Bicameralismo in Italia: tentativi e ipotesi di riforma alla svolta della XVI legislatura

The paper deals with the complex question of Italian bicameralism, the topic of a lively constitutional debate, which has constantly advocated a change, so as to obtain a differentiation between the two branches of Parliament, in point of composition and of function and, in particular, of the Second Chamber which, from the point of view of the reformers, should take a “regional” connotation. The first part of the work starts off and develops from this theoretical preamble; it focuses on mapping and reconstructing Italian bicameralism starting from the debate in the Constituent Assembly up to current times (through periodization of the most significant reform attempts). The second part of the dissertation is instead more of an exploratory nature, in search of alternative scenarios to the reform of bicameralism, placed within the context of the 16th legislative period; in fact, if on the one hand, toward the end of this period another new plan for reforming bicameralism was submitted and partially approved, on the other the search closes with the alternative hypothesis of revitalizing the Committee for regional affairs, through integration with the territorial component. This, in substance, would mean that not only the equal character of the two Chambers remains unchanged, but it would also push in the direction of a “de facto” unicameralism, a hypothesis that has never been considered since the debate in the Constituent Assembly.