Leadership Quote by Emma Bonino

Legitimacy isn’t a parchment quality; it’s a social verdict. Emma Bonino’s line refuses the romantic myth that a constitution, once written, automatically becomes a nation’s moral software. “Only the first step” is a deliberate deflation of technocratic pride: lawyers can draft elegant rules, but rules don’t rule unless people consent to be ruled by them.

The sentence is built like a checklist with a trapdoor. First, “open discussion” signals that process is not decorative consultation but the arena where a public actually recognizes itself. Bonino is smuggling in a theory of democracy that’s less about outcomes than about ownership: people defend what they’ve argued over. Then comes the harder demand, “a fair, representative referendum,” which undercuts the convenient shortcut of elite pact-making. She’s warning that a constitution imposed by a narrow coalition will function like a ceasefire, not a foundation.

Subtextually, this is aimed at the post-crisis temptation to “get it done” quickly - a temptation that shows up after revolutions, regime collapses, or EU-style institutional overhauls. Bonino, a liberal internationalist shaped by Italy’s turbulent party politics and Europe’s legitimacy debates, reads constitutions as public contracts, not expert reports. Her emphasis on “fair” and “representative” hints at the common failure modes: referendums captured by propaganda, exclusion, or badly designed questions; public debate reduced to theater.

It works because it sounds procedural while delivering a moral ultimatum: the rulebook must be authored, in effect, by the ruled. Without that, constitutional text becomes a premium product with no customers.