Luigi Einaudi produced an extensive series of writings dedicated to European federation spanning from 1897 to 1959. In these works, he designs the policies and the institutions of European federation, anticipating the future developments of the European integration process. Several of his proposals are now embedded in the various treaties which have landmarked the history of uniting Europe. However, a number of other proposals have yet to be realised, and could represent a source of inspiration in designing the future of the EU. Einaudi is shown here to be the architect of what we call today the European Union, however no historian, economist or politician has previously recognised the fundamental role of Einaudi. This lack of recognition can be extended to Eurotower bankers, whose unconventional monetary policy has drawn so much from Einaudi’s theory of financial stability.

This is a selective and innovative biography of Luigi Einaudi, the most outstanding scientific and political Italian personality of the first sixty decades of the 20th century. This biography highlights some lesser-known and largely unrecognized, original contributions to theories and policies that were developed and applied even many years after his death. His European writings span more than sixty-two years (1987-1959), and his proposals for a European federation have inspired 30% of the articles of the Treaty on the functioning of the EU. As a thinker, he inspired Jean Monnet, and as President of Italy, he influenced, discretely but substantially, the Italian government’s stance on the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty. Today’s “forward guidance” of the European Central Bank (ECB) is quite similar to the way he enforced his monetary policy action in 1947, after becoming governor of the Bank of Italy in 1945. Even the “unconventional” monetary policy of the ECB has clear Einaudian bases. He posited the bases of the so-called “social market economy”, as well as the ‘time inconsistency’ theory and the section of migration theory that placed emphasis on pull factors.

This book discusses the 2450 year-long journey of the evolution of human rights, beginning from their earliest manifestation through Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone (442 BCE). It then moves on to look at the relationship between human rights and the likes of Cicero and Jesus, Erasmus and the intellectuals of the Enlightenment, before considering the very roots of the idea of Europe, which goes back to the liberal and federalist thought of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book concludes with the Charter of the EU Fundamental Rights becoming legally binding for Member States in Lisbon in 2009. While inquiring into the origins of European shared values, it assesses their compatibility with a non-European culture and religion such as Islam.

Standard histories of European integration emphasize the immediate aftermath of World War II as the moment when the seeds of the European Union were first sown. However, the interwar years witnessed a flurry of concern with the reconstruction of the world order, generating arguments that cut across the different social sciences, then plunged in a period of disciplinary soul-searching and feverish activism. Economics was no exception: several of the most prominent interwar economists, such as F. A. Hayek, Jan Tinbergen, Lionel Robbins, François Perroux, J. M. Keynes and Robert Triffin, contributed directly to larger public discussions on peace, order and stability. This edited volume combines these different strands of historical narrative into a unified framework, showing how political economy was integral to the interwar literature on international relations and, conversely, how economists were eager to incorporate international politics into their own concerns. The book brings together a group of scholars with varied disciplinary backgrounds, whose combined perspectives allow us to explore three analytical layers. The first part studies how different forms of economic knowledge, from economic programming to international finance, were used in the quest for a stable European order. The second part focuses on the existence of conflicting expectations about the role of social scientific knowledge, either as a source of technical solutions or as an input for enlightened public discussion. The third part illustrates how certain ideas and beliefs found concrete expression in specific institutional settings, which amplified their political leverage. The three parts are enclosed by an introductory essay, laying out the broad topics explored in the volume, and a substantial postscript tying all the historical threads together.

This book, the first of two volumes, explores the impact of Jesús Huerta de Soto and his role in the modern revival of the Austrian School of Economics. The chapters focusing on monetary economics, business cycle theory, and entrepreneurship, combine established ideas with novel topics to explore the new directions forged by Huerta de Soto’s ideas. This approach presents Huerta de Soto’s influence on modern economics. It also outlines his current research paradigm. This book aims to highlight and build upon the intellectual legacy of Jesús Huerta de Soto through its contribution to the Austrian School of Economics. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in monetary policy and Austrian economics.

This edited volume explores the relationship between constitutionalism and populism in the Italian context. Italian populism is of interest to comparative lawyers for many reasons. Firstly, the country has a long-lasting tradition of anti-parliamentarism over the course of its history as a unitary state. After the 2018 general election, it has turned into the first European country in which two self-styled populist parties formed a coalition government. Although it collapsed in August 2019, many issues that it had raised remain. Secondly, as Italy is a founding member of the European Communities, the constitutional implications of populist politics have to be considered not only within the national framework but also in a wider context. This book argues that the relationship between populism and constitutionalism should not be seen in terms of mutual exclusion and perfect opposition. Indeed, populism frequently relies on concepts and categories belonging to the language of constitutionalism (majority, democracy, people), offering a kind of constitutional counter-narrative.