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Abstract
This article belongs to the area of university policy, viewed as an important example of the relationship between culture and power. As a case study, it utilizes the competitive exams for university chairs which took place in Italy for economic disciplines between 1900 and 1942. Interpreting the rules, the criteria and the outcomes of faculty recruitment, the article reconstructs an overall picture of the actors, themes and orientations, as well as the channels used to spread ideas. In this way, it clarifies important aspects of the influence exercised by the political sector over economic culture prior to and during fascism, in particular, in the formation of a consensus for government intervention in the Italian economy.
Acknowledgements
This work is an outcome of a study on ‘Economic culture in the South of Italy between the two world wars’, and it was presented in Naples (Italy, 7–9 November 2013). We thank two anonymous referees for their useful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.
Notes
1. ‘The Goals for Society at Large’ of universities put forward by Tuckman and Chang (Citation1988, pp. 616–617) coincide with those characteristic of cultural policy, as follows: ‘a. To preserve and disseminate cultural heritage … b. To encourage discovery and dissemination of new knowledge … c. To encourage discovery, recognition, training, and placement of talent … d. To advance the social welfare … e. To assist society in achieving positive and avoiding negative outcomes’.
2. Premfors (Citation1980) identifies four aspects in the policies of higher education: governance, size, structure and access.
3. In an interesting analysis, Phelps (Citation2006) defines four dimensions of economic culture, and estimates their impact on five standard economic indicators.
4. A more recent example of the way in which ‘changes in the structure and values of academic science … have consequences for post-baccalaureate education in the United States’ is provided by Hackett (Citation1990, p. 242).
5. On university policy in Italy, we refer the reader to the comprehensive analysis of Capano (Citation1998).
6. For the purposes of our work, it is sufficient to restrict ourselves to the recruitment of official professors, excluding the so-called ‘liberi docenti’, because the latter had no right of entry into the commissions for competitive exams.
7. In other words, eminent scholars called directly by the King on the recommendation of the Minister. The instrument of calling someone for ‘clear fame’ lent itself to being employed for political ends.
8. The government also appointed the Rectors, the Deans and the members of the Supreme Council of State Education.
9. The Liberal Age in Italy is the period between Italian unification (1861) and the rise of fascism (1922).
10. In this paper, the translations are ours, where they are not already available.
11. Indeed, it has to be said that with slight modifications that system of recruitment was only abandoned in 1980.
12. Our primary source is mainly the Bollettino ufficiale del Ministero dell’Istruzione pubblica (1891–1925).
13. The original title is Principi di economia pura, while Pure economics is the title of the English translation, of 1898.
14. Pareto died in 1923, Barone in May and Pantaleoni in October 1924; De Viti de Marco will live on isolation for a couple of decades, dying in 1943. Pareto and Barone did not play any role in the assignment of university chairs, while De Viti de Marco was a commissioner only four times. Nonetheless, as we shall see, this remarkable group was influential in the competitive exams, thanks to Pantaleoni.
15. We refer in particular to the sharing of the ‘pre-analytic cognitive act’ which Schumpeter (Citation1954, p. 41) calls ‘vision’.
16. It should be remembered that in this period, there were fewer economic subjects than in the era that followed.
17. There were 17 competitions for Political Economy, 12 for Statistics, and 9 for Public Finance.
18. Male universal suffrage was introduced in 1912.
19. Out of the ordinary, the batch of economists of 1913, with as many as seven competitions, perhaps an attempt to seek consensus on the part of the Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti in view of the November elections, the first in Italy with universal male suffrage.
20. The commissioners were: Valenti (1852–1921), Alessio (1853–1940), Loria (1857–1943), Pantaleoni (1857–1924), Benini (1862–1956), Graziani (1865–1944), Jannaccone (1872–1959), and Einaudi (1874–1961). These names could be inserted in the commissions of all three of the subjects under consideration, through their disciplinary affinities.
21. See footnote 14.
22. The commissioner Jannaccone was part of this tight-knit group, on which see Marchionatti et al. (Citation2013).
23. As a scholar, Einaudi was also an historian and an applied economist.
24. For an exhaustive analysis of Italian economic thought, see Faucci (Citation2014).
25. A panorama of the era coming immediately after the marginalist turning point in the whole of the West is to be found in Screpanti and Zamagni (Citation2005), in particular Ch. 6 ‘The Construction of Neoclassical Ortodoxy’.
26. With the one exception of the competition of 1924.
27. The successful candidates following this orientation were: Flora (1867–1958), Contento (1870–1952), Ricci (1879–1946), Sella (1879–1946), Sensini (1879–1958), Griziotti (1884–1956), and Borgatta (1888–1949).
28. The winners under the influence of Loria were: Coletti (1866–1940), Graziadei (1873–1953), and Arias (1879–1940).
29. The pupils of these commissioners were: E. Cossa (1863–1908), Lorenzoni (1873–1944), Tivaroni (1877–1949), and Masci (1889–1941).
30. The statisticians who passed the selections were: Savorgnan (1879–1963), Gini (1884–1965), and Boldrini (1890–1969).
31. This last group of winners includes the names of Conigliani (1869–1901), Fanno (1878–1965), Natoli (1878–1924), and Bresciani Turroni (1882–1963).
32. On the economists in Parliament in this period see Augello and Guidi (Citation2005).
33. This is the socialist (and later communist) Graziadei (member of parliament from 1910 to 1926).
34. Brizzi (Citation2006) recalls that between 1850 and 1915, the press had the absolute monopoly in the transmission of news.
35. This is a characteristic feature of the Italian approach to economic theory: ‘The history of economics in Italy reflects an interaction between scientific-educational institutions and political power, which led economists to combine a theoretical approach and political commitment’ (Augello and Guidi Citation2008, p. 595).
36. The term is used by one of the most committed and active Italian free traders of the age, De Viti de Marco (Citation1929, p. ix).
37. Nitti (1868–1953) had become an academic already in 1898, but was commissioner of university competitions on only two occasions.
38. He founded Riforma Sociale, the prestigious, eclectic and interventionist journal already mentioned above.
39. For example, in 1912, the state monopoly of insurance was approved: the profits of the new insurance institution (later INA), would serve to finance the National Insurance Fund for workers’ disability and old age.
40. Benini, Flora and Coletti adhered to Nitti’s cultural initiatives. He was decisive for Alessio’s political career, and commissioner when E. Cossa and Sella won their chairs. Nitti had consonance with Graziani, who was Loria’s disciple like himself. Also Graziani’s pupil Masci was influenced by Nitti, whereas Pantaleoni and his disciples were on the opposite side. The young Einaudi was close to Nitti, but he later criticized Nitti’s interventionist policy.
41. Among them, although from different matrixes, were Coletti, Flora, Graziadei, Lorenzoni, Natoli, Arias, Masci and Boldrini.
42. Corporatism was the official economic theory of fascism. It originated in nationalism, and was put forward after the Great War. It differentiated itself from Catholic corporatism and secular-socialist corporatism (Santomassimo Citation2006).
43. Gini had previously been the President of the Public Institution of Statistics (ISTAT) at the personal request of Mussolini. In 1931, he was thrown out after a personal argument with the said Mussolini. Gini attributed a demiurgic capacity to the power of statistics, capable, he believed, of substituting political power. In 1924, he invented an advanced model for the analysis of social differences commonly known as the ‘Gini coefficient’ which is even today considered reliable by the United Nations (Prévost Citation2009).
44. The data are taken from the Bollettino ufficiale del ministero della Pubblica Istruzione (1929), ‘Educazione nazionale’.
45. We recall the case of Antonio Pesenti (1910–1973), who was arrested with the accusation of being a militant communist and thrown into jail. He fought for and obtained the right to have a chair after the war (Pesenti Citation1972).
46. In many cases, the Jews did not return to Italy after 1945. Bruno Foà, a pupil of Graziani, after 1938 emigrated to England to work with the BBC, and then moved to the United States, where he worked as an economic adviser; Riccardo Bachi and his son, the statistician Roberto, both emigrated to Palestine after 1938. Whereas, the father after the Second World War returned to Italy, the son set up the Statistics Office of Israel.
47. The case of Vanoni is emblematic. He finally won a chair of Public Finance and Fiscal Law after a long series of failures. The first attempt dated back to 1932, but his career was penalized for his socialist ideas. After the war, he was a political leader of the Christian Democrats and the man behind a detailed plan of economic reforms in the first half of the 1950s.