La tutela costituzionale della rendita ed i suoi limiti

The dissertation takes as its main purpose that of enlightening the rife and rampant role of revenue in contemporary legal systems and the damage it inflicts to the appropriate functioning of Democracy. The first chapter aspires at reconstructing the very concept of revenue. Under an economic perspective, in fact, it can be defined as a “slothful” source of income, in direct contraposition with the “industrious” one that onlylabour can create. Itthen focuses on financial revenue- undoubtedly the most widespread manifestation of this form of wealth in the contemporary world - , and the role played by institutional investors in capital markets. Shifting to the constitutional and political value of revenue, the chapter ends with a series of data concerning the global financial and economic crisis, aiming at underlining the infectivity thatafflicts modern western democracies. The second chapter opens with the elucidation of the rationale for a constitutionally oriented inquiry of financial revenue. The author is aware that, once underlined the supranational nature of financial markets’ rules and regulations, the inquiry could appear in the best case scenario pointless, and the parameter obsolete. Nevertheless, anticipating such potential objections, he takes his first step considering the very essence of the Italian Constitution. If its hard core is made of unalterable and non-negotiable principles that stand as keepers of the unchangeable values of democracy and if, thus, they are the constitutional limit to the process of the globalization of rules, it can be derivedthat the rife role revenue plays, actually determines a double deficit of democracy in contemporary legal systems. The democratic principle is, in fact, afflicted both in its concrete and formal acceptation. Recalling the substantial slothfulness of revenue, it is quite straightforward howthe betrayal of the principle according to which the Republic is established on labour deeply affects Democracy in its first sense, while themajorelusion of the principle of popular sovereignty strikes it its second acceptation. Taking this last aspect of the rife and rampant role of revenue, the third chapter deals with the problems that implementation of supranational and global rules governing financial markets creates. From this perspective, the author aims at understanding where, in this field, the real and concrete damage to the democratic principle must be found. It is the ability institutional investors acquired of bending public policy makers’ choicesthrough non-institutional channels – notably, personal relationships, or the lobbies’ and rating agencies’ pressure power -in order to make them match their interests what accredited them so much weight to be able to influence the balance of world powers. But if private institutions as institutional investors have a vital role in the world’s policymaking, and public – and elected – entities are just second level actors, what kind of popular sovereignty can be spoken about? The chapter and, thus, the research, ends with some practical and theoretical hints aiming at creating a remedy to such a substantial erosion of citizens’ role