01/2021 – Da Trump a Biden: come cambiano gli Stati Uniti

Abstracts

Alia K. Nardini, Joe Biden’s Victory: Continuity and Change in the US Presidential Elections

Donald Trump’s defeat confirmed that the United States is changing. The elements that made Joe Biden’s victory possible point to new dynamics, especially the exponential growth of the postal vote, which benefited the Democrats, as well as the increase of Latinx participation and that of suburban America, both of which converged around Trump. Old certainties returned, such as the blue wall in the Rust Belt. The Democratic Party registered an increase in preferences among African Americans, women, and young people instead. Other variables still need to be defined: winds of change stir the Sun Belt, as seen from the results in Georgia and Arizona; the deep tension between progressives and liberals within the Democratic party also suggests future unrest.

Overall, America remains a substantially divided country, marked domestically by race, census and gender inequalities, and still torn on the role and extent of welfare policies on poverty and public health. Abroad, it appears confused about its national interest scope and goals. Therefore, Biden’s victory does not mark the final phase of a complex experience – the one of the Trump Administration. Rather, it is the beginning of a very delicate historical phase, in which both parties will need to work hard in order to face the electoral challenges that await them in the near future.

 

Claudia Mariotti, How the United States are changing. Political polarization in the age of Trump

The increasing political polarization is one of the phenomena that most characterize contemporary Western democracies – especially the United States – putting them in front of great challenges that can undermine their foundations, as demonstrated by the recent assault on Capitol Hill. Another element that played an essential role in these elections is the emergence of the world pandemic due to the spread of the Covid-19 virus. This article will try to account for the huge scientific debate on US political polarization, referring to the main studies, and the most recent ones, of the different schools of thought that have given rise to a stimulant, although not always clear in terms of results, interdisciplinary confrontation. It will analyze in detail the key elements that act as an engine of affective polarization such as, in its original definition, the activation of social identities on one hand and ideological polarization on the other. Finally, it will examine the role that the pandemic crisis has played in these elections and, in particular, on ideological and affective polarization.

The article will close with a general reflection on the future of American democracy and the challenges it will face.

 

Federico Donelli. US-China competition in the Middle East. Continuity and changes in Biden’s foreign policy agenda

The U.S. disengagement from the Middle East begun during the Obama administration and perpetuated during the Trump four-year term have favored the emergence of a new regional order. As part of the currently fragmented multipolarity in the Middle East, the increased room for maneuver of regional actors has coincided with the spread of new perceptions of insecurity. This regional environment has generated a variety of dynamics including the establishment of coalitions that cross over the sectarian identities, the adoption of interventionist policies, the outbreak of proxy-wars, and the quest for alliances with extra-regional patrons such as Russia and China. Especially China has expanded its presence in the region, thereby laying the basis for long-term influence. For this reason, the Middle East is bound to become a competitive arena between the United States and China. Through the prism of power transition theory, the article explores the two Great Powers’ role in the region by charting the future choices of the newly elected U.S. President Joe Biden.

 

Caiden Heaphy, Leaving Identity Politics Aside: How better LGBT representation in the US can benefit both parties

Despite making history in 2016 as the first Republican presidential candidate to openly voice support for LGBT rights, President Trump’s claims have remained largely out of sync with his party as well as his own administration’s policies. Although efforts to revamp the 2020 RNC platform with a modern vision of conservatism ultimately failed, they highlighted an internal struggle that has been haunting Republicans in recent years: LGBT voters, and the Americans who empathize with them, have become an increasingly powerful constituency. Democrats’ monopolization of LGBT issues, however, is far from complete, teetering instead on an uneasy coalition of progressives and moderates. A re-imagining of priorities, in which the civil liberties of the LGBT community are no longer up for debate, could transform the political landscape, paving the way for formidable policy debates beyond today’s stagnated identity politics.

 

Alberto Bitonti, Digital democracy and distance voting. Phenomenology of a diffidence

In light of President Trump’s allegations against postal votes in the recent US Presidential elections, the article tackles the topic of distance voting in the conceptual framework of digital democracy, critically analyzing advantages and risks of i-voting (online voting) as possible evolution of the postal vote. The two categories of distance voting are compared with each other and with traditional polling. More specifically, the article addresses the elements of diffidence related to: the equality of voting rights, the identification of voters and the logistics of ballots; the universality of voting and the timing of the «electoral photograph»; the secrecy and freedom of voting; the counting of votes and the publication of results.

 

Valter Coralluzzo, The U.S. Grand Strategy between continuity and change

What are the major strategies traditionally adopted in America’s foreign policy? Which dilemmas is a hegemonic actor called to face, given its recurrent reluctance to take on responsibilities connected with world leadership, and constant questioning by an increasing number of observers? Which grand strategy inspired Obama’s and Trump’s foreign policy choices? Will elements of continuity or discontinuity prevail in Biden’s international agenda?

 

 

Gianfranco Pasquino, The Political Science of Norberto Bobbio

Combining a tremendous amount of historical and philosophical knowledge with a remarkable conceptual clarity, Bobbio devoted his political science analysis to the theory of elites and political power; the tasks and performance of political parties; the lack of a theory of the State in Marxism; democracy and its supposedly unkept promises. My article is meant to provide a synthetic assessment of his contributions especially from the perspective he was pursuing: the establishment of a close and mutually beneficial relationship between political science and the construction of a democratic political culture.  In Bobbio’s writings there is still a lot to be learned.

 

Corrado Claverini, Norberto Bobbio and the History of Italian Philosophy

Norberto Bobbio – discussing the Italian cultural identity – distinguished «two Italies»: «barbaric Italy» and «civil Italy». This distinction has been used to show the ambivalence and complexity of Italian culture. This essay aims to analyse the specificity of such culture starting with Bobbio’s thought – still relevant today – on the history of Italian philosophy.

 

Roberto Giannetti, Which Democracy? Democracy and Disenchantment in Norberto Bobbio’s Political Thought

This article aims at summarizing the theory of democracy proposed by Norberto Bobbio. In particular, two themes are addressed. The first one  is the procedural conception of democracy as an institutional mechanism to make collective decisions. The second theme is what Bobbio calls the “broken promises” of democracy, a set of obstacles and constraints that stand between the ideal of democracy and its actual realization. While the refinement of the procedural theory of democracy is one of the long-lasting contributions of Bobbio’s theory, the methodological criterion adopted by him to highlight the differences between democratic promises and outcomes raises more than one perplexity. Considering modern democracies not as something profoundly different from ancient democracies but as a kind of “attenuated democracy” does not seem the best way to understand the reality and the transformations of contemporary democratic regimes.

 

Giacomo Tarascio, A strange heterogony of ends: the role of Norberto Bobbio in the reception of Italian marxism in the UK

This contribution highlights the function of Norberto Bobbio’s work in the reception of Italian marxism in the UK. In providing a reconstruction of the comparison between Bobbio and the Italian historical materialism, the distribution of the Gramscian concept of civil society in the British political and cultural context will be revealed. In closing, it will be shown how this intersection of theories has nourished the most known international conceptualizations of civil society.

 

Gianluca Damiani, Norberto Bobbio and the Possibility of a Scientific Politics

Norberto Bobbio occupies a central place in the history of Italian Political Science in the second Postwar, primarily in the debates about the proper role of political science in general political studies, which in Italy, up to the 1960s comprised only philosophy of law, history, and constitutional law. In doing this, Bobbio was deeply influenced by Italian ‘elitist’ authors, Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto. This paper aims to discuss Bobbio’s role in these debates, and his analysis of the relationship between ‘science and ideology’, derived from Pareto’s sociology.

 

Damiano Palano, The duty of pessimism. On the trail of the ‘Enlightenment’ realism’ of Norberto Bobbio

This article examines the relationship between Norberto Bobbio’s thought and the so-called “political realism”. In particular, the text highlights the characteristics of the ‘reformist’ realism of the Italian thinker and considers the differences of this conception with respect to the conservative perspective of many realism thinkers and to the “revolutionary” realism that refers to Marx. The article also examines Bobbio’s interest in “political science”. In fact, Bobbio contributed, with his own intellectual authority, to the rehabilitation of Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto. Moreover, following Schumpeter, he grounded the ‘realistic’ perspective within a procedural conception of democracy. To counteract the anti-scientism rooted in “Italian ideology”, Bobbio however adopted a vision of political science aligned with the principles of behavioralism of the 1950s and 1960s. The support for this vision paradoxically favored the progressive expulsion of the theoretical dimension from the “empirical” science of political phenomena.

 

 

Aldo Tochiaro, Consensus and conflict on the Net: the political polarization between socially correct and dark web

 

Conversational analysis on the Net must deal with the exit after Trump of millions of users from traditional channels such as Twitter and Facebook. Where are they going? Parler and Gab are two of the low-moderation platforms where extremists proliferate, but also on Twitch and in gamers’ chats, appeals to take up arms are multiplying, in the United States but not only. While the owners of the most used social media platforms have to deal with the requests, by the EU and the American Congress, to establish a tighter public policy protocol, in Italy there are those – in Parliament – who propose formulas unequivocal digital identification to access network aggregators. Coexist two hemispheres in the Net, one legalized and one privateer, close to the deep web? After having seen the latest statements by the great founder of Silicon Valley, let’s do a few numbers to understand the perimeter of the phenomenon and trace some scenario hypotheses.

Hashtag: #Socialmedia; #polarizzazione; #consenso; #conflitto; #darkweb.