Studi Politici

L’Italia e i «capricci francesi»: la lunga storia di una fabbrica di cartucce in Marocco (1957-1961)

Bruna Bagnato — 2024-12-20

Although of relative objective importance, the complex affair of the Italian cartridge factory in Morocco highlights, on the one hand, Paris’ ability to effectively manipulate the war in Algeria to safeguard its interests in the Maghreb, and on the other, Italy’s cautious approach in translating ‘neo-Atlantic’ orientations into actions. This caution was necessary to avoid worsening the French crisis, which could have dangerous consequences for bilateral relations as well as for the delicate European and Atlantic dynamics. In fact, it was only in 1961, at the end of the Algerian conflict and in a different political context from that of 1957 when the issue first arose, that it could finally be resolved.

Quando la conoscenza guida l’azione politica: la Legge Crispi-Pagliani del 1888

Francesco M. Fiore Melacrinis — 2024-12-20

The article examines the evolution of public health legislation in Italy from the Unification to the approval of the Crispi-Pagliani law, one piece of the Crispi reform agenda, which contributed to the modernization of the country and the reduction of the mortality rate. Initially, health reforms faced political resistance due to the difficulty of accepting state intervention in the private lives of individuals. However, scientific discoveries profoundly changed the sensitivity and political narrative on the issue of health. Through the analysis of parliamentary debates, the article highlights how scientific knowledge led the government to enact a law for the protection of public health, eventually advocating for the creation of a Ministry of Health.

I Giusti e la Shoah: difficoltà e prospettive di ricerca. Il caso di Angelo De Fiore negli anni dell’occupazione nazista a Roma

Andrea Ventura — 2024-12-20

This essay intends to highlight the role of the figure of the “Righteous Among the Nations” in the study of the Shoah. Many historians, in fact, argue that emphasizing their function could have the effect of weakening the memory of the victims by assigning the full and total responsibility for the genocide solely to the Nazis. On the contrary, what needs to be taken into consideration is that they were not necessarily “flawless and fearless heroes” but ordinary men and women in whom fear and courage coexisted. Therefore, studying their biographies can help us better understand how and why many European societies significantly contributed to their persecution. This becomes particularly evident through the analysis of an Italian Righteous, Commissioner Angelo De Fiore, head of the foreigners’ office of the police headquarters in Rome. De Fiore, despite being engaged since the beginning of 1939 in helping Jews in various ways, especially foreigners, had to defend himself in court against the accusation of collaboration with Nazis and the Fascist regime.

Populism and the “unfulfilled promises” of democracy: towards the corrosion of the character of democracy?

Lorenzo Viviani — 2024-12-20

This article examines the complex relationship between populism and democracy, focusing on how populism emerges as both a symptom and a critique of democratic institutions in advanced modernity. It explores the transformation of liberal democracies under the influence of populist movements that exploit crises of legitimacy and declining trust in traditional political actors. It argues that populism, with its chameleonic nature, reshapes the political landscape by emphasising anti-elitist and anti-pluralist discourses that challenge established democratic norms. By analysing the ‘re-semantisation’ of concepts such as ‘the people’ and ‘comunity’ and their implications in Western democracies, the article explores how populism navigates between being an element of democratic discourse and a factor of democratic erosion. The tension between the ideal and procedural dimensions of democracy is highlighted, suggesting that populism capitalises on the ‘unfulfilled promises’ of democracy to position itself as both an alternative and a critique of the current democratic order.

La maison commune et la toiture de paille. Démocratie, socialisme et émancipation, vus du don

Philippe Chanial — 2024-12-20

Si, pour Marcel Mauss, le don désigne bien une forme de prestation sociale – ou de relation interhumaine – parmi d’autres, il est, en même temps, plus que le don. Avec le don, «nous touchons le roc» ou «l’un des rocs», l’infrastructure relationnelle élémentaire sur lequel s’élèvent les diverses formes instituées de la sociabilité humaine. Une autre image ou métaphore inspire ce texte: celle de la «maison commune», et de son «toit de paille», de la société kanak. Toutes deux sont ici mobilisées pour questionner les implications normatives et politique du paradigme du don et tracer les chemins d’émancipation qu’il ouvre encore aujourd’hui. A travers notamment l’exemple de la protection sociale et du socialisme défendu par Mauss, ce paradigme du don vient rappeler que le don comme relation, au regard de sa normativité interne – celle de nos «généreuses réciprocités» les plus ordinaires et les plus essentielles à la fois – constitue bien une force instituante: celle par lequel les sociétés peuvent, au-delà de l’entre-soi, se donner librement des institutions, notamment politiques, et des règles communes, et ainsi tisser les fils d’un monde commun.

Commiato per Philippe Chanial

Fulvia Giachetti — 2024-12-20

‘Battaglie’ senza vincitrici né vinte: prospettive femministe e liberali circa la pornografia e la prostituzione nelle feminist sex wars

Elisa Baiocco — 2024-12-20

This article focuses on the philosophical debate characterizing the feminist sex wars (‘battles’ on pornography and prostitution having place mainly in the United States during 1980s) through the study of three perspectives: the liberal, the pro-sex feminist and the contrary-to-pornography-and-prostitution feminist ones. The first approach is in favour of the liberalization of both activities due to the freedom to decide on one’s own body, whereas the second point of view sees the two practices as female empowering; differently, the third one considers them as degrading for women. Through the analysis of these three approaches positions on the main related-to-pornography and referred-to-prostitution issues, this paper aims at showing that the three perspectives thought of pornography and prostitution as only female empowering or only degrading has ended in having no ‘battles winner’.

Un référentiel globalizzato e globalizzante: il ruolo dell’OECD nella costruzione dell’egemonia neoliberista nel sistema universitario

Federico Barbaro — 2024-12-20

The proposed article aims to analyze the construction process of neoliberal hegemony in the university sector. By using the référentiel model, the neoliberalization of the university is interpreted as a specific sectoral dimension of the global référentiel of neoliberalism, which has become hegemonic with differentiated forms in different geo-institutional contexts. The role played in this process by some supranational “mediators” such as the OECD is examined. Following the perspective of interpretive policy analysis, various OECD documents are analyzed to reconstruct the values and norms that have contributed to shaping the university in a neoliberal sense. Furthermore, considering the process of discursive depoliticization as a hegemonic resource capable of naturalizing certain political choices, the discursive depoliticization strategies that have contributed to legitimizing certain courses of action as pragmatic and inevitable choices are analyzed.

Crossing Boundaries. Rethinking labour history through the lens of paid domestic work

Olimpia Capitano — 2024-12-20

The author of this paper investigates the developments in labour history and emphasizes the significance of global labour history in rethinking the fundamental concepts of social and labour history, as well as the working class, beyond free wage work and male and white factory workers in the global north. She emphasizes the relatively recent intersection of labour history and domestic work studies, and her main contribution to the topic is the deconstruction of boundaries between public and private spaces, as well as the linking of studies on labour coercion and im/mobilities through the lens of migrant paid domestic work.
According to that, in the second section of the paper, she provides some fresh research horizons, beginning with her case study on the experiences of capeverdean, eritrean, ethiopian and filipino domestic workers in Rome between 1970 and 1989. Furthermore, this analysis puts into doubt the notion that Italy suddenly changed from an emigration to an immigration country in the late 1980’s.

Dall’etnia alla società. Una veloce circumnavigazione dei mutamenti della storiografia lituana dalla Perestrojka ai giorni nostri

Andrea Griffante — 2024-12-20

Perennialism and ethnocentrism have been two of the dominant features of Lithuanian historical narratives throughout the 20th Century. Over the last thirty years, however, civic nationalism-inspired concepts have increasingly challenged the dominance of ethnicity in historical writing. The article investigates how these two opposite metanarratives actively contributed to the consolidation of two opposite models of citizenship in post-soviet Lithuania entailing two different approaches to the state, the nation, and Europe.

Legge e teologia morale nell’Europa cristiana: i limiti della sacralizzazione nelle ultime opere di Paolo Prodi

Vincenzo Lavenia — 2024-12-20

This essay analyzes the final works of Paolo Prodi, which are characterized by a constant reflection on moral theology and secularization. His most original contribution concerned the conflict between law and conscience in the history of Latin Christianity: a problem that led him to design a triptych of books influenced not only by the Verfassungsgeschichte, but also by Harold Berman. If for Max Weber modern world was born from the Reformation, for Prodi the medieval conflict between canon and civil law, and between the inner forum and the external forum of justice, introduced a peculiar structure in Europe that would last until the triumph of the nation states and the “political religions”. Without the “papal revolution” would have been no universities, no free cities, nor the mercantile world, nor a desacralized political power. The Reformation, according to Prodi, strengthened the role of the state by reducing the conflict between the divine and the human norm. On one point he agrees with Weber: nur im Okzident did religion and institutions allow for the birth of a society that enhanced the role of individual conscience. The essay also addresses the relationship between Giorgio Agamben’s writings and those of Prodi and highlights how in his later years the catholic historian was prompted to reflect on the role of religious prophecy by a pessimistic view of the fate of the Western world.

Recensioni

Deborah Natale — 2024-12-20