“Institutions are not form, but substance. Certain institutions prevent certain reform policies. For this reason, in order to make the latter, it is necessary to change the former ». Thus in February 2019 Giorgio Armillei recalled, in one of the meetings of the Landino group formed with friends with whom he had shared the experience of the Fuci (Italian Catholic University Federation) in the 80s, the importance of the reform path to modernize the politics, justice and the Italian economy and achieve the governance and efficiency standards of the other great European democracies. Overcoming what he called “the tyrant complex” which was entirely Italian and which marked the elaboration and subsequent conservative defense “of the second part of the Constitution: parliamentarism, perfect bicameralism, proportionality”. With the consequence that “since 1953 the Italian prime minister is no longer in a position to lead a government but he has to limit himself to acting as a mediator”.
Change the institutions to be able to make the reforms that are needed
It is precisely the spirit of reform that is the common thread of Armillei’s life and public interventions. The figure and work of the “liberal democratic Catholic”, as he himself called himself, are the subject – precisely in the days of the first anniversary of his death (5 June 2021) – of a book published by the Mill entitled “The mild strength of reformism, Reflections of a liberal Catholic on the crisis of the beginning of the century “(pp. 335, 26 euros): edited by friends from the times of Fuci Stefano Ceccanti and Isabella Nespoli, the volume collects the most significant writings from 2010 to his death in three sections.
The challenge of the Democratic Party: ruling party with a majority vocation
It is this reforming spirit that pushed Armillei’s public commitment at the national level and in his Terni, where he was also councilor for culture, already in the referendum committees for the reform of the electoral law of the early nineties. Until the firm support in 2016 for that Boschi reform that aimed to overcome the Italian anomaly of perfect bicameralism. Hence, too, his firm support for the cultural and political project which gave rise to the birth of the Democratic Party between 2006 and 2007 as a meeting place for the various Italian reformist cultures (Catholic, liberal and socialist). “A party with a majority vocation of an essentially electoral type, with personalized leadership chosen in open and competitive forms (the primary ones), complete with identification between government leadership and party leadership”. And it is clear that the party with a majority vocation calls “governing democracy” and an “electoral system majority assuring”, for Armillei “the best insurance policies against populism”.
From right / left to populist closing / liberal opening
The writings of Armillei reported in the book unfold precisely in the decade of the growth of populism in Italy and in Europe, between the years of the great financial crisis and the European budget constraint and the pandemic. Together with the political scientist Sergio Fabbrini, Armillei was one of the first to understand that the political confrontation in modern democracies is no longer played, or at least not only, in the traditional right / left field but in the wider global field of opening / closing, unionism. (European) / sovereignism, pluralism / populism, guarantorism / justicialism (enlightening and current, regarding justice and in the run-up to the five referendums of June 12, his writings on the need to arrive at the separation of careers between PMs and judges: ” Is it reasonable that prosecution magistrates and judicial magistrates intertwine their careers, with some fragile wall of separation, could directly or indirectly affect each other’s careers, come, train and cultivate themselves professionally in the same way? “).
The warning to the Pd: «The M5s? Remember to unplug “
The positioning no longer takes place only along the old right / left divide but mainly on that populist closure / liberal opening “, wrote Armillei already in 2017, after the three great defeats of Brexit, the victory of Donald Trump in the USA and the rejection of the referendum. constitutional in Italy. For this reason, despite having supported the decision to give life to the yellow-red government of Conte 2, in recent times the warning to the Democratic Party has been clear: “Remember to unplug”, is not by chance the title of an article written at birth of the Pd-M5s alliance. On the one hand there is the ambition to govern by becoming the voice of the majority of Italians, on the other hand there is the stubborn identity of locking oneself up to the left. «The alternative is very clear – so Armillei, in May 2021, discussing the new secretariat of Enrico Letta -. On the one hand the goal is to govern, on the other hand it is to represent minority interests, on the one hand the big tent, on the other the wide field yes but of the left “. Words that are more than ever a warning to the democrats in the days of the division between Letta and the president of the M5s Giuseppe Conte on the war in Ukraine and on the Atlantic axis.