Away with the Prefect!

Abstract

The proposal, in Italy and in any other country in Europe, to abolish the ‘prefect’ sounds like a fanciful quirk worthy of the mental asylum. A venerable institution, handed down to us from time immemorial, the prefect is almost a synonym of government: with his departure, it seems that nothing is left. Who is in command and who has executive power outside the capital? How does public administration operate? In actual fact, the prefect is a scourge that was inoculated into the Italian body politic by Napoleon. The old governments before the French Revolution were absolute only in name, but in practice they were subject to restrictions on all sides: by the Senates and Chambres des Comptes or chamber magistrates, who jealously guarded their power to refuse to endorse royal edicts inasmuch as edicts that were not endorsed had no validity whatsoever; by privileged local bodies that were self-elected by co-opting members already in office; by ancient pacts of enfeoffment, dedication and annexation; or by age-old custom and usage. The Italian states governed within the limits set by local, regional and professional ‘freedoms’. Often the municipal and regional ‘freedoms’ were the ‘privilege’ of certain social classes, or of the aristocracy or craft guilds, and they were detrimental to the whole system. In its furious desire to sweep privilege away, the French Revolution destroyed local freedoms, thus continuing the work begun by the Bourbons; and Napoleon, a dictator in the domestic arena, a lover of order, suspicious — like all tyrants — of any independent force, whether spiritual or temporal, proceeded to complete the task.

First published in L’Italia e il secondo risorgimento, supplement to the Gazzetta ticinese, 17 July 1944, bearing the signature of Junius.