Abstract

This essay aims to analyse the role of the First World War in the current delegation of legislative power from Parliament to Government in Italy. In doing so, the essay elaborates on Schmitt's concept of "state of exception", especially in the meaning that recently Agamben has given to it. By taking into consideration the role of the Parliament both in the decision-making process on entering the war and in the budgetary process during the war itself, the work tries to show that that conflict represented a turning point in the use of the state of exception as a government's instrument of deregulation.