Carlo Cattaneo was a leading public intellectual in nineteenth-century Italy, contributing groundbreaking work in political and social theory, economics, and public policy, and yet his theoretical contribution is barely noticed in the English-speaking world. Risorgimento specialists are aware of his contribution, and often lament the fact that his work is not better known. Political and social theorists, however, have shown little inclination to engage constructively with the range of his work. Filippo Sabetti's very welcome book seeks to restore Cattaneo to his rightful place in European intellectual history. He has worked painstakingly through Cattaneo's lifework (a formidable task in itself, embracing as it does so many subdisciplines in the modern social sciences) with a view to presenting a balanced account of his overall position. Civilization and Self-Government stands alone in English; and even in relation to a much more extensive literature in Italian, Sabetti's approach is distinctive, focusing on the lasting value of Cattaneo's theoretical work, rather than his role in the developing politics of his day.

Cattaneo's work, it must be said, presents acute problems even for his most sympathetic readers. He never produced a monograph or treatise that tied together the varied facets of his work. It is customary to describe him as a polymath, suggesting by implication that he evades systematic treatment. He specialized, very much in the modern style, in the journal article or essay, often making far-reaching suggestions in what amounted to extended book reviews. He was also an innovative editor, spreading his efforts across a range of disciplines in order to bring the best European work to the attention of Italian readers.

Much of Cattaneo's work was also a contribution to the dramatic political events of his day. His writings on the 1848 revolutions remain among the most penetrating analyses that have come down to us. He was aware that he had spread himself so widely that his readers might well miss the systematic background ideas that informed his different positions.

Most commentators have concentrated on Cattaneo's contribution to specific fields or episodes. Sabetti, however, tries to present the ideas systematically, effectively providing the book that Cattaneo recognized that he owed his readers. Presenting (what might initially appear to be) occasional pieces systematically is fraught with methodological hazards. Yet Sabetti is a sure guide. He is thoroughly versed in every aspect of Cattaneo's thought. Where he draws connections between Cattaneo's diverse writings, he is very largely successful. In highlighting systematic connection in Cattaneo's work, he does not distort the original context of debate or argument. Sabetti really has supplied a missing link in Cattaneo's original work.

Sabetti's focus throughout is on Cattaneo's account of action and engagement in a variety of different contexts. Individuals, in this view, are the source of energy and initiative; but the success of their projects depends upon complex forms of cooperation that are easily missed if attention is focused excessively on abstract ideological accounts of political and social interdependence. What individuals are able to do is a function of their understanding of complex situations. Sabetti highlights the fusion of traditional practices with analytical assessment of the most effective means of achieving objectives as the necessary condition of cooperative adaptation to changing circumstances.

Cattaneo is certainly deeply suspicious of solutions devised in distant capitals and handed down by legislative fiat. Centralized planning is notoriously insensitive to indirect effects that occur in unforeseen circumstances. By the time anomalous consequences are reported back to the center, a new situation may well have arisen that planners will simply miss. One of Cattaneo's most revealing examples is the successive generations of reform at the micro level that transformed the Po Valley in the medieval period. Without central direction or control, local communities had to “adjust, over time, the rules and arrangements for land and water uses,” with contingency plans in place involving authoritative roles for the management of problems and crises (p. 209). Lombardy, in this view, is an “artificial” achievement in the literal sense, dependent upon microcooperation for the maintenance of a precarious prosperity.

In relation to economic policy, too, Cattaneo is an advocate of open markets as radically devolved systems of decision making. Typically, however, he applies market analysis pragmatically. Where public goods cannot be achieved effectively through market mechanisms, he is prepared to adapt the institutional context in order to facilitate the achievement of public goals. Education was a key for him in this context. Uneducated and ill-informed workers are not effective players in the game of social cooperation, and they cannot educate themselves. Public and private means must be devoted to the provision of goods such as education, transport, and health, all focused on improving the effectiveness of social and economic cooperation on a series of fronts. Workers should be encouraged, too, to work together collectively in the pursuit of sectional interests, for otherwise they would be passive victims rather than active players in social and economic life. Recognizing the value of markets did not commit Cattaneo to the defense of a minimal state. What he sought was political means to advance the effectiveness of markets in shifting situations.

Throughout his career, Cattaneo was a fierce critic of the standard unitary model of the state. He could see no great advantage in exchanging one form of unitary state for another. He had taken on board, along with many liberals of his generation, the negative lesson of Jacobin experience in the French Revolution. Centralized government, by its very nature, is likely to appear dictatorial in its impact, no matter how doctrinally opposed to tyranny a particular government might be. Cattaneo always favored a federal form of state as the political order most likely to secure scope for individual initiative at the local level, although, as Sabetti makes clear, he was never entirely clear about the constitutive features of a federal state. His position is best seen as a defense of subsidiarity, securing decision making at the lowest effective level, though he nowhere uses the term.

Characterizing Cattaneo's position in abstract terms is inherently problematic. Sabetti presents him as a liberal republican who seeks to maximize scope for local initiative. He can properly be described as a democrat, at a time when liberals were wary of the term, provided a given democratic regime is sufficiently sensitive to the need to secure adaptive schemes of social cooperation at the local level. The focus in Cattaneo is on civil society rather than state, with specific emphasis on a vibrant public culture in the broadest sense. Sabetti sees genuine affinities with what he describes as the Indiana school of public policy analysis. The suggestion requires further comparative analysis. At the very least, it will help to introduce Cattaneo to a new set of readers.

In sum, Civilization and Self-Government is an impressive achievement. As political theorists, we no longer have an excuse to postpone serious study of Cattaneo. Sabetti has provided us with a first-rate guide to a European thinker of great stature.