of many parties were opened, the skeletons of the direct election of the head of state would be found, locked up in different political seasons. It is hardly necessary to recall that in the text of constitutional law presented on November 4, 1997 by the bicameral Commission chaired by Massimo D'Alema – the highest point reached by the agreement between the parties – the direct popular election by universal suffrage – possibly in two rounds – of the Head of State was foreseen. The speaker on the point was Cesare Salvi, who wrote: "It can, therefore, be affirmed that the direct election of the Head of State is the most widespread system in Europe, and that it has not given rise to plebiscitary degeneration or dangers for the democratic stability of the institutional system". It is therefore not clear why only Italy, and with it the Italian people, should leave the dominant European framework; nor do I think it can be said that the Italian electorate, in fifty years of political elections and referendums, has ever given evidence of irrational behavior or has shown itself easy prey to demagogic suggestions.
No to the premiership proposed by the Third Pole
Instead, I find unacceptable - despite my sympathies for the Third Pole - the proposal for the direct election of the prime minister. It is the recovery of an old idea by Mario Segni – one of the greatest overrated in contemporary history – which can be summed up in the following formula. “Choose the mayor of Italy“. Such a reform would ruin at least three essential chapters of the current constitutional model: the Parliament, the government and the President of the Republic. In fact, no one can think that the operation could be limited to electing a prime minister who then has to go and find a majority. The model of the premiership, on which the election of the mayor and the presidents of the Regions is based, places the elective assembly in a secondary role, the composition of which is conditioned by the need to ensure a majority for the elected; an assembly that remains at the mercy (in the sense of the classic “simul stabunt, simul cadent”) of the chief executive. Is it really surprising that the defenders of the parliamentary character of the Republic fall into this trap. There is no Banana Republic - as far as I know - anywhere on the planet that organizes its institutions in this way, subordinating the legislative power to the government.
