EL REFERENDUM CONSTITUCIONAL Y LA SAGA DE LAS REFORMAS INSTITUCIONALES EN ITALIA: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

This paper goes through the process that ended in the constitutional referendum in Italy, 2006. The essay tries to evaluate the reason of its result and its political and constitutional consequences. It has four parts: the first one set the failed reform in the Italian empty history of constitutional reforms; the second one, recalls the main features of the constitutional reform voted in referendum; the third one, analyzes the political, social, geographic, ideological and age cleavages. In the fourth part, the papers sustains the thesis that only the Constitutional Court would be empowered in the fragile Italian political system.