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This article examines the complex nature of post-war Italian political thought, stressing the importance of Italy's unusual institutional and historical political arrangements, but also the vibrancy of its political ideologies in this period. In the past it has often been argued that the dysfunctional nature of post-war Italian democracy with its rapidly changing governments, and widespread corruption—which nonetheless coexisted with the one party, the Christian Democrats, being constantly in power—led to the atrophying of political theory in general, and political ideologies in particular. But this picture is strongly disputed here—on the contrary it is argued that Christian Democratic, Left and liberal political ideologies were all complex and interesting. Thus if Christian democracy should ultimately be seen as an ‘ideology of transition’ which existed to help Catholicism adapt to the parameters of modern mass democracy, and which lacked a thinker of the calibre of Jacques Maritain, it nevertheless contained within it important debates on the role of the state, between such interesting thinkers as Giuseppe Dossetti and Alcide De Gasperi. And if anything, political thinking on the Left in the post-war period was even more complex, with visceral debates within the (large) Communist Party (PCI) over whether to work within the law—between such thinkers as Palmiro Togliatti and theIl Manifestogroup. Equally on the more revolutionary Left, there were important debates about how quickly capitalism could be made to collapse through revolutionary action between thinkers such as Raniero Panzieri and his more radical disciples, Mario Tronti and Antonio Negri, while later, due to the general failure of these revolutionary efforts, post-modern thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo sought to abandon grand metaphysical narratives, whilst retaining a commitment to Left of centre political commitments. Finally, although not part of a widespread mass movement, the liberal thought of Norberto Bobbio was also highly interesting and sophisticated—borrowing from Hobbes and Kelsen, he sought to advocate a modest form of liberal democracy which allowed for civilised forms of conflict, and the protection of minorities, and which rejected the contention of Marxists that civil rights could not be distinguished from economic ones. Overall, if normative aspirations in post-war Italian politics were often frustrated in practice, this was certainly not due to any lack of theoretical vibrancy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This note explores new ways of thinking about the history of political thought in twentieth-century Europe. It argues that more attention ought to be paid to the interaction between political thought or imagination on the one hand and, on the other, actual political institutions as they were designed, sometimes destroyed, an often re-designed in the course of twentieth-century European history. With this comes a clearer focus on 'in-between figures' (such as public lawyers). The note then outlines an argument concerning the emergence—even triumph—of a particular set of institutions and normative ideas (or sometimes just intuitions) in Western Europe after 1945, a set that was largely extended to Southern as well as Eastern Europe towards the end of the century. What is summed up as a conception of constrained civilian democratic administrative statehood did not reflect any traditional 'ism' and constituted a genuinely new ideological configuration. Have you forgotten the other bankruptcies? What was Christianity doing in the various catastrophes of society? What became of Liberalism? What has Conservatism produced, in either its enlightened or its reactionary form? ... If we are indeed honestly to weigh out the bankruptcies of ideology, we shall have a long task ahead of us. Victor Serge Democracy has developed wherever the abstract appeal of the ideologue and the concrete experimentation of the practical man have worked together. A. D. Lindsay [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In public justifications, but even more in state practice, it is argued that European countries are converging on a notion of membership and political attachment that is best theorized in terms of the category of constitutional patriotism. What once appeared as a highly idiosyncratic construct for the very specific situation of post-war West Germany is now becoming an accepted norm and practice across Western Europe at least. A number of specific empirical research questions are suggested that would allow this thesis to be tested. However, regardless of whether there is any convergence on constitutional patriotism empirically, it is argued that normatively such a convergence would be justified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues against the view—frequently put forward by conservatives themselves—that conservatism cannot be analyzed as a coherent political ideology. It then proposes a multidimensional approach to understanding conservatism, defining (and defending a particular interpretation of) four dimensions which are termed sociological, methodological, dispositional and philosophical. It is argued that only if two of these four dimensions are present in a particular variety of political thought is it justified to speak of political conservatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]