Rodolfo De Mattei e il «dogma» della democrazia. Un itinerario critico nella politica postunitaria a partire da Gaetano Mosca

Abstract

This paper deals with the conception of democracy that emerges from De Mattei’s studies dating back mostly to the Thirties of the last century, in a phase of relevant cultural maturation which coincides with the assimilation of Gaetano Mosca’s institutional teaching, but also with the consolidation of fascist corporatism. The analysis of the multiple expressions taken on by democracy since the end of the 19th century, in De Mattei’s observations, is indissolubly linked to the historical evaluation of the national unification process, to the Italian political-parliamentary system’s limits, as well as to the research of a moral dimension of the political phenomenon’s analysis. In particular, in his considerations on post-unitary democracy, De Mattei rejects the popular sovereignty notion’s absoluteness and the «dogma» of democracy as an ideology.

Keywords

• democracy
• anti-parliamentarism
• trasformismo
• ethics
• fascism