Agenda di un parlamentare anglofilo: gli Studi costituzionali di Emilio Broglio (1861)

The chapter focuses on a short treatise published by the Italian right wing liberal Emilio Broglio in 1861. At the time Broglio was a deputy of the first national Parliament, having a previous experience in the sub-alpine Legislature. In his work he questions the elected Chamber's rules of procedure, which he believes inadequate to the conspicuous legislative action the institution must take to answer the growing Nation's needs. Looking for an alternative discipline, he checks English parliamentary model and on that basis designs a reform that would be suitable to the Italian case. So the essay qualifies both as a constitutional study and an operating proposal. Thanks to Broglio's initiative, it actually inspired some minor procedure reform but it was shortly overcome by the liberal party's decision to abandon the idea nourished by Cavour of a strict imitation of English representative institutions. Despite this failure, Broglio's work testifies a mature insight in modern parliamentary functioning, somewhat unexpected of the Lombard political culture to which the author, due to his origins, belonged.