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Making Liberalism Work The Italian Experience, 1860-1914
Susan A. Ashley
ISBN: 0-275-98062-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-98062-7
216 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 8/30/2003
List Price: $86.95 (UK Sterling Price: £59.95)
Discount Price: $43.48 Sale Price for U.S. Customers Only. Save 50%. Ends 12/31/2009.
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: By most accounts, Italian-style liberalism failed. Explanations of its failure vary from economic backwardness or a political culture shaped by autocracy to claims that liberals ruined their chances by pursuing nothing but narrow middle class interests. This study examines the liberal record to weigh the accuracy of these approaches. Ashley focuses on three controversial issues: public works, social reform, and public order. The railroads would test liberal commitment to laissez-faire, labor laws their pledge to protect all citizens, and dissent their allegiance to individual rights. In each case, liberals compromised their principles. What they decided defined the Italian variant of liberalism by transforming it from a doctrine to concrete practices and political behaviors.

Particularly after 1890, liberals increasingly made empiricism the primary justification for policy and dismissed abstract principles as beneath notice. This shift helps explain why liberalism lost authority and credibility as a set of moral imperatives and as a coherent world view in Italy, as well as why it failed to offer most Italians a compelling alternative to either Socialsim or Fascism. Examining what liberals said and did, however, does not entirely support the despairing judgment of so many historians. Italian liberals managed to build a liberal state and to make it function against intransigent obstacles.
Table of Contents:
  • Acknowledgments
    Introduction
    Governing Italy
    Private Enterprise and Public Works
    Private Interests and the Public Good
    The State and Social Justice
    Finding Ways to Reform
    Law and Order
    Liberty in Law
    Liberalism the Italian Way
    Epilogue: Liberalism and Fascism
    Bibliography
About the Author: SUSAN A. ASHLEY is Professor of History at Colorado College. She received her BA from Carleton College and her MA, European Institute Certificate, and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
LCC Class: 320
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