The pitfalls of “technical” regionalism

Abstract

The debate surrounding regionalism has been urging a rethinking of some assumptions. Since the great expectations that inspired the doctrine of the 1970s have disappeared, many scholars are calling for a deep reconsideration of the cultural foundations of regional law. In this context, alongside opinions that imply that regionalist failure is attributable to politics and continue to credit the Constitution with a core of principles capable of summarizing a “model of regionalism,” other voices seem skeptical of the idea of keeping the issue of regions anchored to a “universal” autonomy, sometimes sought in the constitutional design or “pact”: in a word, from a ‘truth’ that is presumed to be unequivocally enshrined in the Constitution (whether current or to be reformed).

The idea that regionalism should not necessarily be reduced to a “technique” for implementing the Constitution, in the name of a certain pluralist ideology, but that it can see in the Constitution a limit to the pluralism that spontaneously and effectively arises in society, is a perspective about which it seems appropriate to reflect. Such a perspective may in fact lead to interpretations that differ from those arrived at by assuming, as the Constitutional Court did in judgment no. 192 of 2024, that the Constitution contains a picture of “Italian regionalism”; a ‘constitutional system’ (which thus became the first and fundamental parameter of the so-called Calderoli law).

It may therefore be useful, also for the correct interpretation and application of constitutional provisions, not to necessarily label as an anomaly that “de facto pluralism” towards which both the doctrines of the regional state and the literature of ‘disappointment’ or “disillusionment” with the outcomes of the republican experience have shown mistrust.

Instead of continuing to question presumed ‘universals’ drawn from the Constitution (unity, society, autonomy, subsidiarity), in order to deduce consequences in terms of how they are actually reflected in political and social developments, it may be useful to start from the opposite premise that a ‘universal’ is exactly what is missing in the Italian Constitution; and that in any ‘theoretical’ and ‘technical’ attempt to synthesise unity and differentiation, competition and solidarity (or other similar antitheses), elements of truth and falsehood are mixed together. Behind all this lies the ever-present threat of reducing the discourse on regionalism to a merely ‘functional’ pluralism, which ultimately easily lends itself to the ever-changing strategies of the government’s political agenda.