PIETRO GIUSEPPE GRASSO
Proposte di autonomia regionale agli inizi dell'unità d'Italia
N. 169
Summary
— In the last century the supporters of the Italian independence included many catholics and laics who were in favour of a political system based on full local autonomies as well as on forms of regionalism and federalism.As unity was achieved in 1861, in the national Parliament under the influence of "moderate" liberals, the idea prevailed of a system grounded on administrative centralization, thus granting self-governing minor territorial administrations, i.e. Municipalities and Provinces, very limited powers. The administrative rules in force in the reign of Sardinia — Piedmont included — were therefore extended to all Italy.
As a consequence, some drafts were rejected, which had been drawn by Luigi Carlo Farini and Marco Minghetti, Ministers for Home Affairs in the first national governments and members of the moderate liberal majority influenced by Count Cavour’s though. These bills aimed to extend remarkably the powers and the guarantees of Municipalities and Provinces, to allow the spontaneous creation of mixed associations among public corporations and private citizens in order to rule general services. They even envisaged the establishment of autonomous territorial districts such as the Regions.
Farini and Minghetti’s bills were meant as deriving and developing some criteria already embedded in the old Sardinia-Piedmontese legislative administration and therefore independent with regard to the ideological disputes between the supporters of federalism and regionalism during the Risorgimento. For this reason the same proposals still tend to draw the attention of scholars today, even though the were rejected by Parliament in 1861.