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| Voting system | Universal suffrage | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Outcome | Birth of the Italian Republic | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Part of the Politics series |
| Republicanism |
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An institutional referendum (Italian: referendum istituzionale, or referendum sulla forma istituzionale dello Stato)[1][2][3] was held by universal suffrage in the Kingdom of Italy on 2 June 1946,[4] a key event of contemporary Italian history. Until 1946, Italy was a kingdom ruled by the House of Savoy, reigning since the unification of Italy in 1861 and previously rulers of the Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1922, the rise of Benito Mussolini and the creation of the Fascist regime in Italy, which eventually resulted in engaging the country in World War II alongside Nazi Germany, considerably weakened the role of the royal house.
Following the Italian Civil War and the Liberation of Italy from Axis troops in 1945, a popular referendum on the institutional form of the state was called the next year and resulted in voters choosing the replacement of the monarchy with a republic. The 1946 Italian general election to elect the Constituent Assembly of Italy was held on the same day.[4] As with the simultaneous Constituent Assembly elections, the referendum was not held in the Julian March, in the province of Zara or the province of Bolzano, which were still under occupation by Allied forces pending a final settlement of the status of the territories.
The results were proclaimed by the Supreme Court of Cassation on 10 June 1946: 12,717,923 citizens in favor of the republic and 10,719,284 citizens in favor of the monarchy.[5] The event is commemorated annually by the Festa della Repubblica. The former King Umberto II voluntarily left the country on 13 June 1946, headed for Cascais, in southern Portugal, without even waiting for the results to be defined and the ruling on the appeals presented by the monarchist party, which were rejected by the Supreme Court of Cassation on 18 June 1946. With the entry into force of the new Constitution of the Italian Republic, on 1 January 1948, Enrico De Nicola became the first to assume the functions of president of Italy. It was the first time that the whole Italian Peninsula (excluding Vatican City) was under a form of republican governance since the end of the ancient Roman Republic.
- ^ "Dipartimento per gli Affari Interni e Territoriali". elezionistorico.interno.gov.it.
- ^ "Il referendum istituzionale e la scelta repubblicana – Istituto Luigi Sturzo". Archived from the original on 5 March 2018. Retrieved 8 December 2016.
- ^ "Savoia – Nuovi Dizionari Online Simone – Dizionario Storico del Diritto Italiano ed Europeo Indice H". www.simone.it. Archived from the original on 7 July 2018. Retrieved 10 May 2019.
- ^ a b Nohlen & Stöver 2010, p. 1047.
- ^ Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 134 del 20 giugno 1946