modern democracy there is – said Galli – the need for the people to a be primordial, immanent unity, that precedes every institutional and judicial form”.

 

So the people should be the core substance of democracy. This idea, which is also the basis of historical socialism, clashes with the modern liberal thought, that in order to guarantee the rights of people “canalizes power into the forms and procedures of republican institutions”, which means that the “form” organizes the “substance”. In this contest the Parliament represents the quintessence of democracy, the place where the voice of people articulates in the pluralism of thought. Just like the values that found “free” societies and are included in the present form of constitutional democracy in which the opposition between substance and form is eliminated.

 

But what’s happening now in Italy in the shade of the Prime Minister? Do Berlusconi’s liberal ideas, which are displayed in their “form”, really have “substance”? We are living in an uncertain and confused political climate, in which the borders between personal profit and public interest are no longer clear. Democracy as we know it is deemed to change, like the concepts of substance and form. The alarm bells are becoming louder and louder. Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute