Quello che resta. La forma di governo dopo l’emergenza: post hoc ergo propter hoc?

What remains. The form of government after the Emergency: post hoc ergo propter hoc?

Abstract

Abstract: What remains. The form of government after the Emergency: post hoc ergo propter hoc? – After the end of the pandemic emergency, one wonders whether many temporal alterations in the distribution and in the ways of exercise of public powers between top governing bodies have permanent effects. Apparently, with the end of the crisis everything seems to be gone back to normal in the balance of powers. Things are perhaps not that easy. The health emergency has intercepted and emphasized trends going on for some time in the liberal-democratic systems. A gradual concentration of power in the hands of the executives, in the name of efficiency and speed in the decision-making, produces a creeping transformation in the relationship between the holders of public power and in the notion of the democratic principle itself, as it was meant in the constitutionalism after World War Two. It is a trend largely separated from the emergency, regarding which the virus Covid-19 seems to be completely innocent.

Keywords: Separation of powers; Pandemic; Government; Emergency; Political responsibility.