RISULTATI RICERCA

The publication of Pour une histoire conceptuelle du politique. Leçon inaugurale au Collège de France faite le jeudi 28 mars 2002 (Paris, Seuil, 2003) offers us the occasion to reflect upon the historiographical approach and the theoretical reflection of Pierre Rosanvallon. In these pages we seek to shed light upon the methodological originality of conceptual political history, an originality which is derived above all from the understanding of politics as an historical process constituted by the continuous and contradictory interaction between society’s view of itself and social practices. The discussion of the close ties between a rigorous and problematic historiographical research and the questions posed by the present society, highlighting in particular his desire to contribute to the establishment of a new political culture for the reformist left, will serve to briefly outline the path Pierre Rosanvallon takes to arrive at his own definition of politics as well as to delineate the structure of an historiographical method adapted to the understanding of the political domain. To be presented in the final section are the applications of this historiographical approach in Rosanvallon’s works concerning the history of French democracy.

Many studies deal with the European extreme right in the first half of the Twentieth century. None of them, though, focuses on Emanuel Malynsky, the Russian-Pole catholic and anti-semite emigrated in Paris. He has always been remembered, even within the scientific community, for a single pamphlet, published in the middle Thirties (Julius Evola was its Italian editor), which includes some of his works: La guerre occulte. But the width and richness of his works deserve a much deeper analysis. Taking into consideration Malynskian doctrines (such as integral monarchism, liberal neofeudalism, Supernationale de Défense sociale, theory of hidden war), together with other ones worked out in the same period by the French extreme right, the essay wishes to show the reasons why this intellectual should be considered a prominent representative of reactionary thought in a period of great transformations.

Israel has stated publicly that it intends to pursue a policy of targeting and killing Palestinian militants. The jewish state created a new vocabulary and important American policymakers, officials, and media com-mentators have echoed Israeli arguments. Some think attacks by the Israelis on specific Palestinian targets are legal because the leaders are engaged in aggressive warfare. Others, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, are opposed to the practice. Israel says the targeted killings of Palestinian leaders are necessary as part of its effort to prevail in an armed conflict short of war. Palestinians denounce the killings as extra-judicial executions. Military experts tend to disagree with the Palestinians, even while conceding that such attacks fall into a grey area. The attack on Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, exposed the groing debate among Israelis about such strikes.

In this paper a new conception of democracy is proposed, which is useful both as an instrument for the conduct of empirical research on existing democracies and as a compass to be used for a better under-standing of political processes that are changing our societes. Since the positive functioning of democratic procedures is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the consolidation and the development of a democratic regime, the analysis of existing relations between the structure and the culture of a political system is needed. This perspective is not used by political science in an exclusive manner; therefore, two contributes taken from other disciplines are introduced. The first is taken from a recent field of political philosophy, republicanesim; the second is Alessandro Pizzorno’s approach for the study of identities and conversion, taken from sociological theory. These approaches are further elaborated in the present paper: on the one hand, with the aim of identifying the role of structured conflict and intermediate bodies; on the other hand, in order to better explain the use of the social capital concept in political science. The empirical theory of democratic quality and social capital that emerges from the analysis could be a contribution for the inter-disciplinary debate and a stimulus for further research on democracy.

Proceeding from the awareness of a widespread and increasing sense of uncertainty among citizens (especially) in Western societies, the essay attempts to trace the reasons why intellectuals generally appear to be failing to produce far-sighted and reassuring interpretations of current events and potential happenings. The crucial source of analytical confusion is identified in the choice of a distorted or obsolete interpretative frame, leading to misperceptions and unjustified expectations. In particular the author concentrates on portraying three meta-theorical contexts: radical postmodernism; «moderate» postmodernism and classical modernity. Subsequently, once proved the inadequacy of each of them to serve as a neat lens to comprehend recent life-world changes, an original, amended model is conceived. A humanistic reasonable, rather than strictly rational version of modernity could indeed be an appropriate frame in which to locate and read today’s many challenges.

Whether the Constitution to be signed adds anything to the conception of citizenship worked out in the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties is a question which has to be addressed. European (non cosmopolitan) organization is structured in such a way as to reflect the converging role of bodies accountable respectively ton the states and the «european» citizens. EU has now its own goals which require a reflexive awareness different from the one required for the mere regulation of the market: people can not be treated as mere clients of public policies. The nature of citizenship depends on premises of organizational nature (the existence of two sources of power), of socio-historical nature (the non individualistic character of its institutional goals, among which the union of peoples stands out), of procedural nature (the production of a common point of view), and political-legal nature (the function of power as linked to the conception of rights as goals).