This book collects 15 essays exploring the Italian political tradition from Beccaria to Bobbio. Particular attention is paid to the ways these theorists linked social with political theory on the one hand, and politics with ethics on the other, and to the influence of these links on their differing conceptions of the state and democracy. All shared a neo-Machiavellian concern with the divide separating their political ideals and the realities of everyday politics, and devised diverse strategies for bridging the gap between them. As a result, they developed distinctively Italian understandings of liberalism, Marxism and socialism, shaped by a realist approach to politics. Among the thinkers discussed are Cesare Beccaria, Antonio Genovesi, Benedetto Croce, Guido de Ruggiero, Antonio Gramsci, Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca and Norberto Bobbio.

This book explores the writings of Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004) who was Italy’s foremost political, legal, and democratic theorist, a distinguished historian of political and legal ideas, and one of the country’s most perceptive public intellectuals throughout the second half of the twentieth century in Europe. Bobbio’s work offers a unique vantage point for understanding the evolution of twentieth-century ideologies, in Italy as well as in Europe. His biography, scholarship, and militant writings were marked significantly by the vicissitudes of Italian political history, as the country transitioned from constitutional monarchy to Fascist dictatorship to democratic, parliamentary Republic. These events, together with the international challenges posed by the Cold War, made his life and publications an unusually wide-ranging mirror into the complexities of European history and politics. His native country, in fact, provided him with a magnifying glass to scrutinize the respective principles and contaminations of rival ideological traditions in a national and transnational key. The chapters in this volume, written by scholars based in Europe and North America, combine historical contextualization with historical analysis to illuminate the complex ways in which Bobbio studied rival ideologies, examined the relationship between their past and present, and assessed their potential to forge the trajectory of democracy in the future. This book is an insightful resource for advanced students, researchers and scholars of Politics, History and Philosophy, as well as those interested in Italian and European Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Political Ideologies.

Karl Marx is one of the most influential writers in history. Despite repeated obituaries proclaiming the death of Marxism, in the 21st century Marx's ideas and theories continue to guide vibrant research traditions in sociology, economics, political science, philosophy, history, anthropology, management, economic geography, ecology, literary criticism, and media studies. Due to the exceptionally wide influence and reach of Marxist theory, including over 150 years of historical debates and traditions within Marxism, finding a point of entry can be daunting. The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx provides an entry point for those new to Marxism. At the same time, its chapters, written by leading Marxist scholars, advance Marxist theory and research. Its coverage is more comprehensive than previous volumes on Marx in terms of both foundational concepts and state-of-the-art empirical research on contemporary social problems. It is also provides equal space to sociologists, economists, and political scientists, with substantial contributions from philosophers, historians, and geographers. The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx consists of six sections. The first section, Foundations, includes chapters that cover the foundational concepts and theories that constitute the core of Marx's theories of history, society, and political economy. This section demonstrates that the core elements of Marx's political economy of capitalism continue to be defended, elaborated, and applied to empirical social science and covers historical materialism, class, capital, labor, value, crisis, ideology, and alienation. Additional sections include Labor, Class, and Social Divisions; Capitalist States and Spaces; Accumulation, Crisis, and Class Struggle in the Core Countries; Accumulation, Crisis, and Class Struggle in the Peripheral and Semi-Peripheral Countries; and Alternatives to Capitalism.

This book argues that Italy represents a privileged entry point into the comparative analysis of ideologies and experiences of modernity. The book compares how thinkers and politicians belonging to different ideological clusters - Liberalism, Communism, Fascism, Chistian Democracy - came to formulate multiple and often antagonistic visions of Italy's road to the modern. By revisiting Italian political history from the late nineteenth century until the present with a focus on transition periods, Italian Modernities explores how competing historical narratives influenced shifting understandings of Italian nationhood, thus foregrounding the active role of memory politics in the formulation of multiple modernities.

Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks are one of the most important and original sources of modern political philosophy but the Prison Notebooks present great difficulties to the reader. Not originally intended for publication, their fragmentary character and their often cryptic language can mystify readers, leading to misinterpretation of the text. The Routledge Guidebook to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks provides readers with the historical background, textual analysis and other relevant information needed for a greater understanding and appreciation of this classic text. This guidebook: Explains the arguments presented by Gramsci in a clear and straightforward way, analysing the key concepts of the notebooks. Situates Gramsci’s ideas in the context of his own time, and in the history of political thought demonstrating the innovation and originality of the Prison Notebooks. Provides critique and analysis of Gramsci’s conceptualisation of politics and history (and culture in general), with reference to contemporary (i.e. present-day) examples where relevant. Examines the relevance of Gramsci in the modern world and discusses why his ideas have such resonance in academic discourse Featuring historical and political examples to illustrate Gramsci's arguments, along with suggestions for further reading, this is an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to engage more fully with The Prison Notebooks

In A Companion to Antonio Gramsci some of the most important Italian scholars of Gramsci's thought realize a sort of intellectual account of the Gramscian historiography.

In Caesarism and Bonapartism in Gramsci, Francesca Antonini offers a fresh insight into Gramsci’s account of the Caesarist-Bonapartist model, both in the pre-prison writings and the Prison Notebooks. She investigates its historical and theoretical relevance for Gramsci’s conception of hegemony.

This volume seeks to restore Vilfredo Pareto to his rightful place in the history of social and economic thought, bringing together studies by leading scholars to mark the centenary of his death in 1923. Assessing Pareto’s many contributions to the social sciences and his unique integration of the disciplines of sociology, politics, and economics, it addresses the relative neglect of Pareto’s work and explores both his continuing relevance to social research and the influence of his thought on subsequent developments in sociology and social theory. As such it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in the history of sociology and the importance of Pareto’s thought.

Richard Rose’s memoir vividly describes first-hand experience of the transformation of politics in Europe and the United States since 1940. He has been teargassed in Chicago, seen walls go up in Belfast and come down in Berlin. The author’s education in the streets and in the corridors of political power give a unique perspective on discrimination by race, religion and class, and the world in which political scientists live today. Rose has distilled a 500-page book into a three-minute Oval Office explanation to George W Bush of why America’s intervention in Iraq was a disaster. He gives practical advice to political scientists about how to make words into concepts and communicate what you know to others inside and outside universities. The book’s photographs show memorials to the dead, and living evidence of how election forecasting has changed since Delphi. Using skills developed since teaching himself to type at the age of eight, Rose describes his 20 years of working in newspapers, radio and television before publishing his first book. Since then he has combined social science methodology, along with the methodologies of comparative drama and the applied arts, to write many innovative books. This is the latest.

A comprehensive introduction to contemporary political ethics What is the relationship between politics and morality? May politicians bend moral constraints in the name of political necessity? Is it always wrong for leaders to lie? How much political compromise is too much (or too little)? In Political Ethics, some of the world’s leading thinkers in politics, philosophy, and related fields offer a comprehensive and accessible introduction to key issues in this rapidly growing area of political theory. In a series of original essays, the contributors examine a range of urgent political problems: lies and deception, compromise and refusal to compromise, the meaning and limits of political integrity, representation and failures of representation, good and bad democratic leadership, the virtues and excesses of partisanship, administrative ethics, political corruption, whistleblowing, legitimate and illegitimate claims of political emergency, and lobbying. What emerges are realistic but demanding ethical standards—and a clear-eyed understanding of the ethical challenges of political life in the twenty-first century. With contributions by Richard Bellamy, Alin Fumurescu, Edward Hall, Suzanne Dovi and Jesse McCain, Eric Beerbohm, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum, Joseph Heath, Elizabeth David-Barrett and Mark Philp, Michele Bocchiola and Emanuela Ceva, Nomi Lazar, Phil Parvin, and Andrew Sabl.