Marco Minghetti and Agostino Depretis, members of the liberal political class, have explicitly introduced the Trasformismo as a sys- tem of government, claiming its merit and political advantages. What the two liberal leaders carried out in 1883 was actually the fulfilment of a process that, in an effective and/or virtual way, had already been started in the Kingdom of Sardinia since the 1850s and then in the first years after the Italian Unification. The novelty introduced by the Depretis’ proposal, immediately accepted by Minghetti, must be identified in the awareness of the new and increasingly decisive role of the Executive that, according to Depretis, was to be supported by a stable majority, formed by the meeting - not by the merger - of political forces favourable to the project, while for Minghetti, with the Trasformismo, it would have been necessary to create a single political formation, "a governmental party of liberal and conservative order at the same time".
Keywords: Trasformismo, Marco Minghetti, Agostino Depretis