Note e discussioni : la "democrazia diretta" nel lessico politico del XIX secolo

This essay reconstructs the history of the expression ‘direct democracy' in the political, juridical and historiographical lexicon of the 19th century. Its aim is to show how this expression began to come into common use in the transition between the age of ‘representative government' and that of "representative democracy", i.e. around the middle of the 19th century. It is since then, in fact, that the word "democracy" without further adjectives became a ‘disputed' term. And it is since then that a debate, still ongoing, has been opened on "true democracy". The essay is based on the sources made available by various digital platforms - Google Books, Gallica, Archive.org, etc. - which in recent years have made accessible to scholars millions of digitalised texts, some unreachable, some forgotten and some almost completely unknown. [k.w.: Democracy, Direct Democracy, Representative Democracy, Representative Government, History of the Political Lexicon] [Publisher's text]