03/2022 – L’età dell’incoerenza: dilemmi e paradossi della politica

Abstracts

Sandro Ciurlia, “Values” and “Method” as the Foundation of Political Analysis in Max Weber. Some Considerations for a Critical Evaluation

Starting from his youth studies on the method of historiographic investigation, the essay analyzes Max Weber’s reference to the idea of ​​”value” as a critical-interpretative category of socio-political phenomena. He distinguishes between “to intend” and “to explain” in the historical and in the political-social sciences and between the ideas of “understanding” and “judgment”. In this way, the history becomes one of the possibility conditions for knowing the social coordinates of a time and the political sovereignty. In the second part of the essay there are various considerations on some ambiguities of Weber’s political work, in particular the unconvincing methodological identification between social and political sciences and his responsibilities as Constitutionalist (art. 48, modality for the election of the President of the Republic) after the collapse of Wilhelminian Germany and the start of the controversial Weimar experience.

Carlo Marsonet, Social Disintegration and Individual Demoralization. Richard Weaver on the Evil of Modernity

Among the American conservative authors of Twentieth century, Richard Malcolm Weaver (1910-1963) is one of the less known and read in Italy. Quite untranslated in Italian as well as not studied in such a country, he developed a powerful critique not only of liberalism of his age, but also of the modernity itself. According to him, nominalist revolution has being caused the decline of the belief in a natural inscrutable order and the consequent separation of society into shapeless and disintegrated masses. Weaver refuses a «hysterical optimism», but, at the same time, he does not despair once and for all. He continues to hope that the human being, by a reviving awareness of the tragic nature of human experience and by accepting his own humbleness towards nature, can choose again in order to affirm the value of civilization and reject the scientistic hybris of his contemporary age.

Luigi Di Gregorio, In vs Out. The New Cultural and Psychological Cleavage as a Limit to “Permanent Contraddiction”

Contradiction and logical inconsistency seem to be two distinctive features of contemporary political communication. The post-ideological era marks the end of stable beliefs, replaced by the search for new reference points that appear intense but ephemeral. In personalized politics, what voters seem to be asking for is not so much programmatic and political coherence, as continuous emotions to new political brands: the leaders.

In this context, which often rewards contradictions and inconsistency, in the continuous pursuit of fluctuations in public opinion, a new political Cleavage seems to take shape that can go back to redefine right and left, in several Western countries. This work will try to investigate in depth the reasons for this cleavage to reflect on its relative strength and stability in perspective, and to question how it can become a limit to the future contradictions of Western political leaders, defining two stable fields of party positioning and voter orientation.

Chiara Moroni, From Coherence to Authenticity: the New Emotional Configuration of Political Action

The idea of ​​politics as competition between parties – based on conflicts determined by the social cleaveages of modern societies – seems to have been replaced by a different way of being together, a neotribalism that finds its link in passions and in the situated sharing of emotions. In this new public space, in which the community dimension is reconstructed based on new temporary and mobile schemes, politics must look to other articulated sets of meanings, to other shared images, exasperating the emotional dimension of the message and the relative configurations that allow the passage from strategies of conviction to instruments of seduction, to stimulate contingent and transversal social effervescence. What is the ideal background to a new and necessary concept of coherence? How can a political force dialogue with many types of communities that are differently located both spatially and temporally, managing not to lose political credibility? The response of Italian politics and parties is expressed in the transition, ideal and practical, from coherence to authenticity, from rational action with respect to purpose to improvisation of the emergency, remaining consistent with the great reference values, but proposing resolutions and policies that are often coherence and schizophrenic both with each other and over time.

Nello Barile, The Principle of Self-contradiction. The Brand of the Iperleader and His Lo-Fi Communication in the New Digital Ecosystem

Since the nineties, studies on brand communication have insisted on the identity and values that determine the positioning of the brand, on the consistency that governs the transition from the axiological level of the brand to the campaigns of the moment. With the transition from Berlusconian telepopulism to real and digitized populism, the logical principle of non-contradiction has given way to a constitutive contradiction and a habitual object of expectation, such as the Batesonian double bind. This expedient has made it possible to create a consensus that is sometimes blatant, but increasingly momentary and fluctuating. If the triangulation strategies have changed the positioning of left and right parties / movements, the creation of a consumer-centric communication ecosystem has made the political offer aimed no longer at groups but at individuals even more modular. While the dynamics of the echo chambers have made the polarization process of the electorates more acute. The contradiction becomes a dominant feature of the political communication of the hyperleaders. From the U-turns of the 5 Star Movement on constitutive themes and directly connected to the axiological core of their identity, up to the purely tactical action of Matteo Renzi, first hailed as a statesman and then reviled as a new egoarch, after having first born and then died the pink-yellow executive. Even more structural is the contradiction inherent in Salvini’s permanent election campaign, capable of slipping with ease from federalism to sovereignism, up to a new pro-European and technocratic opportunism under Draghi, which he punctually contributed to defenestrating in collaboration with Forza Italia and with the former ally then rival, Giuseppe Conte.

Massimiliano Panarari, The Post-ideological Paradox Made (not) Party. The Communicative and Organizational Ambivalence of the 5 Star Movement

The 5 Star Movement is founded on paradoxes (and contradictions). This dimension can be considered as constitutive; and it was legitimized by its internal élite, on the level of public discourse, on the basis of the post-ideological connotation. A unicum in comparison with the other European neo-populist parties, which tend to position themselves more clearly (as evidenced by the scientific literature) with respect to the categories of right or left and to the spatial (and rational) conception of politics typical of the modernity. The article aims to investigate the dual category of ambivalence / ambiguity as the communication matrix of the M5S (which has played a key role in its continuous metamorphosis), and as the result of a deliberately incoherent process of institutionalization.

Alessandro Sterpa, From Consistency to Adaptation: the Legal Rule in Complexity

There is a juridical-institutional profile that outlines the juridical-institutional face of incoherence. The contribution aims to investigate the transformation of some institutions of constitutional law that seem to reflect the theme. In particular: 1) the attempt to weaken the ban on the mandatory mandate of parliamentarians with the clauses imposed on members of parliamentary groups (regulation of the M5S group, 100,000 euro penalty for expelled who go against the party’s address); 2) the alleged inconsistency between the electoral-representative mandate and the government contract (first Conte Government 2018) as well as with the three different majorities between the three governments of the current legislature; 3) voting with different majorities for the same constitutional reform that led to a reduction in the number of parliamentarians (the 4 votes saw the governing majorities of the two count governments, different from each other, vote together); 4) the constitutional and supranational constraints of the EU in particular as conditions that force the revision of the political positions of populists and sovereigntists until the formation of the Draghi government in parliament with a majority in 2018 of at least 55% of populist-sovereigntists.

Michele Marchi, Macron II and the Evolution of the Fifth Republic in Historical Perspective

This article aims at investigating the beginning of Macron’s second presidency within the historical and political evolution of French Fifth Republic. The political framework that consolidates during the Gaullist decade succeeds in surviving the economic crisis of the middle 70s, but most importantly witnesses the rise of political alternation, thanks to François Mitterrand’s victory. While the 5th Republic demonstrates all his capacity to adapt from a political and institutional perspective, the changes in the so-called affluent society together with the end of Cold War put a strain on the political system born in 1958. This article tries to outline the signs of crisis that took place in the three decades starting with the Treaty of Maastricht and ending with the not so large re-election of Emmanuel Macron. These signs are mainly to be found in the system difficulty to adapt to the challenges of globalization. The progress of the extremist political movements together with the deep crisis faced by the traditional parties of the French Fifth Republic (Gaullists and Socialists) determines the birth of a new multipolarism (tripolar?) within which the re-elected President should try to put forward his proposal of modernisation and voluntarism. After his first five years characterized by the gilets jaunes social crisis, Covid crisis, and the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine, in this second term President Macron will have to clarify both the direction of his voluntarism and the recomposition of the party system of the Fifth French Republic.

Sofia Ventura, The French Right between New Centrism, Gaullism and Radical Right

The French presidential and legislative elections of spring 2022 have ratified the deep crisis of the French Republican Right. The result of the Gaullist presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse, below 5 per cent, and the drastic downsizing of the parliamentary group (10.7 per cent) make this crisis appear almost irreversible. Moreover, the republican right reverse has been preceded by the radicalisation of the French right-wing electorate, which now appears more willing to move towards Marine Le Pen’s National Front. After all, the Gaullist party has been moving to the right since 2007, with the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy. A shift that since 2012 has failed to prevent the haemorrhaging of part of its electorate towards the radical right. At the same time, a more moderate part of that electorate has preferred to turn towards the centrist offer of Emmanuel Macron. Analogously, that centrist offer worked like a magnet in the Gaullist party, attracting part of the leadership group. Squeezed between the radical right and Macron, internally divided and subject to bitter internal conflicts for many years, in particular since the defeat of Sarkozy in 2012, the Gaullist party now faces the need for a radical structural and ideological reorganisation, on pain of disappearing.

Marc Lazar, The New Configuration of the French Left

This article studies the result of the left candidates and parties of the French left at the presidential and legislative elections of 2022. The author observes the great internal transformation of the left configuration. From one part there is the decline of the Socialist Party which was the dominant party of the Left since the end of 1970’s. From another part there is the electoral progression of the component of the radical Left, La France insoumise, with his leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.  Some explanations of this important double transformation are given as the author indicate the elements of strongness and weakness of this recomposition of the left parties in the French political system.

Maurizio Ridolfi, The French “Republican Monarch” and the Exercise of Power in the History of the Quirinal

Although Italian parliamentary democracy does not contemplate presidential election through universal suffrage, the “long” seven-year term makes it peculiar in a comparative and transnational framework. A “reciprocity of view” between France and Italy allows the identification of the adaptation factors present in Italian democracy and above all of the presidential rhetoric that circulate in public discourse, especially in times of crisis and transition. A key to interpretation is privileged that insists on the link between presidential prerogatives and parliamentary practices typical of the Italian Republic, in the coexistence of one and the other and in their changing degree of intensity in the balance of power that can be found in the relationship between Head of the state and governments, parliament and political parties.

Alessandro Giacone, The Quirinal Treaty in a Historical Perspective

In the complex history of the Franco-Italian relationship, the treaty of the Quirinal (2022) is the arrival point of a long process that started at least in 1963, when the treaty of the Elysée was signed between France and Germany. In this article we will discuss how the Italian diplomacy reacted to it by examining three historical moments: a) the period between 1963 and the first enlargement of the EEC (1973); b) the negotiations for the treaty of Maastricht (1991), c) after Brexit (2016), France, Germany and Italy try to coordinate their policies before European summits

Jean-Pierre Darmis, The Quirinal Treaty: From Crisis to Institutionalization of French-Italian Bilateral Relations

The Quirinal Treaty is the fruit of a troubled recent history. The launch of a draft treaty between Italy and France took place between late 2017 and early 2018, while a number of dossiers had emerged as problematic between Rome and Paris. We must first remember the recent political cycles that led to this crisis, but also a number of underlying elements, for example in economic policy, which also result in a reactivation of the perception of conflict between both countries. The signing of the Quirinal Treaty in November 2021 illustrates a particularly favorable political moment and expresses the convergences between the Draghi executive and the Macron presidency. The entry into operation of the Treaty represents a very interesting case of institutionalization of bilateral relations in the context of the European Union. We have been able to detect some elements of cooperation, for example between diplomacies, that make it possible to envisage structural changes in the bilateral game, although the possible fluctuation in political cycles must be taken into account. This treaty also offers an interesting example to compare with some integration paradigms that insisted on a purely communal game as an alternative to bilateralism within the Union.