La «democrazia immediata»: prospettive a confronto

The expression «immediate democracy» is used according to multiple meanings, for example: to indicate a peculiar feature of populist policy; to describe Internet as a mean to increase citizen participation; to define a consequence of the crisis of intermediate bodies. Its origin is ancient and the aim of this essay is to compare some variations of this expression. The starting point are the positions expressed during a well-known debate on institutional reforms that took place in Italy in the 1980s. In a second moment, we focus on a position which emerged during the same years and which sought to combine the request for «immediacy» within the logic of representative democracy, therefore without weakening the forms of classical mediation. Following, we recalled some positions of the most recent debate, which identify a crucial element of «immediate» contemporary democracy in the disintermediation. As will be seen, these meanings differ, at least, for three aspects: the role they reserve for parties, citizens and government. Within the frame that defines each model of «immediate democracy», these three subjects are supposed according to a specific declination: are parties crucial for political mediation? Is the citizen «arbiter» of immediate politics? Should the government be «strengthened» or is it in balance with parliament? The answer to these questions confirms the hypothesis that it is not possible to assume the expression «immediate democracy» in a univocal way; and, at the same time, it confirms the importance of the attention to the transformations of representative democracy in the «intermediate space», but above all that «immediacy» is a polysense term, with an increasingly number of problems.