This book by Giorgio Caravale not only reconstructs with great narrative effectiveness the increasingly problematic relationship between politics and intellectuals. It constitutes an original interpretation of the history of contemporary Italy, its resources and its fragilities, its vitality and its lacerations. After helping to form the Italian ruling class, culture is at the crossroads between a possible decline and a new identity. (Roberto Esposito, philosopher, author of Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy)

The book is the first historical reconstruction of Italian political events over the last thirty years, that is, the period from the Tangentopoli crisis of the early 1990s to the present day. In particular, the book examines, for the first time in a systematic and documented way, the controversial relationship between parties and intellectuals, highlighting the distance, not to say the unbridgeable gap, created between politics and culture in Italy in the last three decades, the decades of the so-called Second Republic. In other words, it tries to explain why the close link between politics and culture that was the hallmark of twentieth-century politics has dissolved in Italy, and through what stages we have come to a substantial incommunicability between these two worlds in the last three decades.

Giorgio Caravale is a Professor of Early Modern History at the University Roma Tre, Rome, Italy. He is the author, among other volumes, of Libri pericolosi (Laterza, 2022), A suon di polemiche (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2024), George L. Mosse’s Italy (with L. Benadusi) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and Censorship and Heresy in Revolutionary England and Counter-Reformation Rome (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

“Giorgio Caravale’s Politics Without Intellectuals offers a compelling, original, and well-researched exploration of the evolving relationship between Italian politics and intellectuals over the past thirty years. While focusing on Italy, Caravale’s work also illuminates the challenges faced by all advanced democracies, including short-termism, the rise of narcissistic leaders, and the growing disconnect between culture and public life.” (Giovanni Orsina, Luiss University, Rome, Italy)

“This book by Giorgio Caravale not only reconstructs with great narrative effectiveness the increasingly problematic relationship between politics and intellectuals. It constitutes an original interpretation of the history of contemporary Italy, its resources and its fragilities, its vitality and its lacerations. After helping to form the Italian ruling class, culture is at the crossroads between a possible decline and a new identity.” (Roberto Esposito, philosopher, author of "Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy")

“A deep rift has occurred between politics and culture in recent decades. Giorgio Caravale describes with depth of analysis the unfolding of this phenomenon .... A necessary reflection on a crucial issue for our democracy.” (Piero Craveri, historian, Il Sole 24 ore, Domenicale)

“A detailed and engaging account, halfway between history and pamphlet.” (Raffaele Simone, linguist, author of "L’università dei tre tradimenti")

“Caravale has the courage to recount recent history using the past tense, endowing it with the completeness and distance that, according to Croce, contemporary history lacked in order to actually become history; but above all to do so in a book that has at its center the most hated and controversial figure in the political debate of the last three decades at least, the intellectual.” (Stefano Jossa, Italianist, author of "Un paese senza eroi: L'Italia da Jacopo Ortis a Montalbano")