On June 18, the field of comparative democratic studies lost one of its most prolific and influential scholars: the great Italian political scientist Leonardo Morlino. An avid and agile intellectual, he was equally at home in analyzing democracy from theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives, arguing in his writing and teaching for the importance of each.
He was a seminal figure in the development of modern Italian political science, including as cofounder and later editor (1977–91) of its flagship journal, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica; dean of the Faculty of Political Science and vice-rector for research at the University of Florence, where he taught for 35 years (1971–2006); vice-rector for research and cofounder of the School of Government at LUISS University in Rome (where he also chaired the Research Center on Democracy); and president of the Italian Political Science Association (SISP, 1998–2001).
His intense and wide-ranging interest in comparative democratic development brought him into frequent interaction with institutions and scholars throughout Europe, Latin America, and the United States, including visiting fellowships at Stanford University, Oxford University, the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris, and the Juan March Institute in Madrid. His intellectual distinction and catalytic role in global scholarly collaborations were recognized with his election as vice-president (2006–2009) and then president (2009–12) of the International Political Science Association. He also served for many years as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and other international journals, and he was coeditor of the eight-volume International Encyclopedia of Political Science, published in 2011.
Morlino was author, editor, or coeditor of more than forty books and 230 articles and book chapters on such themes as democratic transition, consolidation, and crisis; parties and party systems; the quality of democracy; hybrid regimes; and the impact of inequality, political institutions, and international factors on democracy. Much of his work was translated into multiple languages.
Among his many groundbreaking works was his development of a framework for assessing the quality of democracy, built around three dimensions: procedures (such as competition, participation, accountability, and rule of law); substance (freedom and equality); and results (responsiveness). Much of this conceptual work he did during his year as Bechtel Visiting Professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (2002–2003).
With Journal of Democracy coeditor Larry Diamond he organized at Stanford a conference that elaborated and refined the ways in which key elements of democratic quality are understood. Their conceptual essay and several others from the project were published in the October 2004 issue of the Journal of Democracy, and the book they edited together, Assessing the Quality of Democracy, was published in 2005 by Johns Hopkins University Press. The volume included paired comparisons of democratic quality from each of six regions of the world.
Like much of his work, whether written alone or with others, this project and his other writings on democratic quality featured his enduring normative and intellectual concern for democracy as ordinary citizens experience it, and thus for the factors that make democracies more accountable, participatory, law-abiding, rights-respecting, just, and responsive — or, in other words, better. He believed that these dimensions of democratic quality were not only worth improving in themselves, but would be of great practical importance in sustaining democracy.
Throughout a scholarly career that ran from the earning of his doctorate as a 23-year-old to his death just ten days shy of his seventy-eighth birthday, Morlino was heavily preoccupied with processes of political change. While he devoted considerable theoretical and comparative attention to the structure of institutions, it was questions of political change that most animated him: How does democracy come to replace authoritarianism? How do shallow or lower-quality democracies become deeper? How does the “installation” phase just after transition shape democratic institutions? How do democracies decay and break down? Why do some countries rise from abject dictatorship to a “hybrid” type of regime, while others descend from authentic democracy toward “hybridness,” or persist in that state? He also theorized and researched democratic consolidation as a process by which democracy developed deep normative roots of legitimacy and became “anchored” in distinctive political (e.g., party) or societal institutions.
Morlino saw political crises as periods when the democratic system became “de-anchored” from the institutions, interests, and incentives that had bolstered it in the consolidation phase. His intellectual openness to the possibility of consolidated democracies becoming destabilized or “de-anchored” due to major social, economic, or international changes gave his work some immunity from the currently fashionable criticism that theories of democratic consolidation are vacuous and untenable because they are teleological — only pointing in a single direction of progress and stability. Much of his thinking about these issues was brought together in his 2011 book for Oxford University Press, Changes for Democracy: Actors, Structures, Processes.
Morlino’s death occasioned a wave of tributes from former students, colleagues, and collaborators. They praised not only his voluminous contributions to the study of democracy (and political science more generally), but also his extraordinary record of professional service and leadership in organizing collaborations, strengthening professional associations, and fostering academic networks across national and regional boundaries. Many remembrances have spoken movingly of his generosity, collegiality, personal warmth, and commitment to students and younger scholars.
In a tribute for the Italian Political Science Association, Manuel Anselmi of the University of Bergamo wrote,
Leonardo Morlino was one of those scholars whose presence, even sporadic, could profoundly change a young researcher’s way of thinking, directing him toward fundamental questions. He loved working in a team, reasoning together, and engaging in open-minded debate, always calmly and with an old-fashioned grace. His analytical style and precise, clear language revealed the Enlightenment and reformist roots of this thought. This was coupled with a profound sensitivity to social issues.
The Journal of Democracy mourns his loss.
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