McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014 April, 2014 | Page 20

variable of institutional reform through
regional devolution can help explain Italy’s
success in accommodating regional tensions,
despite its unitary institutional design.
However, Canadian and Italian politics since
2000 suggest that the power of institutions

“...why has Canadian federalism strengthened Quebec nationalism, whereas Italy’s unitary system quelled regional
tensions?”

to shape political outcomes has prevailed
over pre-institutional factors, culminating
in a push for Italian federal reform.
Regional Tensions in Italy and Canada
In many ways, it is surprising that
in Italy, a country united comparatively
recently, political tensions based on regional
conflict have not been stronger and that
regional parties and movements have not
played a bigger role in national politics1.
With the exception of certain small areas
on the periphery, there have been few
powerful movements of regional defense,
let alone parties promoting the break-up of
the Italian state. However, the emergence
of the few Italian separatist movements
has often been linked to economic factors.
Since unification, Italy has been divided
economically, having a higher variation
in socio-economic structures and living
standards across its regions than in other
major European states. In 1946, regional
devolution was first introduced to address
Sicily’s growing independence movement,
Movimento per l’indipendenza siciliana,
whose main claim was economic in nature,
since the unitary Italian government was
responsible for the state of poverty and
“backwardness” of the region as compared
to the more advanced and industrial North2.
David Hine, Federalism, Regionalism and the Unitary
State: Contemporary Regional Pressures in Historical Perspective. (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1996) 109-110.
2
Simone Pajno, Regionalism in the Italian constitutional
1

20 | McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014

The central government’s redistribution of
resources from the North to the South in the
1970s, satisfying Southern supporters at the
expense of Northern taxpayers, worsened
this tension3. In the boom of the late 1980s,
North-South tensions largely disappeared
because of economic prosperity. Once
the boom turned to recession, however,
tensions reemerged with the creation of the
Lega Nord separatist movement in 1992.
Growing support for such movements seems
to be linked not to demands for ethnic or
linguistic expression, but to frustration with
the functioning of the Italian unitary state4.
In Canada, federalism was adopted
to accommodate linguistic duality and
regional differences between the English
and French. However, during the Quiet
Revolution, Quebec nationalists largely
rejected federalism and pushed to achieve
an independent Quebec state, with the
creation of the Parti Québécois (PQ) in
1968. In October 1995, they came within a
few thousand votes of winning a referendum
calling for secession, with continued
“association” with the rest of the country5.
Although the prospect of Quebec secession
has considerably receded, the proposed PQ
2013 Quebec Charter of Values once again
raises questions regarding the capacity
of federalism to provide a framework for
calming regional tensions.
Paradox in 1860s Italian and Canadian
Political Thought
A comparative analysis between Italy and
Canada presents an especially interesting
case considering the apparent paradox in
the prominent political thought during the
years leading up to the 1861 Risorgimento
in Italy, and the 1867 Confederation in
System. (Diritto & Questioni Pubbliche, 2009) 627.
3
Hine, “Federalism, Regionalism and the Unitary
State: Contemporary Regional Pressures in Historical
Perspective,” 112.
4
Anna Cento Bull. Ethnicity, Racism and the Northern
League. (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1996) 171.
5
Éric Bélanger, Honours Seminar in Canadian Politics.
(McGill University, 2013) 34-40.

Canada. These events were a result of
much dialogue and deliberation in the 19th
century between political elites regarding
what political system would best suit each
country. In Canada, Confederation was not
a sharp break with the history of British
North America since the conquest of New
France in 1762. Provincial delegations
met in Quebec City and Charlottetown
to discuss the terms of a union of British
North America following the stalemate that
endured regarding how to unify Upper and
Lower Canada. Many elites suggested that
the union of the two Canadas demanded the
emergence of a federal concept. However,
the first prime minister of Canada and
father of Confederation, John A. Macdonald
, was not a federal enthusiast and would
have preferred a unitary state in which
provinces were subordinate and acquired
authority from the central government.
According to Sabetti, without the
Francophone community, the union would
have proceeded along centralized lines
since Macdonald favored, “one government
and one parliament legislating for the
whole of these peoples…the cheapest, the
most vigorous, and the strongest system of
government we could [have] adopt[ed]6.”
However, the terms of the 1867 Canadian
constitutional settlement were not solely
unitary as Macdonald would have wished,
but combined federal and unitary principles
of organization to form a responsible party
government with parliamentary omnicompetence and majoritarian rule at the
federal and provincial levels of government.
Similarly in the 1860s, Italian political
actors struggled to reach a consensus
regarding how to unify Italy. Considering
the strong local foundations of regional
self-governance that existed for centuries
in Italy, federalism was suggested as an
appropriate political system. Independent
of one another, political theorists Carlo
Cattaneo, Francesco Ferrarra, and Alexis
Sabetti, Types of Federalism: Achieving Self-Governing
Capabilities in Societies with Federal Potentials, 30.
6

de Tocqueville were attracted to the North
American experience of federalism and
were all large proponents of applying such
a system to the Italian case7. Cattaneo
insisted that federalism, as a constitutional
and institutional framework for a selfgoverning society, would be successful in
Italy because a self-governing society must
start with the commune as the fundamental
unit of political association, which existed
in Italy as early as the 10th century8.
According to Cattaneo, Italians should
avoid, not emulate, the French political
mistakes and weaknesses seen in their
unitary system. However, he was mindful
that communal self-government was not
enough and that in order to succeed, the
practice of self-governance must be linked
to other larger self-governing institutions
that extend to the nation as a whole. He
saw federal constitutional law “as the
intellectual mechanism for designing and
operating a multi-constitutional political
system with overlapping jurisdictions9.”
Similarly, Ferarra believed that it was a
common error “to attribute more cohesion
to a state whose central government takes
on tasks that subaltern bodies or individuals
can do better10.” For various reasons
however, including the American Civil
War, the victory of centralized government
in the making of a united Italy eclipsed
the prospects of an Italian federal union11.
The paradox between the Italian and
Canadian political thought present in the
years leading up to their national births
reveals the puzzling conclusion of Canada
adopting a federal system, when its major
political actors would have preferred a
unitary system, and Italy adopting a unitary
one, when many of its political actors were
advocating for federalism.
Ibid., 53.
Ibid., 43.
9
Sabetti, Types of Federalism: Achieving Self-Governing
Capabilities in Societies with Federal Potentials, 44.
10
Ibid., 51.
11
Ibid., 52.
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