Silvio Spaventa and Marco Minghetti on party government

ABSTRACT

This article contextualizes, explores, and compares a selection of writings on party government and the modern State authored throughout the 1880s by two major representatives of post-Risorgimento Italian liberalism – Silvio Spaventa (1822–1893) and Marco Minghetti (1818–1886). Its comparative analysis unveils two alternative paths for taming factionalism and securing political freedom in modern representative governments: the strategy of monism pursued by Spaventa, revolving around the primacy of the State and its unity; and the strategy of pluralism championed by Minghetti, praising self-government and the multiple associations that enliven civil society. It connects these strategies to the intellectual background of the two authors – the importance of Hegel’s ideas for Spaventa; the implications of Tocqueville’s anti-Hegelianism for Minghetti – and maps them onto their visions of party government. In doing so, it retrieves an important chapter in the Italian debates on parties that has received scarce consideration among Anglophone scholars. It also helps to pluralize our understanding of Italian liberalism(s) in the aftermath of the Risorgimento. Finally, it draws the attention of Anglo-American political theorists and historians to Minghetti’s seminal book I partiti politici e l’ingerenza loro nella giustizia e nell’amministrazione (1881), which offered the first systematic analysis and defense of parties, and their difference from factions, in the history of modern Italian political thought.