Recomposing the pieces

Fractures and continuities in the history of republican institutions

The introduction explains how the whole publìcation is a contribution to the history of the Republic"s institutions, focussing on the concept of rupture: not a history of ruptures but, rather, chapters in an institutional history considered in the light of some of the main ruptures. Rupture is to be understood in the sense of a profound break or sharp discontinuity that has sometimes become a dramatic laceration, as in the case of the Piazza Fontana massacre (1969) or Aldo Moro"s murder (1978). Some ruptures have been violent. Others, such as Tangentopoli, have not been violent, deriving as they have done from processes within the political class that have largely been determined by the lack of a vision for the nation and the fact that particular interests have prevailed. The use of the rupture perspective does not have a merely descriptive function, however, since it leads to some of our political system"s structural features that take us well beyond a simple account of events.