L'iniziativa popolare nei referendum di riforma costituzionale in Italia

The essay, prepared as part of a research project of national interest in Spain, reconstructs and analyses the legislation and practice followed in Italy to request and hold constitutional referendums, focusing on citizens’ initiative requests, the related procedural formalities and the recently admitted option of digital signature. Until now, citizens’ initiatives have been merely accessory to those of parliamentarians, in a framework that has seen a torsion of the constitutional referendum from a guarantee instrument, with oppositional value, to a tool also requested by the majority, in a confirmatory and plebiscitary key. Now the possibility of online collection of voter subscriptions could revitalise popular referendum initiatives and, before that, those aimed at submitting constitutional reform proposals to parliament. But it could also pave the way for less meditated requests lacking a real consensus in the country, subjecting the delicate balance between the institutions of representative democracy and the forms of direct democracy, outlined by the Constitution, to greater tensions.