At the origins of the suffrage of 1912: between progress and “leap into the dark”

Abstract

The essay examines the climate of opinion around the opening to the extension of suffrage that took place in 1912. Indeed, the parliamentary speeches that followed one another in Italy during the decade preceding the reform return us, alongside sincere expressions in favour of the social categories excluded from the electoral rolls, a series of opposing considerations that seem to trace the theories coming from studies conducted beyond the Alps.