Representative democracy was a foreign import into Italy, for the concept was chiefly inspired by French reflections about the American Revolution centering on the theme of how a democracy could be created in a large country ? It proved to be a crucial dimension of national construction. But can this experience be transposed to other similar processes? In this article, the author offers a reflection on the Jacobin Triennio (1796-1799) in Italy. Were the institutions that nourished representative democracy − suffrage in the first instance, but also political societies and the press − sui generis creations − transpositions of the French experience? Or were they part of a process of acculturation, the adaptation to local traditions of a model outlined by successive revolutionary experiences ?