Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan

Rating:
Summary: Actually, kind of bland
Review: For two countries with very different languages and religions and with no real contact with each other before the 1860s, Japan and Italy have a surprisingly lot in common. Both countries moved towards modern national capitalist politics under authoritarian monarchs in the 1860s. Both sought to limit universal suffrage and modern democracy up until the First World War. Both became fascist dictatorships that launched brutal wars of aggression and allied with Nazi Germany. Both, of course, were defeated and occupied by the Americans, and in the end joined in military alliance with their former conqueror. Both were dominated by conservative parties who ruled for decades while engaging in massive corruption. Both faced political and fiscal crisis at the end of the cold war as their massive corruption was exposed in the early nineties. But there were also differences between the two. Japanese Shintoism never had the independence that Italian Catholicism did. Whereas for most of the post war period Italy had a large public sector that was poorly run and subject to corruption and patronage, Japan had a sleek private sector that in fruitful synthesis with government direction became the second leading industrial power in the world. But in the nineties Italy made heroic efforts to control its financial problems and achieve a degree of political reform with the demise of the Christian Democratic Party, while Japan was stuck in stagnation as the Liberal Democratic Party maintained its baleful hegemony.

Such are the basic facts that a comparison between the two countries provides. However Richard Samuels' recent book does not offer much more. Samuels instead spends much of the book trying to argue that leaders made a crucial difference to the history of their countries, while castigating the spectre of determinism. So we have chapters on the founders (Cavour, Ito, Yamagata), the original economic strategists, the death of liberalism (Giolitti, Hara), the leading corporatists, Mussolini, the postwar leaders (De Gasperi, Yoshida), the masters of corruption, the post-cold war left leaders, and the post-cold war right leaders. There is something ham-fisted in this attack on determinism. It is not clear that the men in question made all that much of a difference. After all, if NATO could take the trouble to include Portugal, it would almost have certainly have gone out of its way to include Italy, whatever Alcide de Gasperi did. Nor does Samuels really convince that with different leadership the two countries would have been more liberal and less corrupt. (And the discussion of Silvio Berlusconi is disappointingly brief about the many allegations of corruption that surround him). We do get perhaps the least interesting chapter ever presented on Mussolini, which ends with the obvious conclusion that his entry into the Second World War was a big mistake. And if we are going to be talking about leaders whose choices made a difference, surely there should be a chapter for Victor Emmanuel II and Hirohito. There is also something shallow about a view of agency which limits itself to a handful of leaders. What about the actions of the rest of society? The history of the Japanese Socialist Party is discussed in scattershot terms, so one is never clear what is happening to it. Nor does Samuels explain why civil and democratic politics in 1920 Japan was so much weaker than in Italy. But surely it cannot just be the result of the superior cunning of a few of Japan's conservative politicians. Gender, trade unions, farmers, civil society and cultural politics are many subjects that do not get their due.

There are other problems. At times Samuels discusses fascism in both countries without explaining it or defining it. He does not provide any reason for why the 1937 Japanese elite felt the need to enter into a vicious war that it could not win. There is also a rather turgid political science jargon that makes the book less interesting to read. The one interesting passage is a discussion of Kishi Nobusuke, prime minister of Japan during the fifties and perhaps the single most important figure behind the conservative ascendancy in that country. He was also a major war criminal who barely escaped trial and Samuels argues that he was responsible for much of Japan's endemic corruption that involved American funds, industry kickbacks, fixers from the ultra-right and Yakuza (Japanese mafia) as well as, in more recent years, the Moonies. Perhaps not surprisingly, this fascist and crook, who had helped declare war on the United States in 1941, got the praise of Richard Nixon as both "a great leader of the free world" and "a loyal and great friend of the people of the United States." Unfortunately, Samuels admits that the study of political corruption is poorly developed and his assertions are somewhat speculative. A number of prominent scholars have praised this book. The reader should peruse their works instead of this one.

Rating:
Summary: Actually, kind of bland
Review: For two countries with very different languages and religions and with no real contact with each other before the 1860s, Japan and Italy have a surprisingly lot in common. Both countries moved towards modern national capitalist politics under authoritarian monarchs in the 1860s. Both sought to limit universal suffrage and modern democracy up until the First World War. Both became fascist dictatorships that launched brutal wars of aggression and allied with Nazi Germany. Both, of course, were defeated and occupied by the Americans, and in the end joined in military alliance with their former conqueror. Both were dominated by conservative parties who ruled for decades while engaging in massive corruption. Both faced political and fiscal crisis at the end of the cold war as their massive corruption was exposed in the early nineties. But there were also differences between the two. Japanese Shintoism never had the independence that Italian Catholicism did. Whereas for most of the post war period Italy had a large public sector that was poorly run and subject to corruption and patronage, Japan had a sleek private sector that in fruitful synthesis with government direction became the second leading industrial power in the world. But in the nineties Italy made heroic efforts to control its financial problems and achieve a degree of political reform with the demise of the Christian Democratic Party, while Japan was stuck in stagnation as the Liberal Democratic Party maintained its baleful hegemony.

Such are the basic facts that a comparison between the two countries provides. However Richard Samuels' recent book does not offer much more. Samuels instead spends much of the book trying to argue that leaders made a crucial difference to the history of their countries, while castigating the spectre of determinism. So we have chapters on the founders (Cavour, Ito, Yamagata), the original economic strategists, the death of liberalism (Giolitti, Hara), the leading corporatists, Mussolini, the postwar leaders (De Gasperi, Yoshida), the masters of corruption, the post-cold war left leaders, and the post-cold war right leaders. There is something ham-fisted in this attack on determinism. It is not clear that the men in question made all that much of a difference. After all, if NATO could take the trouble to include Portugal, it would almost have certainly have gone out of its way to include Italy, whatever Alcide de Gasperi did. Nor does Samuels really convince that with different leadership the two countries would have been more liberal and less corrupt. (And the discussion of Silvio Berlusconi is disappointingly brief about the many allegations of corruption that surround him). We do get perhaps the least interesting chapter ever presented on Mussolini, which ends with the obvious conclusion that his entry into the Second World War was a big mistake. And if we are going to be talking about leaders whose choices made a difference, surely there should be a chapter for Victor Emmanuel II and Hirohito. There is also something shallow about a view of agency which limits itself to a handful of leaders. What about the actions of the rest of society? The history of the Japanese Socialist Party is discussed in scattershot terms, so one is never clear what is happening to it. Nor does Samuels explain why civil and democratic politics in 1920 Japan was so much weaker than in Italy. But surely it cannot just be the result of the superior cunning of a few of Japan's conservative politicians. Gender, trade unions, farmers, civil society and cultural politics are many subjects that do not get their due.

There are other problems. At times Samuels discusses fascism in both countries without explaining it or defining it. He does not provide any reason for why the 1937 Japanese elite felt the need to enter into a vicious war that it could not win. There is also a rather turgid political science jargon that makes the book less interesting to read. The one interesting passage is a discussion of Kishi Nobusuke, prime minister of Japan during the fifties and perhaps the single most important figure behind the conservative ascendancy in that country. He was also a major war criminal who barely escaped trial and Samuels argues that he was responsible for much of Japan's endemic corruption that involved American funds, industry kickbacks, fixers from the ultra-right and Yakuza (Japanese mafia) as well as, in more recent years, the Moonies. Perhaps not surprisingly, this fascist and crook, who had helped declare war on the United States in 1941, got the praise of Richard Nixon as both "a great leader of the free world" and "a loyal and great friend of the people of the United States." Unfortunately, Samuels admits that the study of political corruption is poorly developed and his assertions are somewhat speculative. A number of prominent scholars have praised this book. The reader should peruse their works instead of this one.