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Understanding Democratization: Can National Liberation and Unification be Achieved Through Peaceful Mean of Self Government
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UNDERSTANDING DEMOCRATIZATION:
CAN NATIONAL LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION BE ACHIEVED
THROUGH PEACEFUL MEANS OF SELF-GOVERNMENT?
Filippo Sabetti
Department of Political Science
McGill University
So natural has the creation of national, unitary, states occurred through war,
armed revolts and revolutions that scholars have very rarely asked the question addressed in this paper: can national liberation and unification be achieved through peaceful means of self-government such as constitutional choice? Yet there is at least one historical period in which this question was raised - Europe after the Congress of Vienna - and there is least one instance, the case of Italy, where the prospect of a single political regime generated considerable debate as to what kind of liberal, constitutional design was best suited to a population that had lived under separate and diverse political regimes for more than thirteen hundred years. Unlike Germany, no clash occurred in Italy between the liberal creed and the struggle for national independence (Woolf 1975, 359-60). If, in the end the making of a united Italy followed the standard, forced, creation of states, this development still does not deny the importance of raising the question for understanding why things went this way, what constitutional design did not happen and what contributions, if any, this knowledge can add to the huge and rich literature about democratization.
The paper begins by sketching the challenge of popular sovereignty that emerged
(with the Napoleonic wars) after the Congress of Vienna, usually seen by the democratization literature as beginning the first wave of democratization. The paper then turns to a discussion of how this challenge was understood and met in Italy. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the theoretical implications of the Italian case for understanding, in the words of James C. Scott and Vincent Ostrom, the choice between “seeing like a state” and “seeing like citizens” (Ostrom 2001) that distinguishes three leading streams of the democratization literature: waves of democracy, transition, and Tocquevillian analytics.
The Challenge of Self-Government
The reconstruction of Europe that followed the Congress of Vienna in 1815
restored absolutist and dynastic principles to their former pre-eminence. The restoration thwarted but could not entirely stunt the growing aspirations of people to rule themselves that had been given impetus by the American and the French revolutions, the rise of
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| | Authors: Sabetti, Filippo. |
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1
UNDERSTANDING DEMOCRATIZATION:
CAN NATIONAL LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION BE ACHIEVED
THROUGH PEACEFUL MEANS OF SELF-GOVERNMENT?
Filippo Sabetti
Department of Political Science
McGill University
So natural has the creation of national, unitary, states occurred through war,
armed revolts and revolutions that scholars have very rarely asked the question addressed
in this paper: can national liberation and unification be achieved through peaceful means
of self-government such as constitutional choice? Yet there is at least one historical
period in which this question was raised - Europe after the Congress of Vienna - and
there is least one instance, the case of Italy, where the prospect of a single political
regime generated considerable debate as to what kind of liberal, constitutional design was
best suited to a population that had lived under separate and diverse political regimes for
more than thirteen hundred years. Unlike Germany, no clash occurred in Italy between
the liberal creed and the struggle for national independence (Woolf 1975, 359-60). If, in
the end the making of a united Italy followed the standard, forced, creation of states, this
development still does not deny the importance of raising the question for understanding
why things went this way, what constitutional design did not happen and what
contributions, if any, this knowledge can add to the huge and rich literature about
democratization.
The paper begins by sketching the challenge of popular sovereignty that emerged
(with the Napoleonic wars) after the Congress of Vienna, usually seen by the
democratization literature as beginning the first wave of democratization. The paper then
turns to a discussion of how this challenge was understood and met in Italy. The paper
concludes with a brief discussion of the theoretical implications of the Italian case for
understanding, in the words of James C. Scott and Vincent Ostrom, the choice between
“seeing like a state” and “seeing like citizens” (Ostrom 2001) that distinguishes three
leading streams of the democratization literature: waves of democracy, transition, and
Tocquevillian analytics.
The Challenge of Self-Government
The reconstruction of Europe that followed the Congress of Vienna in 1815
restored absolutist and dynastic principles to their former pre-eminence. The restoration
thwarted but could not entirely stunt the growing aspirations of people to rule themselves
that had been given impetus by the American and the French revolutions, the rise of
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