ABSTRACT
This article assesses the relationship between parliament and citizens in Italy,
raising considerable challenges. Not only is this a democracy traditionally
characterised by a lack of trustworthiness of its central institutions, but it has
also encompassed remarkable changes over the last couple of decades. Our
primary objective is therefore to comprehend the extent to which this relationship
has changed, after the collapse of the post-war party system that had characterised
almost half a century of Italian democratic politics, until the early 1990s. Our sec-
ondary goal is to understand the linkages between these changes and the general
institutional transformations of Italian democracy. We shall start by focusing on
the complex phenomenon of representation, before framing the effective trans-
formation of Italian parliamentary institutions.
