Istituzioni, élites e civiltà. La scienza politica di Samuel P. Huntington

Institutions, élites and civilizations. Samuel P. Huntington’s political science. The aim of this essay is to trace a genealogy of the «clash of civilizations» theory in the intellectual itinerary of Samuel P. Huntington, one of the most influential American political scientists. Since the publication of a landmark 1993 «Foreign Affairs» article, followed in 1996 by the book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Huntington’s «clash of civilizations» thesis seemed to offer a new paradigm of world politics, but it was often misinterpreted. Neither he did intend to recommend Western imperialist wars against «other civilizations», nor he conceived cultures and civilizations in essentialist terms (he explicitly sided with the critique of «Orientalism»), rather as built identities, not so different from Benedict Anderson’s «imagined communities». Writing from a critical perspective on popular mobilization, Huntington regarded the civilizations discourse mainly as a powerful instrument in the hands of political élites.