Le scienze sociali nell'evoluzione della cultura politica

NUMERO MONOGRAFICO/SPECIAL ISSUE The special issue of the journal explores the relationship between social sciences and political cultures. It adopts a historical perspective to examine and evaluate how social sciences actually contributed to the understanding of politics and the different representations of society; it also discusses various descriptions of the social and political process offered by social sciences. S. CAVAZZA, introduction M. RICCIARDI, Ascesa e crisi del costituzionalismo societario Germania 1840-1900/ The rise and Crisis of Societal Constitutionalism. Germany 1840-1900 The essay reconstructs the debate on legitimation in Germany between 1840 and 1900, describing the rise of a peculiar societal constitutionalism which conceives society as the source of an autonomous normativity, complementary rather than opposed to that of the State. Rochau’s critique of the Fourier’s doctrine marks a change in political semantics since it establishes the base for the legitimation of society. Schmoller’s analysis of the relationship between custom and positive law allows their interlacement, since it recognizes the existence of social powers beside that of the State. Both Rochau and Schmoller conceive the Mittlestand as an historical and ideological element demonstrating that social hierarchies are not bound to chance. As shown by the scientific and political critique of the economist Julius Wolf, the crisis of this arrangement paves the way for an individualistic conception of society where the State could not and should not intervene. RAFFAELLA BARITONO, Ripensare lo Stato: scienze sociali e crisi politica negli Stati Uniti fra Otto e Novecento/ Re-thinking the State: Social Sciences and Political Crisis in the United States between the 19th and the 20th Century The essay aims at outlining the main features of the discussion on the role of the state in the emerging U.S. social sciences between the 19th and the 20th century. In particular, the essay focuses on the shift from the early analyses on the origins, nature and power of the state to those that emphasized the problem of administration, efficiency and the functions of the American government. The focus on this crucial theoretical and political turning point helps understanding the peculiarity of the American state, which is too often represented as «weak» or absent. On the contrary, the process of centralization and state-building, in the critical decades at the turn of the 20th century, had to face the powerful 19th-century anti-state democratic tradition and come to terms with it. M. SALVATI, A proposito di storia e scienze sociali nel Novecento/History and Social Sciences in the Twentieth Century This article offers a new perspective on the relationship between history and social sciences in the XX century. The cultural and political success of empirical sociology during most of the century is here related to the diffusion of the industrialized and standardized forms of mass production (Fordism and transformation of working conditions), which began in the U.S. and then spread all over continental Europe. The well known influence on American social sciences of German and Austrian émigrés is here examined by focusing on the social democratic wing of this emigration and its important emphasis on the need for sociology in a welfare-oriented society. The growing presence of a mass industry in Italy in the decades following WWII might explain a similar conversion in Italian sociology beginning from the 1950s. Coherently, recent indications of a decreasing relevance of sociology are here related to crisis of Fordism in the 1970s and its effect on the welfare state. THOMAS MERGEL, Il sogno della guida razionale. Scienza sociale empirica, democrazia e politica nell’Europa Occidentale dopo il 1945/The Dream of the Rational Guide. Empirical Social Science, Democracy and Politics in Western Europe after 1945 The article defines social scientific thinking models as «resources» for political conceptions and ideas of society in Europe, in particular in Germany, after WWII. It highlights the many cultural transfers between the United States and Europe, and stresses the American belief that social science should work as a way of political education after dictatorship and war. The enduring influence of this conviction was reflected primarily not in the idea of «scientific» (that is rational) politics but rather in a conception of society as a homogenous and regular entity. In particular, demoscopic approaches informed the imagination of a society that functioned along quasi-mechanic logics. Against this background, the article argues that part of the political success of empirical social science in Europe was not so much due to the ambition of providing a political education, as in the U.S., but rather to its functionality as a performative political language that enabled to describe the world in unambiguous terms.