IL COSTITUZIONALISMO VITTORIANO TRA LIBERTÀ E IMPERO

Abstract

Victorian constitutionalism carries out the political premises of the Glorious Revolution, enshrining the definitive transition from the constitutional monarchy to the parliamentary one: the choice of the Prime Minister is taken away from the royal prerogative and determined by the confidence of the elective chamber, to which the Cabinet is responsible. Historical precedents, which are sometimes fortuitous, have codified a practice that would have been a model for western constitutionalism. And this is in spite of the contradictions of an era that takes its name from Queen Victoria, in which a vast colonial empire is the other side of the coin of domestic freedom, and in which poverty and exploitation of the working classes make industrial development possible.