This book collects 15 essays exploring the Italian political tradition from Beccaria to Bobbio. Particular attention is paid to the ways these theorists linked social with political theory on the one hand, and politics with ethics on the other, and to the influence of these links on their differing conceptions of the state and democracy. All shared a neo-Machiavellian concern with the divide separating their political ideals and the realities of everyday politics, and devised diverse strategies for bridging the gap between them. As a result, they developed distinctively Italian understandings of liberalism, Marxism and socialism, shaped by a realist approach to politics. Among the thinkers discussed are Cesare Beccaria, Antonio Genovesi, Benedetto Croce, Guido de Ruggiero, Antonio Gramsci, Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca and Norberto Bobbio.