Intellectuals, journals, and the legitimisation of political power: the case of the Italian intellectual group ofIl Mulino(1950s and 1960s)

Abstract

This article explores the intellectual discourse ofIl Mulino’s intellectual group in relation to the transformation of Italian politics during the period leading up to the centre-left governments. First, it investigatesIl Mulino’s cultural project of overcoming the hegemony of idealism by endorsing the empiricist approach favoured by Anglo-American social sciences, while establishing a new role for intellectuals. Then, it focuses on the group’s political agenda aimed at rationalising Italy’s ‘imperfect two-party system’. We argue that, within the Italian intellectual-political scenario,Il Mulino’s intellectual discourse sought to establish a new relationship between culture and politics. It tried to do so both by anchoring Italian political culture to the liberal- and social-democratic European tradition and by contributing to the stabilisation of Italian democracy, while proposing a reduction in the number of political parties.