Machiavelli's children : leaders and their legacies in Italy and Japan / Richard J. Samuels.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Samuels, Richard J., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political leadership--Italy--History--19th century.

Political leadership.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (475 pages)

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, New York ; London : Cornell University Press, [2003]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Two late-developing nations, Japan and Italy, similarly obsessed with achieving modernity and with joining the ranks of the great powers, have traveled parallel courses with very different national identities. In this audacious book about leadership and historical choices, Richard J. Samuels emphasizes the role of human ingenuity in political change. He draws on interviews and archival research in a fascinating series of paired biographies of political and business leaders from Italy and Japan. Beginning with the founding of modern nation-states after the Meiji Restoration and the Risorgimento, Samuels traces the developmental dynamic in both countries through the failure of early liberalism, the coming of fascism, imperial adventures, defeat in wartime, and reconstruction as American allies. Highlights of Machiavelli's Children include new accounts of the making of postwar Japanese politics-using American money and Manchukuo connections-and of the collapse of Italian political parties in the Clean Hands (Mani Pulite) scandal. The author also tells the more recent stories of Umberto Bossi's regional experiment, the Lega Nord, the different choices made by Italian and Japanese communist party leaders after the collapse of the USSR, and the leadership of Silvio Berlusconi and Ishihara Shintar on the contemporary right in each country.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface: LEADERS MATTER

Introduction: WHY LEADERS MATTER

PART I. CREATION STORIES: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

PART ll. LIBERAL EXHAUSTION: THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

PART III. IN THE AMERICAN IMPERIUM: THE COLD WAR

PART IV. DEGREES OF FREEDOM: AFTER THE COLD WAR

Conclusion: How LEADERS HAVE MATTERED IN ITALY AND JAPAN

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-8014-8982-2

1-5017-2029-5

OCLC:

1121057288