Trasformismo

The Italian vice, a historic stain, national character or simply a system of government? For many years and certainly since the founding of the Italian state, transformism/trasformismo has been one of the concepts most used and abused by scholars to describe the (mal)functioning of Italian political institutions and the low yields of its political system. This essay reconstructs the entire political and historical trajectory of transformism in Italy, from the coming to power of the liberal Left under Agostino Deprestis in the 1870s to the so-called Second Republic of today which, precisely because of its transformist tendencies, seems to be facing yet another new crisis of the ‘system’. But is the concept of transformism really applicable only to Italy, although this was certainly where it was first born, grew and was exported to the rest of the world? These questions are addressed in the concluding sections of the essay.