La democrazia ideale è quella che combina funzionalità istituzionale, efficienza economico-amministrativa con il consenso e il lealismo dei cittadini. Quando un sistema democratico realizza queste condizioni ottimali, può dirsi un modello di razionalità politica. Naturalmente le democrazie realmente esistenti sono lontane da questo modello. Molte sono inefficienti nei loro apparati istituzionali, hanno cattive prestazioni amministrative, con pesanti conseguenze economiche e sociali e contraccolpi negativi in termini di consenso. È il caso della democrazia italiana da anni viziata da inefficienze e disfunzionalità che, aggravate da sistematici meccanismi di corruzione, hanno dato luogo a fenomeni di disaffezione civico-politica senza precedenti.

From the perspective of the Italian and German national cases, the author argues that democratic institutions are well and alive when they fulfil the goals and criteria both of instrumental strategic rationality and of communicative, identity-oriented, rationality. The essay spells out the various dimensions of these two kinds of rationality in political behavior, focusing particularly on the integrative dimension of national identity.

According to the author, theoretical approaches which unilaterally privilege either kind of rationality and which contrast utility and identity oriented logic, strategic and communicative behavior, are lacking both at the analytic and at the normative level. They do not understand that political action is an interactive process in which instrumental strategies and «understanding acts» combine. The author, therefore, criticizes Jürgen Habermas's «communicative» political theory.

The Italian case indicates how a deficit of political rationality as well as of functional efficiency provokes forms of national dis-identification and de-solidarization (i.e. the Leagues’ separatism). In this case, civic virtue may be successfully called for to motivate solidarity only if the reference to universalistic democratic values is supported both by the utilitarian expectation of a common good (obtained through cooperation) and by the willingness – based on trust – to sustain the additional costs of solidarity. This willingness in turn presupposes some degree of acknowledgement of a common national historic belonging. In this perspective, citizenship coincides with a reciprocity link among citizens who acknowledge that they are members of the same national historic community.