Political Realism and Liberal Thought: Pareto's Letters to Liberty and The Parliamentary Regime

History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes sometimes. In America today it’s protectionism, tariffs, trade wars, crony capitalism, a ruling elite, and militarism—a primrose path. It was much the same in late 19th-century Italy. The new book, Political Realism and Liberal Thought: Letters to Liberty and the Parliamentary Regime, provides a fascinating picture of the corruption of Italy’s parliament in the late 1880s and details how the classical liberal economist Vilfredo Pareto (...