This chapter will first provide an overview of this repeated cycling between the success, eclipse and reappearance of the discursive constellation around democrazia in Italian political language between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focussing especially on the extraordinary flourishing of democratic imaginaries during 1796-1802. It will then explore the four major episodes just identified of experimentation with popular participation, in practice or purely at the level of imagination, with a view to establishing what was distinctive about the Italian experience of constructing democratic space. Italian efforts were marked, on the one hand, by inclusive, participatory and choral characteristics, and on the other hand, by consensual, anti-pluralistic and unanimist features, associated with strongly vertical and personalised forms of power. Personalisation was a recurrent theme, linking otherwise diverse leader-figures, military, royal and civic: from the soldier-king Napoleon Bonaparte to the king-soldier Victor Emmanuel II; from General Guglielmo Pepe, the international icon of the 1820 Neapolitan Revolution, to his ideological heir Giuseppe Garibaldi, media star and political hero of Italian unification; from King Charles-Albert, first constitutional king of the Kingdom of Sardinia, the ‘sword of Italy’ to Giuseppe Montanelli, a resurgent veteran of earlier struggles, who was the leading proponent of a national constitutent assembly during the liberation wars of 1848-49.

Democracy in Italy: from egalitarian republicanism to plebiscitary monarchy

G. L. Fruci
Primo
2018-01-01

Abstract

This chapter will first provide an overview of this repeated cycling between the success, eclipse and reappearance of the discursive constellation around democrazia in Italian political language between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focussing especially on the extraordinary flourishing of democratic imaginaries during 1796-1802. It will then explore the four major episodes just identified of experimentation with popular participation, in practice or purely at the level of imagination, with a view to establishing what was distinctive about the Italian experience of constructing democratic space. Italian efforts were marked, on the one hand, by inclusive, participatory and choral characteristics, and on the other hand, by consensual, anti-pluralistic and unanimist features, associated with strongly vertical and personalised forms of power. Personalisation was a recurrent theme, linking otherwise diverse leader-figures, military, royal and civic: from the soldier-king Napoleon Bonaparte to the king-soldier Victor Emmanuel II; from General Guglielmo Pepe, the international icon of the 1820 Neapolitan Revolution, to his ideological heir Giuseppe Garibaldi, media star and political hero of Italian unification; from King Charles-Albert, first constitutional king of the Kingdom of Sardinia, the ‘sword of Italy’ to Giuseppe Montanelli, a resurgent veteran of earlier struggles, who was the leading proponent of a national constitutent assembly during the liberation wars of 1848-49.
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
Democracy2018.pdf

accesso aperto

Tipologia: Versione finale editoriale
Licenza: Tutti i diritti riservati (All rights reserved)
Dimensione 3.6 MB
Formato Adobe PDF
3.6 MB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11568/981797
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 3
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact