L’attuazione dell’art. 49 Cost.: un difficile esercizio. Problemi di metodo e di contenuto.

(The Enactment of Art. 49 Cost.: A Difficult Exercise. Problems of Method and Content)

Abstract

The prevailing Italian constitutional theory agrees on the need to give legislative enactment to the article 49 Cost. Having moved beyond the historical and political reasons that caused a complete absence of normative interventions geared toward disciplining the internal life of political parties, now we witness a consistent difficulty in identifying contents and methods of such normative intervention. The reasons for the difficulty lie in the fact that one needs to balance the constitutional value of the autonomy of political parties against the intrusion of public power and, which is also constitutionally equally important, one needs to protect the position of the single citizen within the political party in some critical “predicaments” (admission, expulsion, selection of the internal leadership, selection of candidates). The party structure that has been established in the last twenty years has lost the features of organization, territorial rooting, and internal relations among its associates, to the point that it almost looks like an extemporaneous aggregate of electors and sympathizers. Legislators find themselves in the position of having to “govern” over a series of situations that, at the juridical constitutional level, are completely new.