THE ITALIAN CONSTITUTION AND THE INVENTION OF THE ASYMMETRIC REGIONAL STATE: “ORDINARY” AND “SPECIAL” REGIONS
Over the last decade, Italy has gradually but deeply transformed its regional system in order to meet the declared political objective of “federalizing” the country. Numerous delays in the implementation of the reform process have led to the rather paradoxical picture of a federal constitutional framework surrounding a still mostly centralist political culture.
Moreover, the rich regions in the North are asking for more autonomy – which, however, in the opinion of most politicians would simply amount to a decreased contribution to financial equalization – while the poorer regions of the South are worried about disadvantages resulting from further differentiation, which would inevitably widen the gap in economic and living conditions.The Long and Twisting Road of Regionalism in Italy
Since the achievement of national unity, completed in the 1860s, the Italian state has been modelled on the French blueprint of a centralized and bureaucratic administration. It was only with the republican Constitution of 1948 that an innovative, but at the same time feeble, experiment with regionalization was made. From the very beginning, Italian regionalism was characterized by its asymmetrical design, both as a matter of constitutional law and in terms of the effective use of powers transferred to the regions. At first only five “special” or “autonomous” regions were established, all situated in the periphery: three with homogeneous minority groups in the Alpine arch in the North (the Aosta Valley, Trentino-South Tyrol, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia) and to the south the two islands of Sicily and Sardinia.1 Each of them is guaranteed by a “special autonomy statute,” a regional constitution that is however adopted by the national Parliament with a constitutional law. This means that the special regions do not enjoy full constitutional autonomy, but at the same time their “autonomy statutes” benefit from a special entrenchment that makes it extremely difficult to amend them.
As an innovative experiment, the regionalization of the whole country, a “third way” between a federal and a unitary system, was aimed at avoiding too strong an asymmetry between the special regions and the rest of the territory. Although laid down in the Constitution of 1948, regionalization, however, was fully developed only in the 1970s, when the “ordinary” regions were established and legislative powers eventually devolved to them. Since then, a permanent increase in the regional powers gradually narrowed the gap between “ordinary” and “special” regions. But the path has been anything but straightforward and coherent, since it has been influenced by shifting political priorities and very much determined by constitutional adjudication.
The key role of constitutional adjudication largely depends on the absence of constitutionally guaranteed institutional representation of regional interests at the central level. In fact, sub-national interests can be guaranteed mostly in two ways: either by constitutional restrictions on the powers of the national government or by effective regional participation in national decision making. Both instruments were used with extreme caution by the constitution makers in 1948, since regionalism was started as an experiment and the national government wanted to retain control over this process. Against this background, the role of the Senate as a chamber for representation of regional interests was undermined by a constitution designed to vest the central government with the final say on autonomy issues. For this reason, constitutional litigation was the only instrument regions could use to strengthen their powers. Progress could often be achieved only through conflict by challenging national legislation in the Constitutional Court.2 These conflicts and a jurisdiction underlining the necessity of cooperation and consultation led to the gradual emancipation of the regional level and to a system characterized as “cooperative regionalism”: the powers of the national and the regional level are intertwined and require cooperation and joint action to be effectively implemented.3
A series of important reforms of public administration and of the system of local self-government were adopted between the late 1980s and the late 1990s, thus encouraging the more active regions to really start developing their potential for self-government.
Reflecting the socio-economic cleavage between the North and the South, the political demand for more self-government became an absolute priority for the rich and industrialized Northern regions and at the same time also for the government in Rome. Initially, the devolution of powers was primarily seen as a means of reducing the national expenditure, but owing to pressures by a “federalist,” and on occasions a “secessionist,” political party, the Northern League, the issue of “federal reform” could no longer be left to experts only but had to be dealt with politically and in more comprehensive and symbolic terms, thus requiring a constitutional reform.