Reviews for From elite to mass politics

The average rating for From elite to mass politics based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-11-13 00:00:00 Lew Klein Christopher Duggan's "Francesco Crispi" is most certainly a four-star book and may even be a five-star book. However, since I have read less than a dozen books on the modern history of Italy, I do not feel that I am sufficiently qualified to give it the top rating. Duggan's book tells the story of what went wrong in Italy after unification. It conforms then to the popular myth that the Italian political class after 1861 was of inferior quality. The Italian parliamentarians failed to achieve their self-proclaimed objectives. They did not establish Italy as a European power nor did they build the infrastructure needed for a modern industrial state. They allowed illiteracy rates to remain extremely high especially in the south. Finally, and, in the view of Crispi, they failed to create a sense of national identity. Duggan clearly implies that Mussolini came to power because the Italian politicians of the previous sixty years with the noted exception of Crispi had been such abject failures. Duggan seems to suggest that if the various Kings and the Italian electorate had supported Crispi more than they did, Italy might have been spared of its Fascist interlude. Francesco Crispi was a key player in the struggle for Italian unification and a close collaborator of Garibaldi. The first half of the book then provides an excellent history of the political struggle for national independence and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. The second half of the book describes how the Kingdom of Italy failed to meet expectations after 1861. Italy was afflicted by politicians who wanted only to serve the interests of their local power bases and a Roman Catholic Church that fought progress on all fronts (education, public infrastructure, agrarian reforms, and public hygiene). Crispi managed to accomplish many important things but by the time his political career ended, not enough had been done. Twenty years later, Italy would turn to the charismatic Benito Mussolini who promised to do finish the political agenda for Italy that the generation of Garibaldi, Mazzini, Crispi and Cavour had created. I find it difficult to agree with Duggan's interpretation but I find that his narrative of the events to be extraordinary. He appears to present all the facts not just those that support his thesis. I think, however, that Duggan makes his case very well that the leadership from the Kings was never as good as the situation required after 1861 and that the political classes were as a group highly mediocre. All in all, Duggan's biography of Crispi is an extraordinary work that does much to illuminate what happened politically in Italy between the completion of Italian unification and WWI.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-29 00:00:00 Reynaldo Reyna In this book, my favorite poem is: My People, by Langston Hughes: "The night is beautiful, So the faces of my people. The stars are beautiful. So the eyes of my people. Beautiful, also, is the sun. Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people." The art called "Into Bondage" by Aaron Douglas took my breath away.