Appunti sulla teoria della rappresentanza politica di Vittorio Emanuele Orlando

[Machine translation] //The essay critically reconstructs the theory of political representation developed by Vittorio Emanuele Orlando in the contribution De la nature juridique de la représentation politique (1895), placing it at the intersection between the transformation of the liberal state, the formation of Italian constitutionalist science and the debate on the foundations of political legitimation. Starting from the Orlandian refutation of the theory of the political mandate, the work shows how the Sicilian jurist pursues a double theoretical operation: removing the relationship between voters and elected representatives from the private paradigm of delegation and bringing representation back into a state-centric system, in which the source of the powers of the representative bodies is not the people, but the Constitution and therefore the State as a sovereign legal unit. The result is a conception of representation as a procedure for selecting the most capable, consistent with the liberal State, but problematic in the light of republican democratic-pluralist constitutionalism., // The essay offers a critical reconstruction of Vittorio Emanuele Orlando’s theory of political representation as developed in De la nature juridique de la représentation politique (1895), situating it at the intersection of the transformation of the liberal state, the rise of Italian Constitutional and Public law scholarship, and the broader European debate on the foundations of political legitimacy. Starting from Orlando’s critique of the theory of political mandate, the article shows how he pursues a twofold theoretical move: first, to detach the relationship between electors and elected from the private-law model of delegation; second, to relocate representation within a state-centred framework in which the source of representative powers is not the people, but the Constitution, and thus the State as a sovereign legal unity. Representation is thereby redefined as a procedure for selecting the most capable, a view coherent with the liberal state yet deeply problematic when measured against the democratic-pluralist axiological framework of the Italian republican constitutional order., //The article proposes a critical reconstruction of the theory of political representation developed by Vittorio Emanuele Orlando in On the legal nature of political representation (1895), placing it at the intersection of the transformation of the liberal state, the formation of Italian public science, and the European debate on the foundations of political legitimacy. Based on the Orlandic refutation of the theory of political mandate, the study shows that the Sicilian jurist performs a double theoretical operation: removing the relationship between voters and elected officials from the privatizing paradigm of delegation and re-registering representation in a strictly stato-centric framework, where the source of the powers of representative bodies is not the people, but the Constitution, and therefore the State as a sovereign legal unit. The result is a conception of representation as the most capable selection procedure, consistent with the liberal state, but problematic in terms of the democratic and pluralist constitutionalism of the Italian republican order.