Attempting to Dialogue with Sabino Cassese About the History of the Italian State

Abstract

The essay is a long confrontation with the reconstruction of the story of the state in Italy that Sabino Cassese has recently provided. Moving from the specificity of the constitutional history of the Italian state and calling into question the existence of a more or less pure model to which to compare it, the author reclaims the constitutional relevance of the administrative action in the very institutionalization of the state. The practical limits of the Italian constitutional story, its missed general integration, the contingency of various measures, the definetly unsystematic and eclectic character of many institutions and doctrines are considered, though, as the evidence of the historically declining character of the whole story of the modern state and of the possibility for the administration itself to give instruments which are adequate to the present global scenarios.