Il governo dell'opinione: le interpretazioni dello statuto albertino dal 1848 all'unità

The article offers a critical review of the constitutional literature published about the Piedmontese Statute during the first period of its application, from 1848 to the beginning of Sixties. The interest of the subject lies mainly in the different readings of the executive/legislative relationship proposed by the documents here taken in account. Indeed, the analysis of these essays reveals a wide range of interpretations, which cover almost any possible form of constitutional government. Some of the authors conceive the Statute nothing more than a limited monarchy which assigns to the Parliament a mere external control on the Crown’s government. Others allocate the executive management in the hands of a cabinet which represents a body intermediate between the Monarch and the elective Chamber, responsible towards both of them. Others, finally, adopt an emphatically parliamentary view of the constitution, where the king is reduced to play a pure formal role in the balance of the power. The long hegemony of Cavour, from 1852 to 1861, assured a temporary victory to the most advanced interpretation, based on a strong and mutual relationship between ministry and Parliament, but the further phases of Italian constitutional history revealed that this was far away from being the only possible reading of the Charter and gave value back to other interpretations, not so far from those already tested during the first period of life of the Statute