In this article, the author builds on the dual reform —of the Constitution and the electoral law— promoted in Italy by the Renzi government between 2014 and 2016 (which was subsequently rejected by a national referendum and by a decision from the Constitutional Court) to develop the analysis of degenerative trends that induce the transformation of real democracies into forms of elective autocracy. As an instrument for the analysis, he proposes the construction of an innovative conceptual paradigm that is articulated in the distinction between forms of state, forms of regime and forms of government. Within the category of forms of state, he considers relevant the alternative between representative and non-representative forms; the category of forms of regime concerns the relationship between rulers and ruled, and the fundamental opposition is between democracy and autocracy; within the category of forms of government refers to the relations between the political bodies, and the main distinction is between parliamentarism and presidentialism. The author invites to consider forms of state and forms of regime as mutually independent variables, and includes not only monocratic and oligarchic regimes, but also forms of tyranny of the majority, and names this third species of autocracy with a classical neologism: «pleonocracy». He emphasizes the need to maintain clear the analytical distinction between forms of regime and forms of government; but suggests examining whether and when a change in the form of government could result in a change in the form of regime. Applying the previously outlined conceptual diagram to the problem of contemporary democracies’ degenerative tendencies, the author invites us to recognize that the shifting towards autocracy is accomplished through the change of the form of government. That is to say, it is mainly caused by the change in the relationship between the executive branch and the representative branch. He notes that, in
recent decades, all or nearly representative states governed by regimes that are commonly considered as democratic, have undergone a more or less radical reversal of the relationship between government and parliament. In Italy, this change has been more pronounced than in other places, and the institutional reforms proposed over the last two years can be interpreted as an attempt to perfect the change of fact in the form of government; and, at the same time, to officially recognize the establishment of a pleonocratic regime. Finally, the author reconstructs the main moments of the attempt to transform the form of government and the form of regime in Italy; and concludes with an articulate criticism of the idea of «majoritarian democracy», which he interprets as a form of tyranny of the majority and is therefore assimilated to the third species of autocracy: «pleonocracy».