Il pareggio di bilancio come condizione di libertà: la politica fiscale della Destra storica

Reaching Break-Even as a Condition for Liberty: The Fiscal Policy of the "Destra storica"

Abstract disponibile solo in lingua inglese

This essay seeks to describe the fiscal policy of Italy's Destra storica. In 1861 this political group started to develop the fiscal system with which the budget was eventually balanced in 1876. This was a considerable achievement in view of the many obstacles our forbears had to face: it must be remembered that in that period they had to come to terms with the Church and with Austria, with the coldness of Prussia and Russia, with the hostility of French public opinion, with the total lack of civil infrastructure south of Florence and with the illiteracy and poverty rife of much of the country. Much theoretically invaluable work was carried out to enable the system to survive the close scrutiny of a series of political economic and social evaluations. The country was governed with this system until 1973, and its designers were to win the esteem of the generations that followed them. Yet their success was not fired by rigour and the risk of impopularity alone. Minghetti and Sella were firmly convinced that at the basis of good government was efficient, rational administration professionally run, moulded to the new principles of the law-based state, free from political interference, capable of offering a solid foundation for politics. Secondly, through their obsessive budget-oriented policy, their intention was to decree the existence of political standards consistent with changeable and contingent choices within a flexible constitutional system. It expressed the great respect which the ruling party felt towards civil society. It was thanks to the rigorous choices and the timely and efficient rules of the Destra storica that an alternative economic policy was feasible in the years after 1876.