"A highly original and intellectually courageous piece of work, Machiavelli's Children opens up new horizons and perspectives, and will undoubtedly be the subject of considerable commentary. A joy to read, this engaging book combines analytical chronicles with sustained theoretical perceptions to powerfully illuminate social science’s central puzzles of ‘structure’ and ‘agency.’-Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University It astutely identifies the coercive, material, and normative mechanisms leaders use to loosen constraints and make choices, and offers fascinating paired comparisons of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japanese and Italian leaders who confronted problems of statebuilding, economic organization, and the character of political regimes. Samuels demonstrates in this tour de force of comparative politics."-Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire "What a wonderful book! Machiavelli’s Children shows not just why, but how, leaders shape history.
As it turns out, both countries also share a lot more than that, as Richard J. "Italy and Japan share the experience of the United States’s postwar attempts to dictate political systems for them-in each case emphasizing neofascism over democracy and independence. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. 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. 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.
He draws on interviews and archival research in a fascinating series of paired biographies of political and business leaders from Italy and Japan.
Samuels emphasizes the role of human ingenuity in political change.
In this audacious book about leadership and historical choices, Richard J. 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.
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