Abstract

Starting from the relationship between Regions, democracy, and financial autonomy – understood in the dual sense of Regions as instruments of territorial distribution of political power and as guarantees of self-government for the governed – this article reconstructs the constitutional model of financing sub-national entities and the variables that characterize it: the choice between autonomous or derived finance; the distribution of administrative functions; the existence or absence of allocation constraints on transferred resources; and the degree of intensity in the coordination of public finance. The analysis highlights the progressive deviation from constitutional provisions caused by state financial legislation over the past twenty years, leading to a significant centralization of financial and fiscal powers. By distinguishing the «expenditure side» from the «revenue side» of sub-national entities, the paper suggests several remedies aimed at restoring the original constitutional design concerning the relationship between regional autonomy and the availability of adequate resources, in order to prevent the ongoing failure to implement the Constitution from weakening the link between Regions and the democratic principle.