QUALITÀ DELL’ETICA PUBBLICA, QUALITÀ POLITICA E COSTITUZIONI ITALIANE

Abstract

The Author treats the argument of the quality of public ethics starting from norms that regulate it in various Sicilian Constitutions of the 19th century until Constitutional Chart of the Italian Republic.Therefore, he shows how the Sicilian Constitution of 1812, modeled according to the example of political institutions of Great Britain, and that of 1848 both have already had a great interest towards the profile of morality exercised in the political life and how both have prescribed the parliamentary decadence of Deputies who made themselves guilty of having corrupted the electorate in order to be elected or became authors of criminal offences. The question of the quality of public ethics appears, for the Author, even today of a relevant actuality not only in order to restrain the corruption that devastates the politics, transforming it in bad politics, but also to give force to a successful recruitment of political élites. Therefore, in this work he treats the topic of the regeneration of political life aiming to connect the exigency of reform of the access to political roles with a not less necessary ethical vigilance expressed by the suffrage of electoral body. Following the line of Max Weber’s thought, the Author concludes that the quality of politics has no need of demagogues, political hacks or political dilettantes, but of austere men of politics, dedicated to good purposes of general interest, and which should act according to the ethics of responsibility.