02/2022 – La guerra di Putin

Abstracts

Maurizio Griffo, Walter Bagehot and the Liberal Empire

Walter Bagehot distinguishes between the dignified parts and the efficient parts of the English constitution. A distinction that serves to describe the cabinet government in its effective functioning as opposed to the American presidential system. Bagehot hoped that the cabinet government could also be transplanted to France in the final phase of the Second Empire, but his hopes will be dashed by the Franco-Prussian War.

Keywords: English Constitution; Liberal Empire; Cabinet; English Political System

Catherine Marshall, The concept of political deference in Walter Bagehot’s thought

The concept of deference, as defined by the Victorian thinker Walter Bagehot in his book The English Constitution (1867), is an English disposition linked to respect for the uncodified constitution. Today, in Britain as elsewhere, this provision is seen as a form of duty without rights, worthy of the aristocratic regimes of the past, and incompatible with democratic regimes. Yet political deference is something quite different and far removed from any kind of subordination. This article revisits Bagehot’s definition of deference in view of the various definitions he gave in two of his seminal books The English Constitution (1867) and Physics and Politics, or Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of ‘Natural Selection’ and ‘Inheritance’ to Political Society’ (1872).  The author, while witnessing a Victorian aristocratic society opening up to democracy in the nineteenth century, did not see deference as demeaning. On the contrary, his type of political deference was the guarantee of an evolution of the system without revolution.

Keywords: Political Deference; Anglo-British constitution; Monarchy; The English Constitution (1867); Physics and Politics (1872)

Antonio Campati, Science and Politics? Elite and «cooperative groups» in Walter Bagehot’s thought

Walter Bagehot’s notoriety is linked above all to his famous book The English Constitution dedicated to the British political system and the dynamics of political power. Another book of this eccentric Victorian thinker is very important to understand his conceptual frame: Physics and Politics. This book is one of the first reflections in which Darwinian logics are explicitly applied to analyse political phenomena. The aim of the article is to examine some theoretical and conceptual elements present above all in this book, and to consider them as useful suggestions for studying the transformations of contemporary democracy.

Keywords: Physics and Politics; cooperative groups; elites; democracy

Carmelo Calabrò, An English Insight on the Risorgimento. Cavour and Mazzini in Walter Bagehot’s Eyes.

This Introduction focuses on Walter Bagehot’s interpretation of the Italian Risorgimento, based on his writings on Cavour and Mazzini. The two figures are outlined with opposing profiles. And it is immediately clear that the reasons for the sympathy towards Cavour justify and feed the considerations on Mazzini’s weaknesses and limitations. However, upon a careful and parallel reading of the two characters, the picture that emerges is anything but schematic and Manichean.

Keywords: Cavour; Mazzini; Risorgimento; Walter Bagehot

Spartaco Pupo, Carroll Quigley and the Holistic Study of the History of Political Systems, between Limited Sovereignty and Lost Community

This article focuses on the political thought of Carroll Quigley (1910-1977), an intellectual figure who is very little known in Italy and forgotten even in his own country, the United States, both for the premature death that prevented him from completing some of his important works and for the instrumentalization of some of his writings by the “conspiracy theory”. In the works of Quigley, who stands out in the second half of the twentieth century, especially for the originality of his holistic perspective, interesting considerations emerge on the most disparate areas of Western political and military experience, which go beyond disciplinary fences and challenge the academic conventions. The article dwells on Quigley’s analysis of the history of political systems about weapons systems, his vision of the stability of contemporary democracy, dissent, and loyalty in politics, with reference above all to the period of student protests that he experienced first-hand. Finally, a classification of Quigley’s political thought is attempted based on a comparison with some of the main political orientations of his time, such as that of American conservatives, communitarians and “cold warriors” authors.

Keywords: Carroll Quigley; World History; Political Realism; American Conservative

Carroll Quigley, Public Authority and the State in the Western Tradition. A Thousand Years of Growth, A.D. 976-1976

It is the first Italian translation of the text of the three “Oscar Iden Lectures”, held by Carroll Quigley as a historian of civilizations and political systems at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University, in October 1976, shortly before his death. In this sort of intellectual and political testament, the author, with an original approach that has several traits in common with political realism, outlines the development of the state and what he calls “public authority” in the West in the millennium 979-1976. He dwells, also with some interesting incursions into Italian history and political historiography, on the main forms of government in Europe, on the revolutions, among which the military one stands out for its analytical acumen, on the affirmation of the “police” or administrative power which turns out to be the distinctive element of the modern sovereignty, defined especially about the development of the establishment. This is followed by deep considerations on twentieth-century American democracy in relation to the development of weapons systems and electoral flows and its dependence on the uncontrolled power of mammoth corporations that delimit sovereignty. Finally, the decadence of communities as the main consequence of the growth of the highly centralized state is analysed.

Keywords: Carroll Quigley; World History; Political Realism; Public Authority

Andrea Frangioni, François Furet and 1989

The essay is about Furet’s position on the collapse of communist regimes in 1989-1991. This position excluded that the events of 1989-1991 could be considered as “a revolution”. Furet’s point of view is compared with the one of other observers (Ralf Dahrendorf, Timothy Garton Ash, Jürgen Habermas) and is connected with broader Furet’s interpretation of democratic modernity from his Penser la Révolution française (1978) to his Le Passé d’une illusion (1995). Through Furet’s position brief reconstructions of Eastern Europe’s opposition to authoritarianism and of events of 1989 are also tempted.

Keywords: Revolution; François Furet; Communism; Eastern Europe