Italian Citizenship and the Republican Tradition

Luca Baccelli

Some years ago, during the debate on German reunification, Jürgen Habermas pointed to the dangers of "a national identity not based, first of all, on a republican self-understanding of constitutional patriotism"1. The well known original fatherland of the republican tradition in early modern political thought is . Or, at least, that northern-central part of it where, at the beginning of the millennium, the political experience of city republics developed. This holds true whether this origin, following John Pocock's account, is traced back to fifteenth century Florentine 'civic humanism' or, following Quentin Skinner, is anticipated to fourteenth century 'neo-roman' political thought. An Italian is the eponymous author of republican political thought, the champion of the 'Machiavellian moment'. And it is in Italy that, after the establishment of national monarchies, some republican experiences still persisted, if not flourished, during the eighteenth century. Venice remained for a long time the paradigm of a republic, and when, in 1651, Hobbes introduced his deliberately anti-republican conception of negative liberty, his target was the word libertas on the wall of the city-republic of Lucca2.

This paper will try to answer this question: did republican political thought influence Italian national identity and the Italian concept of citizenship? And is it still relevant today?

1. Republican patriotism

In my view there is much more than a family resemblance between the political language of the republican tradition and the early literary appearance of an Italian national identity.

More than six hundreds years ago Francesco Petrarca complained about the 'deadly wounds' afflicting the 'beautiful body' of the fatherland, and urged Italian governors to give the 'ancient value', still living in the 'Italians' Hearts', an opportunity to express itself3. It is impressive that the most important lyrical poet of fourteenth century Italy speaks this way. Italy was part of the Empire, which was actually fragmented in a number of state entities; Italy had been divided since the sixth century Longobard invasion, and was characterised by deep regional linguistic differences. The only, already remote, unitary experience had been the hegemony of Rome and then the Roman Empire. In Italy there was no such thing as the embryos of national monarchies which were forming in such countries as France or England. Nor did Italy have an ideological drive similar to the Reconquista carried out against Islam by the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula. Thus it is highly significant that in such a country a sense of national identity is expressed so strongly, as a grief for the subjection to foreigners. Petrarca's poetry is remarkably nerved by the myth of the ancient Rome, notably republican Rome.

The grief for the foreign domination of Italy, and the denounce of the poverty of its governors, are a persistent thread in the history of . About two hundreds years later, these verses of Petrarca's will be echoed in the dramatic final chapter of the Principe, where Niccolò Machiavelli wishes the liberation of Italy, for "everybody smells this barbarous domination"4. After another three centuries of heavy foreign domination Machiavelli, the theorist of republican liberty, is among the national heroes celebrated by Ugo Foscolo in his I sepolcri5.

In Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis Foscolo denounced the treason of Bonaparte who, with the treaty of Campoformio, had handed over his republic-fatherland, Venice, to the Absburg empire. More generally, he complains about the fate of Italy. And, addressing Florence, he writes that such characters as Machiavelli, Galileo, Dante, Petrarca, whose graves are in the church of Santa Croce, are the only national eminences6. In Ortis Foscolo referred to Venice with the word 'fatherland' ("the sacrifice of the fatherland has been accomplished")7, while bemoaning that "we Italians wash our hands in Italians' blood"8; in I sepolcri Florence, owing to foreign invasion, has lost the 'fatherland': the term clearly refers to a wider national perspective.

This literary patriotism goes hand in hand with a significant theoretical elaboration, associated with the Roman tradition: to Cicero's idea that "omnium societatum nulla est gravior, nulla carior quam ea, quae cum re publica est uni cuique nostrum"9. In the work of Machiavelli, from the theoretical writings to comedies, to poems, to letters, 1494 - the year of the French invasion of Italy - occurs with a nearly obsessive frequency10. And the last phrase of Istorie fiorentine is marked by the allusion to the "bad seeds which brought, and are still bringing, Italy to ruin"11. Machiavelli's writings are pervaded by a sense of belonging to the Florentine fatherland which he declares he loves "more than his own soul"12; but this republican city patriotism is intertwined with a national patriotism13. And serving as a politician and a diplomat in the camp of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, together with Guicciardini and Vettori, in an attempt to resist the Spanish invasion, is the last important opportunity for 'rolling a stone'14 in Machiavelli's life15.

If Machiavelli feels himself a patriot, there emerges in his work a conception of belonging to a political community which is free of genealogical references and does not suggest a cultural homogeneity. Sure, Machiavelli cannot be thought of as a theorist of multicultural society: these questions are outside of his horizon, of course. Yet his idea of citizenship is clearly cast in political terms. Love of the fatherland, greater than the love of one's own soul, is first of all love of libertà and the institutions of vivere libero, protecting individual freedom and pursuing the public interest. The constitutive idea of this conception of citizenship is that, while one kind of dissensioni has a destructive impact and can make the republic enslaved and corrupt, another kind of conflict is required for the development of freedom. This kind of conflict is expressed by citizens' basic umori and leads to "laws and orderings beneficial to public liberty"16. Moreover, Machiavellian patriotism is far from being triumphal. Machiavelli recognises all the limitations of his fatherland and diagnoses its crises and weaknesses sternly. In Le istorie fiorentine the dissection of Florence's political and social pathologies is so merciless that one can seldom think it is a work written for the Medici17. And Machiavelli takes it to be a very important feature of Florence, so to speak an ineffaceable feature of its genetic code, that it was born 'servant', and begins his analytic reconstruction of its history with the first violent clash between two noble families18.

A passage of Discorsi sums up the link between Machiavelli's patriotism, republicanism (and political realism): la patria è ben difesa in qualunque modo la si difende, o con ignominia o con gloria [...] dove si dilibera al tutto della salute della patria, non vi debbe cadere alcuna considerazione né di giusto né d'ingiusto, né di piatoso né di crudele, né di laudabile né d'ignominioso; anzi, posto ogni altro rispetto, seguire al tutto quel partito che le salvi la vita, e mantenghile la libertà19.

Republican political culture becomes weaker and weaker, in sixteenth century Florence, with the advent of the familiar domination of the Medici, sanctioned by the establishment of the Granducato of Tuscany20. Yet this political culture still helps the last attempts at national renaissance against oppressive governments and foreign domination: I refer to the last republican experiences of sixteenth and seventeenth century, from Siena's resistance against the Medici to the Neapolitan revolution of 164721, but also to the 'Jacobin' republics of 1796-99, in particular to the Neapolitan republic of 1799. And to the Republics of Rome and Venice of 1848-49, to the deeds of Garibaldi and, less than a century later, to the Resistance. These historical experiences are often paralleled by significant theoretical conceptions. The thread of republican patriotism is not cut with Donato Giannotti: it can be found, after centuries, in the work of Paolo Mattia Doria, of Melchiorre Gioia, in 's very critique, up to such characters, opposed under some respects, as Carlo Cattaneo and .

Thus the republican tradition made a major theoretical and ideological contribution to the difficult, centuries old building of an Italian citizenship. In a forthcoming paper Massimo Rosati singles out four traditions in the history of national identity: the liberal patriotism of Risorgimento, moderate Catholicism, nationalism and the republican and radical democratic tradition itself. The key stage in the emergence of the latter in the late eighteenth century can be said to be the 'Jacobin three years' 1796-99. For it is in the language of Jacobin patriots that the theoretical seeds, already emerged in a fragmented way, grow ripe; it is the disappointment of Campoformio and the end of the Repubblica Cisalpina that arouse the patriots' new awareness22. In this situation, the first stirrings of unitary patriotism are marked by republican ideology. Among eighteenth century Jacobins, Melchiorre Gioia equates "the political dimension of patriotism [...] to the principles of liberty and equality"23, and claims again the importance of the 'negative' character of national identity: "everybody speaks about perpetuating the memory of republican virtues, so as to arouse their imitation: why not perpetuating the memory of tyranny, so as to make us hate it for ever?"24.

In spite of the deep cultural gap between Jacobins' Enlightenment and their romantic mysticism, Giuseppe Mazzini revamps the idea of a close link between patriotism, republicanism, democratic constitutionalism and - notably - a positive view of conflict. Republic, says Mazzini, means "a public thing: government of the nation by the nation itself; social government: government by laws truly expressing people's will [...] political equilibrium, balancing of the three powers, orderly struggle of legal elements, mixed parliamentary rule, etc." (Rosati ccviii).

Unlike Mazzini, who sees a strict unitary solution to the problem of national independence, Carlo Cattaneo puts forward the idea of multiple membership of the city and the national community, and casts it in federal terms. For Cattaneo love of 'singular fatherlands' cannot be ignored; liberty is coterminous with republic, but it is a 'many-rooted plant' (Rosati ccviii). Cattaneo's idea of 'one hundred cities' Italy is expressed even more radically: "municipalities are the nation: they are the nation in the innermost shelter of its liberty". And for Cattaneo liberty and self-government are a logical and axiological condition of national independence and unity.

Rosati makes another point: to the Jacobins, as well as to Mazzini and Cattaneo, to be a patriot is to be an 'internal'25 critic of the problems, the distortions, the limitations of national history and character. There emerges a notion of citizenship opposed to the idea emphasising the traits of national 'primacy'. On the contrary, Vincenzo Gioberti tends to ignore the limitations and distortions of national historical experience, exalting instead an alleged 'moral and civil primacy' of Italy stemming from the millenary presence of the Pope. Gioberti is among the first in subordinating the civic element of national membership to the natural, linguistic, geographical and chiefly religious element, inverting the order of priorities of republican patriotism. In this vein the link between fatherland and liberty will become weaker and weaker, and ultimately lost. In the twentieth century the language of patriotism will be a monopoly of right-wing nationalists, and will become unusable by the progressive culture.

In spite of this, the threads of the republican tradition are knotted in the works of a number of authors, notably those belonging to the diverse constellation of liberal socialism, the 'Justice and Liberty' movement and the Action Party. As it is well known, they are among the key figures of the Resistance and the opposition to fascism. Piero Gobetti criticises the fear of social conflict as one of the most dangerous elements of Italian identity26 , and denounces those traits of Italian character which made fascism possible. Yet Gobetti suggests another national identity, rooted in a recognition of the democratic value of political conflict and people's struggle against tyranny for self-government27. A theoretical, ideal and political continuity can be established between Gobetti's radical liberalism, such protagonists of the liberal socialist movement as Carlo Rosselli, and proponents of the Action Party culture. Moreover, on Rosati's view, much of Gramsci's analysis can be counted in republican patriotism, in spite of Gramsci's membership of the communist party and his endorsement of Marxism28.

2. A history of defeats

Republicanism is therefore one of the historical roots of Italian national identity. But can the republican tradition be said to play a significant theoretical, ethical and political role today? Here some scepticism is fit. First, reference has been made so far to the ideological position of small élites. Two examples are often made to show the élite character of Risorgimento and the slow pace of the emergence of an Italian national identity. The very leading characters of Risorgimento were aware that, once the process of unification was carried out, 'once Italy was made', 'Italians were to be made'. It is only after the second World War, as it is well known, that Italian has become the spoken language of the most people, when the impact of basic education was added to the spreading of television.

But not only was Italian national identity limited for centuries to a part of the ruling élite, however significantly widespread that élite was. More specifically, the history of its republican version is one of defeats. The republican Jacobin experiences of late eighteenth century were destroyed by conservative powers, by Sanfedist gangs, and by Napoleon's geo-political strategy. The hero of was a republican, . Nonetheless, the republican experiences of 1848 - form to Venice and Rome - were both heroic and ephemeral. Since then the political leadership of the unifying process was with the Savoy monarchy, its strategist being Cavour. The same holds true for the heroic liberation of southern Italy from the Bourbon monarchy by Garibaldi's volunteers. Soon Piedmont took the direction again in its hands and every hypothesis of self-government was rapidly defeated. Through less than open referenda southern regions were annexed to the , which became without either a formal dynastic discontinuity (Vittorio Emanuele remained 'two') or a change in the octroyée constitution of the kingdom. The price of this was brigandism, illiberal violent repression and, probably, the preclusion of every chance of southern Italy's economic development and civil evolution.

The unitary state resulting from the unifying process is a centralised monarchy, taking over the legal and administrative framework of the Savoy kingdom. The rhetoric of national identity leaves no room for republican principles. Early twentieth century nationalism is even more far away from the republican tradition; indeed it appropriates the language of patriotism, severing its link with liberty and democracy. Fascism will eventually monopolise such terms as 'nation' and 'fatherland', so that they will be unusable for a long time in democratic argument.

The underground river of republican ideology shows up again in the second key stage of building national identity, namely the experience of German occupation and the Resistance against nazism and fascism. The Justice and Liberty groups play a significant role in the partisan fighting - maybe only less relevant than communist 'Garibaldi' groups - and the Action Party has a key place in temporary cabinets. But with the advent of republican democracy - in the Cold War climate - the Action Party rapidly disappears from the political scene, with its leading members going in different directions (even though they will be major influences in Italian politics and culture: just think of such people, very different in their careers and political affiliations, as Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Norberto Bobbio, Ugo La Malfa and Bruno Trentin). Rather, after the second World War national identity has been shaped by the clash between the two dominant political cultures, the Christian democratic and the communist. It is this conflict that configures, in republican Italy, the emerging of a collective identity through the transformation, in Alessandro Pizzorno's phrase, of 'private hate' into 'public friendship'29.

The 'republican' element of Action Party intransigence shows up in many stages of recent history, but it is invariably contained and defeated. Its last stirring might be said to be the movement of renewing politics that, albeit with some ambiguities, cut through Italian civil society from 1992 to 1996, as an answer to the general corruption of the political system brought into light by the 'Clean Hands' affair. This process, together with the long wave of 1989, led to the disappearance or transformation of all major political parties of republican Italy, and the establishment of a majoritarian, albeit spurious, electoral system. The symbol of that movement's retreat can be taken to be the fall of the Prodi cabinet in 1998, with the ensuing coming back - through MPs changing party affiliation and other 'transformist' practices - of a cabinet held by a coalition of parties: the 'normal' situation of Italian politics.

It may be added that recent scholarship on the problems of Italian national identity has charged the very republican-Action Party political culture with some significant responsibilities. Such authors as Renzo de Felice and Ernesto Galli della Loggia have taken up the idea that the armistice and the king's flight from Rome, on September 8 1943, have been the 'death of the fatherland'. Galli della Loggia emphasises the long term traumatic impact of the division of the country between the Kingdom and the Republic of Salò, between fascism and the Resistance. He favours waiving the anti-fascist legacy so as to reconstruct an Italian national identity. He supposes, moreover, that a monarchic continuity would have fostered a more solid national identity30. Even authors much closer to the anti-fascist tradition, such as Pietro Scoppola or Gian Enrico Rusconi, have argued about the limitations of the Action Party culture. The former stresses the value and genuine popular meaning of the 'passive resistance' to Nazi occupation, widespread among Catholic population, in comparison with the armed resistance of communist and Action Party élites. Rusconi himself - though, as we shall see, he proposes a revamping of republican constitutional patriotism - emphasises the élite character of Action Party democratic radicalism31.

Apart from an assessment of the normative meaning of the republican tradition, some more general considerations are needed. The sense might be questioned of appealing to a an ancient and early modern political tradition to cope with the question of citizenship in contemporary complex diverse societies. In order to understand the process of social integration, it might be argued, the theorems of game theory and the results of system sociology might turn out to be more useful than Machiavelli's or Cattaneo's pages. Today's Italy is a complex post-industrial society, pervaded by the media and forms of social differentiation much more articulated than the 'moods' of republic-cities. Republican virtù can hardly be supposed to have an impact, in terms of social integration, greater than, e.g., such phenomena as the institutionalisation of behaviour expectations and 'expectations of expectations'32 or the role of the political system in producing consensus (the so-called 'legitimation through procedures')33.

However, a feature of very recent Italian history is an element of novelty: for fifteen years at most, Italy has no longer been a country of emigrants, but of immigrants. To be sure, the presence of foreign communities is much less significant than that in countries of historical immigration, such as Britain, France, Germany or the Netherlands, even though the extremely low Italian demographic rate is expected to produce long term effects. In any event, a cultural, religious and linguistic unity, which had been the substratum of Italian citizenship for a long time, seems for the first time to have come to an end. Faced with this scenario, the recent (1992)34 Italian legislation on nationality, subordinating naturalisation to long complex procedures and relying on ius sanguinis to a relevant extent, already seems to be inadequate. Proposals for a constitutional amendment, meant to allow Italian citizens abroad to vote in national elections, go even against the tendency to the generalisation of ius soli and the link between nationality and dwelling.

A further element should be considered. I think that in Italy the link between national identity and European identity can be said to be deeply felt. Under certain respects this is a paradoxical effect of that 'negative' element we have found in the republican notion of citizenship. At the popular level, it is expressed through an ironic and resigned criticism of national mores, the inefficiency of civil service, widespread bad habits. In this respect European integration is seen as an opportunity for reconstruction not to be missed. Significantly, in Italy the heavy sacrifices imposed upon the national economy and state budget by the compliance with the Maastricht criteria did not meet a relevant social conflict nor a significant political opposition: far left-wing groups themselves have in substance endorsed the cabinet policy. The very secessionist project of the Northern League is very likely to have been defeated by the adoption of Euro. Paradoxically, a policy aimed at limiting sovereignty and giving up one of its most typical marks, the monetary unit, had itself a positive impact on the solidity of national membership.

3. The virtues of a negative identity

It may be asked whether, in spite of this series of defeats, the republican tradition is still useful to cope with the question of Italian national identity. This is a problem for at least three reasons. First, a significant political force, rooted in many areas of northern Italy, explicitly wants secession or, at any rate, a breach in the bond of national solidarity. The 'ethnodemocracy' of the Northern League has been endorsed by important political theorists, it has been recently provided with a symbolic apparatus (however unlikely and approximate: but which myths are rational?) and, most importantly, its current political crisis notwithstanding, can still express widespread feelings, moods and interests. Second, Italy, as we have seen, has become a country of immigration only recently and is, by virtue of its geographical location, the firs landing-place for immigrants to the First World from the Mediterranean south and east. It goes without saying that the League's success is also due to its propensity to give voice to widespread racist feelings against immigrants (as well as against southern Italians). Third, Italian transition, started in 1989 and 1992, has not yet been accomplished: renewed political institutions have not been established, nor did a fresh political culture replace those who had shaped post-war historical experience. Can then the republican tradition still help - on an analytic or normative level - to carry out the difficult task of redesigning a national identity? If a standard picture of the republican tradition is correct, e.g. Habermas's picture in Faktizität und Geltung, I do think it cannot. On this view, drawing on elements of John Pocock's account in The Machiavellian Moment35 variously read in the light of Hannah Arendt's thought, republican political thought stems from Aristotle's conception of the individual as zoon politikon, that can only develop her moral rational nature in political participation. In this perspective the republican tradition is seen as the political translation of communitarian theses, in that it expresses a notion of membership rooted in "the ethical substance of a particular community"36.

Quentin Skinner, however, is known to have challenged this picture, pointing to a 'neo-roman' strand in classical republicanism. On Skinner's view this theoretical strand departs from the Aristotelian tradition: the individual is no longer seen as zoon politikon, nor is politics considered to be the achievement of human essence. For neo-roman republicans, says Skinner, political participation is a means to defend civil liberties, and virtue itself has an instrumental meaning, which is the set of dispositions and powers required by effective political activity. In particular, Machiavelli - the beacon of this tradition - would have put forward an original conception of liberty, distinguished from both ancient 'positive' liberty and modern 'negative' liberty as lack of fetters. Also, a positive evaluation of conflict is typical of this version of republicanism37.

Close affinities can be easily seen between this 'neo-roman' strand of republicanism and Italian patriots' republicanism. Thus, unsurprisingly, such authors as Maurizio Viroli and Gian Enrico Rusconi have recently appealed to the republican tradition itself in order to propose a fresh version of patriotism as the virtue of democratic citizenship. They insist on the link between republican citizenship and democracy, and emphasise the deep difference between republican patriotism and the organic and ethnic forms of nationalism38.

Rusconi's account, in particular, begins with a worry: the threat of secession is an actual danger and the League is a mass political force, rooted in many areas of northern Italy. That is the reason why a republican culture and feeling, i.e. an essential resource of democracy, is required39. Whereas Viroli plays the (republican) concept of fatherland against the (ethnic cultural) concept of nation, Rusconi sees the republic as "the junction of nation, qua the outcome of a long conflicting history, and democracy qua an imperfect, though perfectible, political project"40. Defeated in the Risorgimento, republicanism had a major impact during the framing of the Constitution, which - says Rusconi against revisionists - remains "the event richest in value and collective national pathos"41.

Rusconi makes it clear that this process does not refer to an ethnic-anthropological 'hard core', but to historic interaction and communication among individuals and groups through which 'civil society' and the republican nation were established within precise cultural and geographic boundaries. Moreover, on Rusconi's view republicanism makes it possible to re-define "a democracy's necessary link between the institutional framework and the citizens' behaviour motivations"42. On the other hand, recent empirical social research shows evidence that in Italian history the republican political tradition has been something more significant than a genre or the idle ideology of some political cultural élite. Robert Putnam, in particular, argues that there is a link between the 'civic tradition' characterising the Italian regions affected by the republican experience and institutions' output43.

In the light of this, I think that the republican tradition can provide some useful hints about the complex relationship between citizenship and national identity, both with respect to historical interpretation and normative proposal. And this holds true for Italy too. First, because the process of emergence of an Italian national identity can hardly be understood without reference to that tradition. As we have seen, for centuries an appeal to collective myths, heroic battles, a shared epos, was not available. Italians did not suffer ethnic or religious persecutions, nor did they engage in crusades. In their literary legacy there are no sagas of half-divine heroes nor poems of Christian knights, but the Divina commedia, the Decameron or the Orlando furioso. Nor could any reigning dynasty play a significant mythopoietic role. But this very lack of traditional mythomoteurs emphasises the importance of centuries old literary production, the appeal to Roman antiquity and, chiefly, the protest against 'barbarian' foreign domination: in a word, the constitutive features of republican identity.

Second, the republican tradition in political thought can provide us with ideas, principles and values useful, at the normative level, to build a conception of community membership suitable for current challenges. In an age of emerging ethnic states and claims to secession, but also, less dramatically, of weaker bonds of solidarity between rich and poor regions, the theoretical political debate opposes an organic, even ethnic, notion of membership, rooted in a community's substantive ethos, to the rejection of the very notion of citizenship44 or its formulation in purely legal-normative terms. I think none of these alternatives is viable. A re-definition of national identity seems more promising which begins with an awareness that any collective (ethnic and, a fortiori, national) identity is 'artificial' and 'made up'45.

Early modern republicans felt a strong bond to their own polis, but they were far from tracing this link back to ethnic or genealogical origins. Rather, they felt themselves the keepers of a shared history and, mainly, the holders of a 'liberty' worth being fought for. Membership of the republic was seen as a feeling of loyalty to a political-legal order, free from references to ius sanguinis and the 'community of history and fate'. From this point of view there are many similarities to Dworkin's notion of 'liberal community' or the idea, taken over by Habermas, of 'constitutional patriotism' (Verfassungspatriotismus)46. But there emerges a significant difference, too. Membership of the republic includes important emotional and symbolic elements: it is precisely a feeling, a passion. And it is membership of a particular republic, backed up by endorsing a specific culture47. Rusconi takes 'constitutional patriotism' to mean "accepting a Constitution where the status of citizenship is characterised by the bill of rights and individuals' duties but also by acknowledging that the constraints of the Chart presuppose and lead back to a shared history and culture, succinctly referred to as the nation"48. In this vein Rusconi too parts company with Habermas's universalism: citizenship and national identity need be rooted in a cultural 'life-world', historically constituted; they cannot be identified with the endorsement of normative universal principles49.

Moreover, we have found in the republican tradition the idea that membership - apart from being articulated vertically in cultural, ethnic, association, religious elements - cannot but have several levels of political identity: from neighbourhood, quarter and village to the land and the region, possibly up to European identity. The idea that, under given conditions, a plural patriotism does not mean a weaker sense of national identity is expressed by Cattaneo's picture of the many-rooted plant, and his thesis that "municipalities are the nation: they are the nation in the innermost shelter of its liberty". I think that articulating civic memberships, in particular valuing the city element, does not simply point to a path towards institutional innovation. It suggests an important hint for the difficult task of rebuilding an Italian civic culture, after the crisis of those that marked post-war history. In the age of globalisation and telematic revolution - perhaps especially in Italy - cities are likely to be a preferred place for a politics more controlled by citizens, that activates the available resources of 'patriotism' and civic sense. Perhaps it is only in city politics that democratic experiences may be rooted which are not merely formal and can attach 'sense' to politics50.

Besides the civic notion of collective identity and the pluralist articulation of membership, I think a third relevant element is what Rusconi has called 'expiation patriotism': "a way of passive participation to the nation's bereavements, conspicuous in the period 1943-45, characterised by a vague sense of guilt, not personal (individually one feels indeed an innocent victim) but collective". The grief caused by international and civil war comes to appear "as the price the community must pay for its redeeming from the consent given to the fascist regime which led to catastrophe". It is a feeling that "yields a new acknowledgement of a common fate" and goes on in the republic's history "being a link with the new civil order", playing even "a role similar to or substitutive of 'civil religion'"51.

In my view 'expiation patriotism' is not without risks. In the symbolic apparatus of aggressive nationalism there are often not only half-divine leaders, triumphant saints, more or less unlikely genealogies, original myths: there are also narratives of (perhaps imagined) defeats52. But I suppose that Italian expiation patriotism is different in kind, precisely because it opposes the idea of national 'primacy' and refers to the republican tradition. For this very reason it is a legacy to accept and use. Republican theorists and patriots, 'internal' critics of national history and character, closely linked their notion of collective identity to the collective rejection of oppression: "everybody smells this barbarous domination". This idea, I think, so embodied in Italian identity tradition, bears a direct connection to a conception typical of neo-roman republicanism, namely liberty as non domination, as exclusion of arbitrary interference53. And is a good argument against the thesis of the 'death of the fatherland'.

Finally, what I think is a misconception should be disposed of. Many authors see a close link between republican patriotism, military virtue and the endorsement of government policies54. In this respect I think we should part company with Machiavelli, or at least with a certain reading of his thought: if the democratic process is a requirement of republican citizenship, if social conflict is a condition of 'public liberty', then criticism, dissent, conscientious objection are as vital a resource as loyalty, consensus and obedience. This holds true, in a highly significant way, with respect to key issues such as a country's engagement in war. A split public opinion on such themes need not mean weaker bonds of membership of national community55. And, appearance notwithstanding, I think that the saying 'right or wrong my country' is not very consistent with republican citizenship: at least, with the kind or republicanism discussed above. The idea of 'constitutional patriotism' is much more fitting. In the Italian case, it means fidelity to article 11: "Italy rejects war as a means of offending other peoples' liberty, and a means of settling international disputes"56.

1 J. Habermas, Die Nachholende Revolution, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1990, p. 217.

2 See, of course, T. Hobbes, Leviathan, XXI.8

3 Perdio, questo la mente talor vi mova, et con pietà guardate le lagrime del popol doloroso, che sol da voi riposo dopo Dio spera; et pur che voi mostriate segno alcun di pietate, vertù contra furore prenderà l'arme, et fia'l combatter corto: che l'antiquo valore ne l'italici cor' non è anchor morto. (F. Petrarca, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, CXXVIII, vv. 87-96).

4 N. Machiavelli, De principatibus, XXVI.27

5 [...]il monumento vidi ove posa il corpo di quel grande che temprando lo scettro a' regnatori gli allòr ne sfronda, ed alle genti svela di che lagrime grondi e di che sangue (U. Foscolo, Dei sepolcri, vv. 154-58).

6 da che le mal vietate Alpi e l'alterna onnipotenza delle umane sorti armi e sostanze t'invadeano ed are e patria e, tranne la memoria, tutto (Ibid., vv. 181-85).

7 The sonnet 'A Zacinto' should be considered, too. It is devoted to the island where the poet was born, and is pervaded by the feeling of exile and nostalgia for the 'mother land': in Foscolo there is an articulation of concentric memberships characterising the 'patriotism' of many republican authors.

8 U. Foscolo, Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis, 1.

9 M. Tullius Cicero, De officiis, I.17.

10 Just a few examples: the 'labours of Italy', narrated in Decennale primo (1504), are those of the ten years after the invasion. A clear reference is in the chapter Dell'ambizione. See also Mandragola, a. I sc. 1: "with the coming of king Charles, wars in Italy began"; Clizia, a. I. sc. 1. 11 N. Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, VIII.36.

12 See, e.g., N. Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, April 16, 1627. See also Istorie fiorentine, III.7.

13 "Liberate diuturna cura Italiam, extirpate has immanes belluas, quae hominis, preter faciem et vocem, nichil habent". Machiavelli to Francesco Guicciardini, May 17, 1526.

14 See N. Machiavelli to F. Vettori, December 10, 1513.

15 See ***

16 N. Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, I.4; see also I.37. And, of course, the destructive (but not always) impact of conflict is treated in Istorie fiorentine.

17 See N. Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, I. proem.

18 See II.3.

19 N. Machiavelli, Discorsi, III.41.

20 A classical description of this event is R. von Albertini, Das florentinische Staatsbewußtsein im Übergang von der Republik zum Prinzipat, Bern, Francke Verlag, 1955.

21 See Cfr. R. Villari, "Patriottismo e riforma politica", contribution to the conference Libertà politica e coscienza civile. Liberalismo, comunitarismo e tradizione repubblicana, Torino, Fondazione Agnelli, 21-22 novembre 1996. Villari's thesis is that Italians' "grand virtue in body" Machiavelli speaks of in Il principe XXVI is not sheer literary fiction, but showed itself significantly.

22 M. Rosati, I linguaggi del patriottismo italiano, doctoral dissertation, University of Florence, 1998.

23 Rosati, ***

24 M. Gioia, Quale dei governi liberi meglio convenga alla libertà d'Italia, Roma, Istituto storico italiano per l'età moderna e contemporanea, 1988. p. 27.

25 Rosati here refers to M. Walzer, ***

26 See P. Gobetti, Scritti politici, pp. 677-78; Id., La rivoluzione liberale, Einaudi, Torino, 1995, p. 46. 27 See M. Rosati, **book***

28 Rosati, book***

29 "National identity, that can be intense in the revolutionary formation of a state or in confrontations with the enemy, is backed up in everyday life by rituals too intermittent, not very intense, easily ignored, thus insufficient to meet more limited and circumscribed needs for recognition of identity and constitution of solidarity. It is instead in the conflict between enduring political parties - which the framers of democratic republics did not value - that there seems to be again the chance of a strong, everyday recognition, and so of forms of active solidarity, though not exceeding the constitutional limitations of wider collective solidarity": A. Pizzorno, "Come pensare il conflitto", in Le radici della politica assoluta, cit., pp. 193-94.

30 See E. Galli della Loggia, La morte della patria. La crisi dell'idea di nazione tra Resistenza, antifascismo e repubblica, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1996.

31 See e.g. G.E. Rusconi, Se cessiamo di essere una nazione, Bologna, il Mulino, 1993, pp. 86-91..

32 See N. Luhmann, Soziologische Aufklärung I, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1970.

33 Ibid., pp. 179-204.

34 Act n. 91 of February 5, 1992.

35 See J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1975.

36 J. Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1992.

37 See M. Geuna, Il linguaggio del repubblicanesimo di Adam Ferguson, in E. Pii (ed), I linguaggi politici delle rivoluzioni in Europa, Firenze, Olschki, 1992; Id., "La tradizione repubblicana e i suoi interpreti: famiglie teoriche e discontinuità concettuali", Filosofia politica, 1998, n. 1.

38 See M. Viroli, Per amore della patria. Patriottismo e nazionalismo nella storia, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1995.

39 G.E. Rusconi, Patria e repubblica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1997, p. 29.

40 Ibid., p. 9.

41 Ibid., p. 15. 42 G.E. Rusconi, Patria e repubblica, cit., p. ****.

43 See R. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, Princeton., Princeton University Press, 1993. It may be noted that Putnam does not distinguish 'Aristotelian' from 'neo-roman' republicanism. The distinction might be useful for empirical enquiry itself, e.g. with respect to the assessment of conflict. Among other things, Putnam's account entails taking the distinction between central-northern Italy and southern Italy seriously, acknowledging its deep historical roots. On the other hand, it is clear that if central-northern regions can claim something on their behalf, this is precisely the tradition of republican self-government; surely, not their Celtic (or Etruscan) origin or the blessing of god river Po.

44 See L. Ferrajoli, "Dai diritti del cittadino ai diritti della persona", in D. Zolo (ed), La cittadinanza. Appartenenza, identità, diritti, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1994.

45 See B. Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London 1983; E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1983; E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990; but also such a defender of the link between ethnos and nation as A.D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1986.

46 See J. Habermas, "Staatsbürgerschaft und nationale Identität", in Faktizität und Geltung, cit.; Id., "Anerkennungskämpfe im demokratischen Rechtsstaat", in the German edition of C. Taylor, Multikulturalismus und die Politik der Anerkennung, Frankfurt a.M. 1993.

47 On this see M. Viroli, Per amore della patria, cit. and especially F. Michelmann, "Family Quarrel", Cardozo Law Review, 17 (1996), 4-5, pp. 1170-71.

48 G.E. Rusconi, Patria e repubblica, cit., p. 16.

49 Rusconi had already made this point in Se cessiamo di essere una nazione, cit., pp. 126-37. See also F. Belvisi, Rights, World-Society and the Crisis of Legal Universalism, "Ratio Juris", 9 (1996), n. 1, pp. 60-71. Remarkably, in his most recent treatment of the problems of collective membership Habermas no longer seems to see its cultural rootedness as a necessary, albeit temporary, condition of the achievement of democracy and the rule of law. Instead he sees it as one of its essential permanent conditions; therefore, he seems to hold the need for a sort of 'warm stream' in democratic citizenship. See J. Habermas, Die Einbeziehung des Anderen, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp.

50 On the other hand, I think that the republican tradition can contribute to the 'reconstruction' of a democratic theory other than the theses of 'democratic elitism': it is not another call for popular participation in all levels of decision making. The political division of labour should not be ignored, but institutions should be kept open to contestability by citizens (see P. Pettitt, Republicanism, cit., pp. 8, 201-02), and the political system should be 'permeable' to the communicative processes from civil society (see J. Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung, especially cp. 7; see also Id.. "Volkssouveränität als Verfahren", Ibid.).

51 G.E. Rusconi, Patria e repubblica, cit., pp. 22-23.

52 The reference is, most obviously, to the relevance of the defeat of Kosovopolije as the mythomoteur of Serb nationalism.

53 See P. Pettit, Republicanism, cit.; Q. Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, cit. Here too, I think, there is a contact with the theme of European citizenship. It is only after two centuries of wars amongst Europeans, after the catastrophe of Second World War, after Shoah, that the difficult process of building a common identity started in Europe. See F. Cerutti, "Identità e politica", in F. Cerutti (ed), Identità e politica, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1996, especially pp. 38-41.

54 See e.g. A. MacIntyre, "Is Patriotism a Virtue?" Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas, 1984.

55 See A. Panebianco, 'Representation without taxation': l'idea di cittadinanza in Italia, "Il Mulino", 40 (1991), n. 1.

56 But I do not want my conclusion to suggest that all-legal, insipid approach to citizenship I criticised above. I propose therefore another literary quotation. In the song All'Italia, surely not the best instance of his poetry, opposes the fate of Italian soldiers in Napoleon's army to the fate of those who fight to defend their fatherland:

Oh misero colui che in guerra è spento. Non per li patri lidi e per la pia consorte e i figli cari, ma da nemici altrui per altra gente, e non può dir morendo: alma terra natia, la vita che mi desti ecco ti rendo (G. Leopardi, "All'Italia", in Canti, vv. 54-60). Leopardi wrote one hundred eighty one years ago. Yet his thought is perfectly consistent with Italian constitutional law and the Charter of United Nation: both admit defensive war only.