POLITICAL IDEAS AND WORLD HISTORY
- Academic year
- 2025/2026 Syllabus of previous years
- Official course title
- POLITICAL IDEAS AND WORLD HISTORY
- Course code
- LM6620 (AF:561832 AR:323207)
- Modality
- On campus classes
- ECTS credits
- 6
- Degree level
- Master's Degree Programme (DM270)
- Educational sector code
- SPS/02
- Period
- 2nd Semester
- Course year
- 1
Contribution of the course to the overall degree programme goals
Expected learning outcomes
More generally, the course aims at 1) strengthening the learning abilities of the students; 2) enhancing their capacity to tackle with complex theoretical issues; 3) developing a critical approach towards the secondary literature and stimulating the original thinking of the students.
Pre-requirements
Contents
It aims to offer an overview of the thinking about authoritarian regimes from the antiquity up to our times, by investigating a number of political categories which belong to the same ‘conceptual family’: Tyranny, Despotism, Absolutism, Napoleonism, Bonapartism, Caesarism, Charisma, Dictatorship, Totalitarianism.
The approach will be 1) philological, insofar as we will investigate the evolution of these categories in a lexical-diachronical perspective, highlighting the similarities and the differences between them and 2) historical, since the contextualisation in their given time will be an essential part of this reconstruction.
Investigating these political concepts will allow us to explore the works of some key figures of the History of Political Thought – from Montesquieu to Weber, from Tocqueville to Schmitt. Attention will also be devoted to conceptual transfers and to authoritarian experiences in a global perspective, too.
Referral texts
- Antonini, F., ‘Caesar, Caesarism, Caesarisms in Gramsci’, in Bellomo M. and E. Zucchetti (eds.), “Power, Coercion, Consent: Gramsci’s Hegemony in the Roman Republic”, De Gruyter 2025 [forthcoming]
- Baehr, P., “Caesarism, Charisma, and Fate: Historical Sources and Modern Resonances in the Work of Max Weber”, Transaction Publishers 2008, pp. 32-45.
- Baehr, P., ‘Max Weber and the Avatars of Caesarism’, in Baehr P. and M. Richter (eds.), “Dictatorship in History and Theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism”, Cambridge University Press 2004, pp. 155-174.
- Bell, D., “Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution”, New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux 2020, Chapter I (‘Mr. Boswell goes to Corsica’), pp. 19-52.
- Burns, J.H. ‘The Idea of Absolutism’, in Miller, J. (ed), “Absolutism in Seventeenth-Century Europe”, Palgrave, 1990, pp. 21-42
- http://www.politicalconcepts.org/dictatorship-andreas-kalyvas/
- Lee, D., “Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought”, Oxford University Press 2016, Introduction (‘Popular Sovereignty, Constitutionalism, and the Civil Law’), pp. 1-23.
- McCormick, J.P., ‘From Constitutional Technique to Caesarist Ploy: Carl Schmitt on Dictatorship, Liberalism and Emergency Powers’, in “Dictatorship in history and theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and totalitarianism”, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 197-200.
- Richter, M., ‘A Family of Political Concepts: Tyranny, Despotism, Bonapartism, Caesarism, Dictatorship, 1750–1917’, “European Journal of Political Theory”, 4(3), 2005, pp. 221-248.
- Richter, M. ‘The History of the Concept of Despotism’, in “Dictionary of the History of Ideas”, vol. 2, 1973, pp. 1-20.
- Richter, M. ‘Tocqueville on Threats to Liberty in Democracies’, in Welch, C. (ed.), “The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville”, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 245-275.
- Rinke, S., ‘The Epitome of Modern Dictatorship in the Early Nineteenth Century: Dr. Francia in Paraguay or “The Chinese Emperor of the West”’, in Prieto, M. (ed.), “Dictatorship in the Nineteenth Century: Conceptualisations, Experiences, Transfers”, Routledge, 2021, pp. 133-149.
- Traverso, E., ‘Totalitarianism Between History And Theory’, “History and Theory”, 56, 2017, pp. 97-118.
- Turchetti, M.,’“Despotism” and “Tyranny” Unmasking a Tenacious Confusion’, “European Journal of Political Theory”, 7(2), 2008, pp. 159-182.
For not attending students:
- P. Baehr and M. Richter (eds.), “Dictatorship in History and Theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism”, Cambridge University Press 2004.
- D. Bell, “Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution”, New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux 2020