Author Interview: Federalism and Constitutional Law: The Italian Contribution to Comparative Regionalism

Erika Arban, Giuseppe Martinico & Francesco Palermo

University of Melbourne, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna & University of Verona

Erika Arban, Giuseppe Martinico and Francesco Palermo talk with us about their new edited collection ‘Federalism and Constitutional Law: The Italian Contribution to Comparative Regionalism'

Tell us a little bit about the book. 

Our book examines the relationship between central government and subnational institutions taking Italy as a case study. In doing so, it presents a comparative overview of how the Italian experience has influenced the global developments of federal and regional states and lessons that can be drawn from this for the future. In fact, being the country with the oldest regional system in place (dating 1948), Italy has a lot to share with countries currently dealing with issues such as profound socio-economic, cultural, linguistic, geographical cleavages. The book adopts a theoretical/analytical approach, coupled with a comparative analysis, to critically reflect on the changes brought to the Italian system of government by the reform of the constitution from 2001 and on the reasons why further decentralisation has been resisted. Doing so offers a comparative study of the place and contributions that the Italian experience has brought to the global debate on regionalism and federalism.

The book comparatively and thoroughly analyses a significant constitutional reform that is little known abroad, and that was important for several reasons. First, for its “federal” potential, although developed only in part. Second, because it completely redesigned the distribution of powers between the centre and the peripheries. Third, it introduced in the constitutional text an explicit reference to EU obligations, also embedding in the constitution a string of innovative features that had already been introduced by national law (like the principle of subsidiarity).

The volume is divided into two parts. Part I distils the essence of the evolution of Italian regionalism and the respective debate before and after 2001. While mainly focusing on Italy, the various chapters situate it within the global framework of discussion. Part II, on the other hand, reflects on how the Italian regional constitutional architecture contributed to the global debate, particularly concentrating on the main innovations brought about by the constitutional reform. 

What inspired you to take up this project? 

We decided to take up this project towards the end of 2019 while jointly attending a conference in Milan on the future of federalism from a comparative perspective. We realised that very little is known outside of Italy about Italian regionalism, and Italy rarely appears as a meaningful comparator in comparative conversations on regionalism. At the same time, many Italian constitutional law scholars are not fully aware of Italy’s potential contributions to comparative federalism. Because 2021 marked the twentieth anniversary of the reform of Title V of the Italian Constitution, we thought it might be appropriate to celebrate this anniversary with a book making available to an international audience the most updated information and reflections on the contributions on regionalism and federalism elaborated in Italy.

Whose work was influential on you throughout the project?

Because this is an edited volume, it is difficult to identify one specific work or author that has been influential throughout the project. However, in situating the Italian experience with regionalism within the broad debate on federalism, we embraced a view whereby regionalism and federalism are not considered separate or distinct concepts. In doing so, we espoused the empirical and dynamic approach towards federalism put forth by Carl Friedrich.

What challenges did you face in writing the book? 

Overall, it has been a great experience working together on this book, as we found we had good synergy. Also, it has been an absolute pleasure to coordinate the work of the colleagues that we involved as authors, whose contributions have been outstanding.

As often happens when working on edited volumes, we also had to face some challenges. A big challenge was perhaps one of timing. Because we wanted the book to be published in 2021 in time for the anniversary of the 2001 constitutional reform, we knew that we had to work on a very tight schedule. Such a tight timeframe might be challenging, especially for an edited volume. But all the authors were timely and respected the deadlines, so we managed to have the book published in mid-2021 as expected.

Another challenge was the choice of contributors – this was challenging for at least two reasons. First, we wanted to situate the Italian experience within the broader context of federalism and regionalism. Thus, we needed to invite scholars who had a solid reputation as experts in the specific field and also had a strong comparative background. To this end, while most of the contributors are Italian, we also wanted to include non-Italian colleagues because of the comparative outlook of the book. Second, we looked at Italian regionalism mainly through the prism of comparative constitutional law. Thus, we primarily invited public law scholars as authors – this was unusual because, ordinarily, political scientists perform most work on comparative federalism. At the same time, we wanted to include some issues usually neglected in purely constitutional law debates, like the party system. 

Finally, when Covid-19 hit Italy, Europe and the rest of the world, we were already working on the book. Because of the timing, we could not fully capture in the volume the developments on Italian regionalism that were caused by the pandemic. The pandemic will likely have a long-term impact on Italian regionalism, triggering criticism from several fronts and awakening centripetal tendencies. 

What do you hope to see as the book’s contribution to academic discourse and constitutional or public law more broadly?

As implied above, we hope that the reflections on the Italian case will help place Italy in a more prominent position in global debates on comparative regionalism and federalism. Until now, the Italian contribution to this debate has been less prominent than it should have been, so the ambition is that the volume will redress, at least in part, this flaw and open new avenues for comparative research. 

What’s next?

(Erika) I am currently working on a range of different projects, from a monograph on federalism and economic regionalism that again looks at Italy as a case study, to several other theoretical questions in federal constitutional theory, particularly on the “unit” question. I am also in the process of developing a new project on the impact of languages in comparative constitutional law method.  

(Giuseppe) I am working on how populists in power use and manipulate constitutional law categories and instruments. My latest monograph was published by CUP last year, and I am currently focusing on the instrumental rehabilitation of constituent power in the constitutional counter-narrative advanced by populists. I am also working with other colleagues on an interdisciplinary book devoted to the inaccuracy of a purely ordo-liberal understanding of the European Union.  

(Francesco) My work is predominantly in the fields of comparative federalism and minority rights, sometimes bringing the two issues together. At the moment, I am focusing on four different books projects dealing with different constitutional issues, all of which I hope will be published within the next couple of years and on a project on participatory constitutionalism.

Erika Arban is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the ARC Laureate Program in Comparative Constitutional Law at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne

Giuseppe Martinico is Full Professor of Comparative Public law at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa

Francesco Palermo is Full professor of Comparative Public Law at the University of Verona and Director of the Institute for Comparative Federalism at Eurac Research in Bolzano/Bozen

‘Federalism and Constitutional Law: The Italian Contribution to Comparative Regionalism’ is available from Routledge.