Geografie politiche di inizio millennio: il "modello fondamentale" di Stein Rokkan rivisitato

- The author assumes that the post-bipolar world is redesigning the geography of politics, multiplying the number of political groups that successfully claim the violent control of a particular territory, possibly at a sub-state level. These developments, which many have seen as a return to the original, anarchic conditions of outright war, or as a return to pre-modern models of feudal organisation are, nonetheless, a response to the new laws of privatisation imposed by the market and implemented by complicit governments. To better analyse this kind of evolution, the essay looks back at Stein Rokkan's model of analysis on the formation of the modern state in Europe, reinterpreting and adapting it to the new context of reference.

Distruzione delle appartenenze e caos organizzato. Aspetti della critica del liberalismo e della democrazia nella cultura politica antisemita

- The ideological pattern of anti-Semitism sprung in the second half of the XIX century, and it moved against Liberalism and Democracy as its defining theoretical and political statement. From Toussenel to Drumont, up to Maurras and Hitler, the anti-Semitic theory revolves around the idea that liberal society leads to the end racial differences and fosters an historical process of homologation and cross-breeding epitomized by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion there is a recurrent theory that the Jewish rule will ultimately establish a One- Nation world, where national and racial differences are abolished. In such an apocalyptic view on history, the criticism of egualitarianism and cospiracy theory blend in a particular and theoretical synthesis.

Diritto e natura a Oxford: il caso di H.L.A. Hart

- Hart is one of the most prominent philosophers of law of the last century. Published in 1961, his book The Concept of Law has influenced many of the leading figures in contemporary legal theory. Hart held the Chair of Jurisprudence at Oxford University from 1952 until 1968 and he chose Ronald Dworkin as his successor. In his last book Diritto e natura. H.L.A. e la filosofia di Oxford, Mario Ricciardi takes the uneasy relationship between the two philosophers as the starting point of his inquiry and claims that Dworkin's critique of Hart's legal theory has misinterpreted many relevant aspects of Hart's approach to law. As a result, many scholars have paid little attention to the cultural and philosophical background of Hart's work. In particular, Ricciardi suggests that, in this work, Hart uses a specific notion of analysis, namely connective analysis, which Gilbert Ryle and Peter F. Strawson had opposed to the decompositive one. Such a reading of The Concept of Law generates a new understanding of the role played by the minimum content of natural law in Hart's legal theory.

A dieci anni dallo scontro di civiltŕ: il dibattito e i test empirici sulle ipotesi di Huntington

- The article reviews recent contributions to the debate on the Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington. The aim of the article is to present, in a schematic manner, how the debate on Huntington's thesis has developed during the last decade, and what is its legacy on contemporary international relations theories. Two different methodological approaches to the clash of civilization are identified, namely the qualitative and quantitative one. Focusing on the latter, the article analyzes the findings of recent studies on internal and international conflicts which test empirically Huntington's thesis. Finally, the article discusses some limits of Huntington's work and points out its importance for the development of international relations thinking after the Cold War.

Una originale genealogia del liberalismo americano: le tesi di Paul W. Kahn

- An enduring myth portrays the American people as the first modern nation to live in a liberal and selfgoverning polity. Paul Kahn believes in American exceptionalism, but he argues that liberal political theory, as conceived in the United States, does not have the necessary conceptual resources for understanding it. The main limit he sees in classic formulations of American liberalism is to be found in the paralyzing alternative between reason and interest. According to Kahn, contemporary theorists are not able to see the real meaning of American exceptionalism because they don't have a proper theory of the will. Indeed, only a political psychology that takes into account the role of the will can explain the peculiarity of a nation's constitutional history. In that respect, Kahn concentrates on the idea of sacrifice to explain the functioning of American constitutionalism and to show the main differences with the evolution of the European Union. However, by following this path, Kahn risks to propose a reductionist account of American constitutionalism.

Statualitŕ come idea e strumento ordinativi

-The question of the capacity and quality of the State marks a constant challenge to modern political science up to now. The article points out that the modern State should be comprehended in its quality as an idea and as an instrument of order. From its early beginning, the modern State has been closely bound up to this aspect, since it is a product of the desire of order in the time of denominational civil war. Thus in the modern age, the guarantee of order remains a central basis to the State's legitimacy. In the last decades, the State has often been said to be a weak patient or even to be dead. The article argues that this opinion is untenable, and that statehood still remains an elementary condition of democratic political order.

L'affetto antimoderno di Michel Foucault

- According to the author, two different approaches to modernity are now competing. The first one (coming from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) underlines the irrational and voluntaristic nature of any moral code and political power. The second one (coming from Rousseau and Kant) grounds progress and legitimacy upon democratic, legal and moral universalism. Foucault's philosophy of life belongs to the first of these approaches. This is where the clash with Habermas, belonging to the second approach, becomes poignantly significant. At first, for Foucault, the power of sovereignty represses life, whereas insanity and madness preserve a transcendent meaning of liberation. Later on, life moulds the inside like a pleat of the outside, subjectivity becomes an effect of power. In Foucault's anti-humanism, Man and God die together like far gone delusions that are recaptured into nature. Schopenhauer's compassion becomes sharp diagnosis of the many tortures inflicted upon man's body, whereas Zarathustra's heroism becomes on the one hand neo-stoical aesthetics of existence and on the other political revolutionary anarchism.