di Paola Silvestri
La democrazia moderna nasce e si sviluppa a partire dal Settecento sotto forma di democrazia rappresentativa; le rivoluzioni americana e francese, come già la precedente rivoluzione inglese del Seicento, hanno elaborato l’idea della rappresentanza come strumento per governare stati di larghe dimensioni fondati sulla sovranità del popolo o della nazione partendo dall’esperienza di istituti medievali. La nascita dell’idea di Stato induceva inevitabilmente a cercare nuove soluzioni organizzative di gestione del potere anche a livello territoriale, difatti gli Stati a differenza delle piccole comunità, non potevano più essere retti con forme di democrazia diretta, come lo erano state Atene e altre polis greche.
Abstract
The history of administrative law could be written as the history of the authority and ways of exercising the authority, the history of power forms and power transformations. In fact, the significance of the administrative procedure is the meeting between authority and freedom, between rulers and ruled.
In this way, the administrative procedure is the main instrument of social and political coexistence: from this last point, constitutionalists take their interest to study the “right procedure” and its formal connection to the Constitution.
Over time, in this continuous tension between rulers and ruled, from the early Nineties of the Twentieth century, we are witnessing the progressive affirmation of an increasingly democratic and transparent vision of the administrative function; a path desired both by scholars and by judges and made possible, first of all, through the enhancement of autonomy and, subsequently, codifying the principles of participation in a collaborative function in the decision-making processes and in the preliminary phase.
These are forms of “participatory democracy”: they are different from the representative one to which we usually refer, but today we increasingly turn to the latter, in order to meet the need for transparency and participation, deriving from the state of crisis of politics and political parties.