I

What could be timelier than a forum on Caesarism?Footnote ¹ Had this collection of articles been published only a few years earlier, I would have introduced the topic quite differently. Recently, Caesarism has become the keyword of US (and therefore, to a certain extent, global) politics, being used to explain both internal and external political–ideological dynamics.Footnote ² As such, Caesarism is increasingly replacing that much-used (and abused) concept of recent years: populism. Only time will tell whether it will be a permanent or temporary replacement, or whether another type of conceptual relationship (possibly a symbiotic one) will develop.

As with populism, current debates on Caesarism are not immune from confused and confusing statements. With few exceptions,Footnote ³ contemporary discussion shows a distinct lack of historical awareness as well as a problematic flattening of the concept. If disarray reigns at the lay level, even scholars may struggle to define Caesarism with precision.Footnote ⁴ Without judging contemporary political discourse and its merits, and, equally, with no ambition to resolve once and for all the scholarly definition of Caesarism, I believe nonetheless that this forum can provide food for thought.

In this perspective, I would borrow and adapt from the research on populism an approach that, while being to a certain extent controversial, has been effective in establishing a point of departure for scholarly debate; that is, the posing of a “minimal definition” of the concept that can be supplemented and expanded.Footnote ⁵ At bottom, Caesarism is a system of government in which the figure of the leader towers. Such a leader cannot be a king: the power of Caesarist leaders, even when they make themselves emperors, remains rooted in a different type of legitimacy from that which underpins monarchical regimes. Following Melvin Richter, we can maintain that Caesarism is, in its very essence, modern and postrevolutionary, thus posing also a clear terminus post quem for its occurrence.Footnote ⁶

Such a minimal definition, while providing a common ground for the contributions to this forum, leaves ample room for further investigation of historically specific expressions of the phenomenon. Since it cuts across the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries and occurs in different geographical settings, Caesarism exhibits considerable variety. The changeability surrounding the category, notwithstanding its conceptual core as defined above, explains the terminological oscillations that can be found in the scholarly research on the topic, as the present forum demonstrates. Often combined with Bonapartism, albeit not fully overlapping with it,Footnote ⁷ Caesarism is frequently paired with Napoleonism as well. More generally, Caesarism can be associated or compared with other concepts belonging to the same “semantic family,”Footnote ⁸ such as dictatorship, totalitarianism, or even fascism.Footnote ⁹

This conceptual expansiveness must also be explained through a further specific feature of Caesarism, namely its double nature as both a political and a historiographical concept. This is to say that Caesarism may be either a category that is invoked by historical actors, with reference to contemporary events or transformations, or a category that is imposed retrospectively by external, subsequent observers. In this forum, the category of Caesarism operates in this twofold fashion. While the latter case applies mostly to scholarly analyses,Footnote ¹⁰ multiple historical layers may also be present in contemporary interpretations, especially when (pseudo-)historiographical considerations are embedded in politico-theoretical arguments.

Further qualifications might be added, but for now my central claim is that Caesarism is a much richer political and philosophical phenomenon than is customarily assumed. Indeed, this provides the basic rationale for this forum. The articles which comprise it differ from one another both in their historical focus and their thematic approach. Taken together, they offer a multivocal and opportune scholarly debate on Caesarism, either shedding light on neglected or under-investigated aspects or profitably reassessing the concept in already investigated scenarios.

II

But let’s proceed with order. Our first shared argument is that, in order to revisit Caesarism, it is necessary to focus on some brief considerations concerning its historical and theoretical fortune while also concentrating on the history of the studies dedicated to it.

The first scholarly works on Caesarism and Bonapartism date back to the aftermath of the exclusion of the two terms from day-to-day political discourse, particularly during the 1940s, when they were displaced by the ascendant category of “totalitarianism.”Footnote ¹¹ The two concepts then resurfaced in the research panorama of the 1970s and 1980s, frequently under the influence of the Marxist paradigm, along with the distortions that this perspective often brought with it.Footnote ¹² From the 1990s onward, interest in Caesarism and Bonapartism rapidly and dramatically collapsed, with only a few scholars continuing to pay attention to them.Footnote ¹³ In recent years, a new generation of scholars has returned to the history of Caesarism, analyzing it from different points of view as well as revisiting “old” themes with up-to-date approaches. These studies have reassessed numerous historical and theoretical issues connected to Caesarism, significantly expanding the field of inquiry in terms of authors, contexts, and geographical boundaries.Footnote ¹⁴ Moreover, recent academic gatherings on both sides of the Atlantic testify to the growing appeal of these concepts.Footnote ¹⁵

III

Relying on but also departing from the previous literature, this forum provides a showcase for new research while encouraging collective reflection on the future of Caesarism studies. Although arising from autonomous pieces of research, the articles establish novel and exciting trajectories that might be profitably developed.

The articles presented here achieve these goals thanks to two main features. The first one is the focus on the modern era and, more specifically, on the late nineteenth century and the twentieth, these being the “golden age” of the category, in terms both of the frequency of its usages and of its conceptual significance. This is not to dismiss the historical framework within which the term “Caesarism” was coined, nor its specific background, nor the (analogical) connection between Caesarism and previous historical scenarios and categories describing authoritarian phenomena, but rather to underscore the close linkage between Caesarism and political modernity. If the genesis of the concept of Caesarism corresponds to the early nineteenth-century transformation in the politico-philosophical reflection on legitimacy, it is with the later politicization of the masses as a point of no return that Caesarism gains its more specific and original features. The Caesarist model brings together seemingly discordant phenomena, incorporating the contradictions of modern politics: on the one hand, the trend towards a broadening of political participation, with the “myth” (in a Sorelian sense) of universal suffrage; on the other, the increasingly antidemocratic attitude of the ruling classes and the dangerous appeal of the charismatic strongman. The majority of the articles collected in the forum explore precisely these dynamics, also showing indirectly the relevance of Caesarism for contemporary politics, in which such contradictions are still at play.Footnote ¹⁶

The second distinguishing feature of the articles consists in their approach to the topic. In line with current methodologies within intellectual history,Footnote ¹⁷ they do not focus exclusively on the opinions of great political thinkers; rather, they reconstruct the broader contexts in which the debates on Caesarism arose and developed. Concretely, this means that less-known authors and little-studied sources are put into dialogue with the “higher” intellectual developments of the time. Great attention is paid not only to politics but also to the cultural, social, economic, and even emotional elements that characterized each epoch—this is particularly necessary considering the profoundly ideological character of Caesarism and the countless “vulgar” uses of the concept, which sometimes can be better understood on the basis of the evaluation of historical circumstances rather than on an abstract politico-theoretical level.Footnote ¹⁸

A theme that cuts across many of the contributions is that of the relation between Caesarism and similar concepts—first of all its closest relative, Bonapartism, but not only. Understanding the novelty of the category of Caesarism implies an explanation of what distinguishes it from other concepts describing authoritarian regimes. Why did an author choose to describe something as “Caesarist”? Which positive or negative connotations were embedded in this definition? And further, was this label connected to a change in the habits or in the conditions of political practice?

These synchronic observations are combined with the diachronic study of Caesarism’s development. By and large, the latter covers a time span going from the 1850s to the 1950s, detailing its rapid rise and its equally rapid decline. But what were Caesarism’s internal turning points? What were the historical–political events that triggered its shifting applications? To address these questions entails taking into consideration regionally different political “temporalities,” as well as their dynamic interactions.

Another crucial theme of our undertaking concerns the role of analogy as a tool of interpretation of the past and its very political power.Footnote ¹⁹ In modern times, the comparison between past and present has been crucial since at least the French Revolution, with the Jacobins relying heavily on Roman precedents and Napoleon skillfully exploiting the myths of past conquerors for his own propaganda (the so-called “Great Parallel”).Footnote ²⁰ To a certain extent, Caesarism represents the highest point of this form of reasoning: there are no other political categories that draw so extensively on historical comparisons—analogy is Caesarism’s very essence. This observation, in turn, opens up the way for two series of questions. The first is directly related to the history of Caesarism. One may wonder, for instance, why exactly historical comparisons acquired such a foundational relevance, or what precise meaning the figure of Caesar took on.Footnote ²¹

The second set of questions is more general and relates to the usage of analogies as such. Caesarism constitutes a privileged standpoint from which to reflect on the role of feelings and emotions in politics, both on the side of leaders and on that of the people. Since historical comparisons do not rely on analytical reasoning but derive their strength from the charm of the past, they function, above all, emotionally and not rationally (Caesarism is indeed often a rhetorical and emotionally charged concept, designed to act upon the emotions of readers and audiences in specific ways).

Moreover, this enables us to consider a spectrum of theoretical aspects connected to the Caesarist–Bonapartist model. In what follows, I would like to briefly focus on two of them: legitimacy on the one hand, and charisma and the personalization of politics on the other (this latter being in turn conducive to the study of the relationship between the state and civil society).

The first and broader issue brings us back to the origins of the category of Caesarism and to the circumstances that made possible the re-foundation of political power after the rejection of monarchical and divine forms of legitimization. On this basis, subsequent conceptualizations fostered the elaboration of a new political tool kit whose declared goal was the expression of the people’s will, in a precarious balance between exploitation and respect, suppression and empowerment. In this regard, Caesarism found itself at the crossroads of different tendencies, both progressive (e.g. the expansion of the franchise) and regressive (e.g. the necessity of controlling the populace). The questions the contributors face in this respect are, among others, the following:Footnote ²² what specific contributions did Caesarism make to the development of the idea of the people’s sovereignty? What kind of institutional architecture fulfilled the needs of Caesarist politics? How was Caesarism related to the mass dimension of (nineteenth- and) twentieth-century politics?

The counterpart of these inquiries is a stress on leadership as a key element of the Caesarist solution.Footnote ²³ As David A. Bell has demonstrated, charisma is an essential feature of modernity, and carries with it a “sentimentalization” of politics whose consequences are still visible today.Footnote ²⁴ The concept of Caesarism fits very well in this scheme and represents, mutatis mutandis, the elaboration of this modern tendency at the level of political theory. In particular, dealing with the personalization of politics from the standpoint of Caesarism implies, among other things, a reflection on issues such as the impact of individual leadership on party organization, the relationship between the charismatic leader and the state as well as institutions such as the army or the bureaucratic apparatus of a nation, the process of selection of leadership, and, last but not least, the sociological and even psychological mechanisms that regulate the relationship between the leader and the masses. Connected to these themes are observations on the interplay of state and civil society that underpin any understanding of Caesarism—Caesarism may be conceived as the manifestation of the change in the way in which power is exercised, with politics increasingly interfering with citizens’ private lives (and anticipating, to a significant degree, “totalitarian” dynamics).

IV

As already mentioned, the forum does not pretend to exhaust all of these questions or to address them in equal depth (some remain on the margins out of necessity). Rather, it puts forward a series of new approaches to examining Caesarism, in order to stimulate further scholarly debate, including beyond the boundaries of intellectual history strictly conceived. In this regard, it is meaningful that the forum brings together contributions both by established scholars as well as younger academics, and by researchers stemming from contiguous but nevertheless formally distinct research fields—from contemporary history to the history of political thought and anglophone studies.

To conclude, I would like to turn to a succinct overview of the contributions that follow. Instead of describing the content of the individual pieces (a purpose that their abstracts serve exhaustively), I will now make some general observations on them.

The forum consists of six articles focusing on different geographical and chronological frameworks. In particular, two strands can be identified: the first is represented by the writings by Cesare Cuttica and Alexander Jordan on Victorian Britain, and the second by those by myself and Laura Cerasi, dealing with early twentieth-century Italy. In this perspective, the texts by Michels Broers (on eighteenth-century France) and by Jan-Werner Müller (which, while discussing chiefly nineteenth-century France, has a broader scope, both contextually and temporally) work as a premise and an “interlude” between them, respectively. While taking their cue from a comparable historical background, the aforementioned scholars have succeeded in approaching Caesarism from complementary points of view. As a result, Caesarism emerges clearly as a major protagonist of European political discourse across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Footnote ²⁵

More specifically, far from providing a comprehensive account of Caesarism, the chief goal of the collection is to cast light on exemplary instances and under-investigated frameworks. With the (partial) exception of revolutionary and postrevolutionary France,Footnote ²⁶ the other contexts investigated are indeed scarcely attended to in the secondary literature on Caesarism. Both Britain and Italy historically remained at the margins of the research on Caesarism, which is mostly focused on France (for obvious reasons) and Germany (with Bismarckism often being compared, or even equated, to Caesarism). Moreover, even when scholars investigated Italian or British authors, the focus was quite different.Footnote ²⁷ If we add this consideration to the fact that the thinkers at stake here are mainly minor and the documents analyzed are, in many cases, mentioned for the very first time, the originality of this collection of articles clearly stands out.

Ultimately, whether it is Pareto, mass culture, the Roman legacy, the actual usage of the term, or buildings, the strength of this forum resides in analyzing Caesarism (either through thinkers, material culture, or theoretical perspectives) in unexplored manners. Rather than a point of arrival, the hope is that these essays will become the starting point for a reinvigorated scholarly debate on Caesarism, prompting further research in other geographical areas and historical contexts, with an eye also for the new contemporary relevance of the category.