Government
Article 1 of the Italian Constitution states
Italy is a democratic Republic founded on labour. Sovereignty belongs to the people and is exercised by the people in the forms and within the limits of the Constitution.
By stating that Italy is a democratic republic, the article solemnly declares the results of the constitutional referendum which took place on the 2nd of June 1946. The State is not anymore an hereditary property of the ruling monarch, but it is instead a Res Publica, it belongs to everyone.
The people who are called to temporarily administer the republic are not owners, but servants; and the governed are not subjects, but citizens. And the sovereignty, that is the power to make choices that involve the entire community, belongs to the people, in accordance with the concept of a democracy, from the Greek demos (people) and kratìa (power). This power, however, is not to be exercised arbitrarily, but in the forms and within the limits established by the rule of law.
Read more about this topic: Politics Of Italy
Famous quotes containing the word government:
“America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing. We are the richest people in the world and they are among the poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help—because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And perhaps because they won.”
—Martha Gellhorn (b. 1908)
“Our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)