Political system choice under the 1924 Constitution

La scelta del sistema politico sotto la Costituzione del 1924

Abstract

This paper examines the political system choice made by the 1924 Constitution by looking at constitutional and dispositional properties. It is argued by a certain literature that the political system choice of this constitution mixes assembly government’s properties with parliamentarism, namely supremacy of parliament, fusion of powers and absence of executive power of dissolution. In the light of a brief explanation on what is meant by parliamentarism the paper refutes this argument. For that matter, the power of dissolution, its functions and forms in parliamentary systems are reviewed closely and reached a conclusion that the 1924 Constitution’s political system is a type of parliamentary system. The paper claims that it is an unconstrained republican parliamentarism which is a majoritarian parliamentary system with no effective checks and balances. Such parliamentarism is shaped by revolutionary settings at the time to make it suitable for nation state revolution, not for pluralist democracy.