The kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro

Abstract

Deaths of sovereigns or political leaders are generally accompanied by dramatic representation and celebration of the political order over which they have presided. The circumstances of death, funeral rites and destination of the corpse (cremation, burial or public display) proclaim the value and necessity of the ideas embodied in the ruler's office. However practically deficient or scandalous any particular ruler's interpretation of that office, the activities which surround his death reaffirm the invulnerability of the transcendent order to any local or temporary individual failings. Sometimes, however, the circumstances of a sovereign's death can be appropriated by his opponents not merely to decree that death but to destroy the ideological underpinnings of the political system itself: the trials and executions of Charles i and Louis xvi were not simply the punishment of individuals for specific crimes but rather symbolic destructions of monarchy itself staged by Cromwell and the conventionnels (Walzer 1974). Such occasions have been rare. A radical political opposition can expect at most to intervene in the timing of the ruler's death, by assassination, but draw no benefit from this, since it is likely to be even more effective than peaceful death in stimulating public affirmation of the existing order.