Il “vincolo esterno”. L’Europa e il repubblicanesimo dopo Ugo La Malfa

Abstract

The essay analyzes the influence that the process of European unification had
on the Italian republican political culture in the 1970s and 1980s. In particular,
it focuses on the choice that the leader of the Italian Republican Party (PRI),
Ugo La Malfa, made in 1976 to enroll the PRI in the group of European Liberal
Democrats, in view of the first elections to the European Parliament. This
choice determined the limits within which the political line of his successors,
Giovanni Spadolini and Giorgio La Malfa, was defined. This decision was apparently
secondary, but it proved to be the heaviest and most lasting legacy left
by the old leader for his party.