Le "grandi" riforme del centrismo

The reforms of the De Gasperi governments and De Gasperi’s reformism are perhaps among the most controversial and interesting topics in the historiographical debate concerning the early phase of the history of the Italian Republic. Despite the considerable volume of new sources now available, historiography remains divided between those who regard those years as a period of substantial preservation of the political and social structures of Fascism, with an inflexible, if at times reactionary, conception of public order; and those who, conversely, regard them as fundamental to the reconstruction of Italian democracy, set in motion through a wise centrist policy—moderate yet open and sensitive to social justice, albeit understood in an anti-communist sense. The reforms introduced by the De Gasperi governments – primarily the agrarian and fiscal reforms – do not necessarily exhaust the philosophical idea and culture of the reformist policies conceived by De Gasperi, but they clearly constitute their highest and most politically significant achievement. De Gasperi’s reformism, in short, can be defined as a political project for the reconstruction and consolidation of democracy through complex forms of mediation, aimed at reconciling ethical values and institutional practice, promoting a ‘secular’, orderly and inclusive evolution of the Italian political and social system during the delicate transition from fascist dictatorship to the democracy of the Republic, against the backdrop of the early phase of the Cold War.