A legal theory for the nation state. Pasquale Stanislao Mancini,Hegelianism and Piedmontese liberalism after 1848

ABSTRACT

This article aims to shed light on the Italian liberals’ contribution to the post-1848 European debate on nationality, representative government and the theory of the state, through focus on the political thought of Pasquale Stanislao Mancini. Building on Vico and Hegel’s philosophies of law and history, Mancini developed a sui generis tradition of national liberalism that founded representative government on a theory of the state that identified freedom and nationality. Far from being the passive and provincial adaptation of Anglo-French currents of liberalism, Mancini’s political thought, while engaging with the contemporary European debates on freedom and constitutional government, nurtured an original constitutional theory that connected conflicting ideas of cosmopolitan freedom and national patriotism.