Il volontarismo democratico come questione storiografica

The essay takes up a distinction between "naturalist" and "voluntarist" ideas of nation, originally proposed by F. Chabod. It draws a link between the voluntarist nature of Italian nation-building and the highly politicized tradition of Italian public culture. The essay traces back to the Risorgimento a division between a national-liberal voluntarism and a democratic-revolutionary voluntarism which has permeated also the birth of the Italian politics parties in the late XIX C. and during the XX, until the birth of the Italian Republic