Costituzioni allo specchio: la rinascita democratica in Francia e in Italia dopo la Liberazione [Constitutions in the mirror: the democratic rebirth in France and Italy after the Restoration]

InCostituzioni allo specchio the author presents a body of work that is the fruit of years of research, and includes some very recent findings, with the aim of offering a comparative analysis of the Italian and French constitutional processes in the postwar period. There are many common themes that support a comparative study: both constitutions were deeply influenced by the values of the resistance, and they were drafted by members of the same political groups, including Catholic centrists, socialists and communists. There are of course some elements that contribute to differences between the two: unlike the Italian constitutional process, for instance, the French required a referendum to pass, and its first draft’s failure to do so resulted in the gathering of a new constitutional assembly. Examining these two documents side by side does not ignore their differences, but rather highlights the key aspects of the Italian democratic rebirth through a side by side comparison with the country whose influence on the peninsula was most notable. In the first chapters the author examines the complex and winding French constitutional process. In particular, he focuses on two issues that were at the forefront of the debate: the necessity to expand the role of the government in the social and economic domains – thus broadening its reach in terms of civil rights – and the equally heartfelt need to reorganize its structure. This came as a result of functional problems the French government had experienced in the 1930s, when an ever growing imbalance had manifested between the legislative and the executive branches, for the benefit of the latter. There were marked differences between the initial proposals and the final draft of the French constitution. This was perhaps the most notable feature of the Fourth Republic, which straddled the line between light and shadow, and between remarkable achievements and many uncertainties. The author offers a positive view of the impressive set of economic, social and administrative reforms which the constitutional assembly had laid out and that were implemented in the following years; as well as of the role undertaken by France in the process of supranational cooperation: in addition to Schuman’s famous declaration in 1950, the contribution of French jurist René Cassin to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights is worthy of mention. Attempts to reorganize the structure of government were less fortunate: the rules and regulations concerning the duties of the Prime Minister, for instance, were the result of difficult negotiations between parties, and as such turned out to be complex and ineffective. Efforts to retain French colonial holdings by inscribing them into the constitution were also destined to fail, as the creation of the French Union soon became unsustainable due to its underlying imperial spirit.