01/2020 – Libertà, partiti e partitocrazia nell’opera di Luigi Sturzo

Abstracts

Giulio De Ligio, Open society’s democratic misunderstandings

Our contemporary troubles show that humanity is not yet reconciled. Europeans are also intimately divided by their own principles. After totalitarianism, Europe is identified both with democracy and openness. This perspective seems now to generate a “vicious circle” between democracy and openness that risks to condemn Europeans to an irresolution on the determination of what is “common” or to the choice between “terrible simplifications”.  A noble aspiration, the ideal of unlimited openness involves some misunderstandings about European democracies and seems to impose an indeterminate duty on them. As a moral and intellectual principle, it does not specify who has to open himself to which action, to which change or to which truth. As a collective criterion, it does not distinguish between the enlargement and the deepening of common life. A fact or value that supports a limitless process, the goal of openness does not suffice to determine the political and spiritual experience of human beings. This essay discusses those misunderstandings as they are expressed in the most authoritative European debates. It also draws attention on the incompatibilities between the “democratic arguments” illustrated by the main philosophers of the open society (such as Bergson, Popper and Castoriadis). By so doing, it endeavours to outline a practical perspective on both European divisions and the real unity of humanity.

Corrado Stefanachi, Thirty Years Since the “End of History”. Francis Fukuyama and the eternal return of struggles for recognition

In his new book Identity, Francis Fukuyama returns to the themes explored in his controversial first work, 1992’s The End of History and the Last Man, which brought him worldwide fame. At the time, Fukuyama argued that, with the end of the Cold War, the likely extension of the liberal democratic order across the entire world would put an end to the struggle for recognition, which he saw as being the great engine of human history. Today, quite differently, it is the persistence of disregarded requests for recognition that seems to Fukuyama as the main source of the political phenomena currently shaking up the world, such as populist nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, or the great power nationalism of Russia and China. The article argues that, in Identity, Fukuyama makes a persuasive case that contemporary political science is too inclined to accept explanations of political action borrowed from economics, and therefore is losing the sight of the thymotic dimension of politics. The article also contends that Fukuyama’s new book offers an interesting framework for interpreting the current crisis of the liberal order in the United States and Europe, which nonetheless does not seem to be automatically applicable to the phenomenon of illiberal nationalism that can be observed in other parts of the world, nor to the rejection of the liberal-democratic model by states (also with thymotic motivations) such as Russia and China.

Alessandro Campi, Luigi Sturzo and his critic of the “partitocrazia”: from Liberal Italy to Republican Italy

Luigi Sturzo’s reflection on the parties was original and innovative. The same can be said of his criticisms to the degeneration of parties. In both cases, these are positions which – in addition to having remained coherent and constant over the decades – have been nourished by an original vision of democracy and the state, whose theological-political core is to be traced in the idea that freedom is the foundation of society and politics. A freedom that in Sturzo’s vision has become a historical force, and therefore a political one, through Christianity.

Federico Poggianti, Rediscovering Hannah Arendt: the Second Edition of “The Origins of Totalitarianism”

Out of the three editions of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, the second one is certainly the most complete. The main point of interest is represented by the last chapter, extracted not included in the subsequent version of the book. Here, the author traces the characteristics of Soviet totalitarianism with special regard to the Hungarian revolution, which had happened just a few years before. The chapter presents original and unpublished contents. In its pages flow the criticism to the Marxism and the rediscover of the thought of Rosa Luxemburg. From the chapter itself the author will take inspiration for another highly successful book, On Revolution. Even if Arendt decided to eliminate this part from the third – and last – edition, it represents a point of primary importance for the elaboration of her later political thought.

Massimiliano Panarari, The imageries of postmodern left. Political cultures of radical and populist New Left movement-parties, media industry and global pop culture

During last two decades, some Radical leftist parties became more and more important in various European political systems. The Greek Syriza, the Spanish Podemos, the French La France Insoumise represent many answers to rise of radical right populist parties, with some similarities concerning communication strategies and narratives (above all for the «friend vs. enemy» paradigm). And with a lot of differences, naturally: like being in tune with an imaginery egemonized by a kind of postmodern mainstream and mass culture, media industry and tv serials. The aim of this article is to investigate the relations between political cultures, organizational models, leadership paradigm of this New Left European parties and traces of pop culture coming from collective mentality. According a renewed project of (soft) cultural hegemony and, at the same time, a strategy oriented to political realism.

Simon Leys, Anatomy of a “post-totalitarian” dictatorship. Liu Xiaobo’s essays on contemporary China

In this article, Simon Leys reviews a collected volume of Liu Xiaobo’s essays translated into English and published under the title No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems. However, the article is far from being a mere review. As clearly emerges from Leys’ words, this text is testimony to two different uncompromising political passions: the one of the scholar (Simon Leys), who devoted large part of his studies to Chinese culture and politics, and the one of the intellectual (Liu Xiaobo), who sacrificed himself for the cause of freedom.

Giovanni Cofrancesco, Francesco Borasi, The globalist ideology between millenarianism and selective nihilism

The paper examines the fundamental conceptions on which the culture of globalization is based in order to highlight the most controversial aspects that underlie its present crisis. In particular, the cultural roots of the globalist mentality are traced back to Christian heretic “millenarianism”, as laicized and secularized in the modern era that claims to realize the perfect world on this earth and in a “selective” form of nihilism, aimed at denying value to anything that opposes this perfect world. From this perspective, the authors retrospectively analyze the history of the last decades and mention the possible future developments.

Giulio Di Donato, Law and political spaces. For a critic of political-juridical globalism

The challenges thrown by the global integration processes of the last decades plead new textures between politics, law and space, that could positively solve the basic contradiction, identified at the beginning of the Thirties, between nationalism of politics and cosmopolitanism of economics. The priority, then, is redefining the national/supranational connection (for what relates particularly to the position of our country in the EU) according to a perspective alternative to the one hegemonic in the last forty years. The experience of the last years shows how a de-territorialized political space is inevitably a depoliticized juridical space. We will endeavour to criticize the so-said juridical-political globalism, relying on the reflections by Danilo Zolo and Hedley Bull, emphasizing the connection between modern democracy and national space.

Brendon J. Cannon, Dominic Ruto Pkalya, The al-Shabaab case in Kenya: origin, development, resilience and rationality of a non-state actor

Terrorist groups such as al-Shabaab are often depicted as irrational and motivated by ideology rather than strategy. Using the case of al-Shabaab in Somalia and its repeated attacks on neighbouring Kenya, we argue the opposite: the group perpetrates attacks for rational as well as strategic reasons. They do so in order to fulfil their primary goal: survival as a terrorist group through relevance. To demonstrate these findings, we catalogue and provide a list of critical variables that motivate al-Shabaab to attack Kenya such as geographical proximity to al-Shabaab’s bases in southern Somalia, Kenya’s international status and visibility, and its status as East Africa’s main tourism destination. Kenya should combat this threat by properly investing in intelligence efforts and relevant homeland security measures as well as building better relations with neighbouring states such as Somalia.