The image of the Parliament in the debates on the legislative procedure in France and Italy (1815-1920).

Summary The object of the thesis is the progressive transformation of the nature of sovereignty and the modes of its exercise during the 19th century. In this context, the Parliament, with its institutional evolution from the system of notables to that of parties, constitutes a privileged point of observation. More precisely, the object of the thesis is the debate that fueled the whole century on the legislative procedure and on the choice between the system of offices and that of the special commissions. Far from being a technical question, this debate crosses on the one hand the relations between the sphere of the political and the social, by showing us the long evolution of a conception of the parliament as a place of sociability, "melting pot" of a homogeneous national elite, according to the model of the salons and the English clubs, until the affirmation of the politics as profession. On the other hand, the opposition between a conception of politics (very much in the majority during the 1800s) which only accepts pluralism and division within a holistic vision, and the defenders of parties and a pluralist vision of society. We have chosen to approach these questions with a comparative approach, with the objective of showing the existence of a homogeneous European political culture (and in particular in Italy and France). Finally, as far as the chosen methodology is concerned, in approaching this question we have not sketched an "evolutionary profile" of Parliamentary Law, but, rather, an "intellectual history of institutions", that is, a history that aims to confront the different debates and deliberations and to study the relationship that is created in each case between the prescriptive element of the norm, the cultural element of the theory and the factual element of the practice.