Tra metodo e merito. Osservazioni a margine del (fallito) processo riformatore della XVII legislatura dell’Italia repubblicana

The article reconstructs some delicate issues related to the attempt of constitutional reform that has occurred in Italy during the current legislature. Considering the rejection of the project, the author will highlight some aspects that are mainly methodological but that also have repercussions on the form of the institutions that the legislator has tried to affect. The work is structured in three parts. In the first, the author reconstructs some critical aspects of the framework in which the reform has been attempted, which has affected the way in which the latter has been carried out. In the second, the paper discusses the overall sense of the proposed actions, aimed at triggering a majority-personal dynamic in the framework of the Italian parliamentary system (also through important changes in the electoral legislation). In the third, the work identifies the limits of the construction delineated, in the light of the characteristics of the political context in which the same should have been implemented, and recovering analytical insights from comparative experiences. The main idea that emerges from the study is that the approach to the reforms adopted in Italy (today as in the past) relies too much on regulatory automatisms aimed at governability, disregarding the actions that should lead instead towards the development of the political culture of the actors, making the representative dynamics more fluid.