Democratic Corporatism – The Italian debate during the “First Republic” (1948-1992)

Abstract

The paper intends to explore the Italian debate on corporatism after the fall of fascism, in the years of the so-called “First Republic” (1948-1992). Over this long time period, which spanned more than four decades, the debate on corporatism continued to interest the nostalgic political right represented by the Italian Social Movement (MSI), but rekindled also the minds of Catholics. In both cases, the aim was to harmonize the corporatist theory with democratic principles. During Sixties the debate on the launch of a planning policy in Italy was seized by some members of the MSI as an opportunity to revive the corporatism and find a concrete solution to “govern” the Italian economy. The crisis of the institutions that emerged in the early 1970s and the consequent need for reform of the State finally give new vigour to corporate theories. The crisis of the institutions was perceived as a crisis of the political parties, which was ultimately the crisis of representative parliamentary democracy resulting from the French Revolution. In the 1980s the theme once again became of particular interest to the Catholic world and more specifically to the Milan Group, which revolved around the figure of Gianfranco Miglio. Until the beginning of the 1990s, the Milan Group produced a number of volumes on the reform of the Italian Constitution and on the issue of representation of organized interests.