Matteo Faini - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Matteo Faini

Data di pubblicazione: 15 febbraio 2017Questo articolo è pubblicato nell'ambito delle iniziat... more Data di pubblicazione: 15 febbraio 2017Questo articolo è pubblicato nell'ambito delle iniziative della sezione 'Il mondo dell'intelligence' nel sito del Sistema di informazione per la sicurezza della Repubblica (Approfondimenti)Gli strumenti più utilizzati da chi lavora per i servizi segreti non sono affatto segreti. Sono invece a disposizione di chiunque abbia la pazienza di leggersi un libro[1] o, in mancanza di tempo, anche solo un articolo. Questi strumenti non sono quelli che servono per reclutare e gestire una spia. Al riguardo conosciamo qualche principio generale, come le ragioni che solitamente spingono una persona a spiare contro il proprio gruppo di appartenenza. Ma nessuna agenzia entrerà mai nel dettaglio rivelando come comunica con i propri informatori in territorio ostile. Tuttavia, solo una piccola parte di chi lavora per un’agenzia d’intelligence si troverà mai a reclutare una spia. La maggior parte invece farà un lavoro più simile a quello di un acc...

For democratic countries, intelligence agencies are a threat and a necessity. They often provide ... more For democratic countries, intelligence agencies are a threat and a necessity. They often provide vital information for national security, but they can also engage in unauthorized activities, like attempting to remove their own government, i.e. subversion, and/or manipulating intelligence for political purposes, i.e. politicization. I develop and test a typological theory of the relationship between intelligence agencies and policy-makers in democratic countries. I answer three questions: how can intelligence agencies be controlled? When will politicization occur? When will intelligence agencies engage in subversion?

Spies and Their Masters, 2020

Intelligence and National Security, 2016

Abstract In the summer of 1964, Italian security forces and the President of the Republic attempt... more Abstract In the summer of 1964, Italian security forces and the President of the Republic attempted to remove the US-backed Italian center-left government. The attempt did not succeed, but the threat to do so was used to curtail the government’s reformist program. This article shows that the State Department and the CIA misunderstood the plans of the Italian President and security officers, dismissing the possibility of a forceful removal of the center-left, despite having a long-standing hierarchical relationship with Italian intelligence. US officials failed because of poor analytic tradecraft and because of two unintended consequences of international intelligence hierarchies: an excessive reliance on liaison over penetrations and the increased freedom of maneuver of Italian intelligence when faced with multiple, competing principals.

Intellectual History Review, 2017

Niccolò Machiavelli looks at us with an ironic smile. He escapes us, deceives us and at times eve... more Niccolò Machiavelli looks at us with an ironic smile. He escapes us, deceives us and at times even mocks us: "For some time now, I never say what I think, nor do I think what I say, and even if I tell the truth sometimes, I hide it among so many lies, that it's hard to find it again." 1 That ironic smile hides a tragic figure. Usually well hidden, it reveals itself in the moments of deepest desperation. "So if I sometimes laugh or sing,/", he wrote soon after being tortured and imprisoned, "I do it because I have just this one/ Way of giving vent to my bitter cry." 2 I want to uncover what lies at the heart of this tragedy using Machiavelli's own interpretative technique. Uncovering a complex, at times deceitful figure is a problem that Machiavelli himself faced repeatedly in his years as Florentine Secretary. Whether it was Cesare Borgia or Caterina Sforza, Machiavelli had to interpret the gestures and words of statesmen that were masters of deception. The strategy he developed to uncover these statesmen's intentions was based on the analysis of human passions, on uncovering the fundamental trait that defined a man's character. I apply Machiavelli's strategy of interpretation to Machiavelli himself. I do so by relying extensively on his letters and his comedies. Machiavelli would have envied the wide access that we have to the most private works of our subject of study. Had he had access to similarly private works by Cesare Borgia, his job as the Florentine envoy would have been much easier. Through this work of interpretation of human passions, I will uncover the irreconcilable disconnect which shapes Machiavelli's tragedy. On one hand, he relates to his objects of desire by entirely abandoning himself to them, regardless of how unachievable they are. On the other, to obtain these objects of desire his analytical mind develops strategies which take pride in their adherence to what he called the "effectual truth of the matter." 3 His incapacity to reconsider his objectives in light of the means at his disposal and his tendency to transfer all of himself into his objectives determined Machiavelli's successes and failures. He repeatedly failed when he had to set his own goals, or when he approached a problem with empathy. He succeeded when he was given precise and limited objectives and when he understood that he did not share the goals of those he was studying. The next section discusses how other scholars have struggled to understand the fundamental disconnect at the heart of Machiavelli's tragedy, focusing on the final exhortation of The Prince. The third section describes Machiavelli's interpretative strategy. The fourth section applies this strategy to his personal writings in order to understand what passions animated him, and then uses these passions to interpret some famous passages of The Prince. The fifth section looks at his political successes and failures and explains them in light of this fundamental disconnect between goals and means. The final section asks whether Machiavelli was aware of this fundamental disconnect. Looking at his comedies and at his epistolary exchanges with Francesco Guicciardini, I conclude that he was ironically self-aware. How could a realist embrace such unrealistic goals? Machiavelli most famously embraced an unrealistic goal in the concluding exhortation of The Prince. This was far from being the only time he did so, but by focusing on the interpretations of The Prince's twenty-sixth chapter I can review the literature relating to my central problem. After being kicked out of power, exiled and tortured by the Medici, why was Machiavelli appealing to the Medici themselves to liberate Italy from the barbarians? Did he think that such an enterprise was feasible? If so, why did he reach a conclusion which, by virtually all accounts, was utterly implausible? We can identify three ways in which readers of Machiavelli have reacted to this puzzle. First, many scholars simply ignored the final chapter of The Prince. As early as 1523 the Aristotelian Agostino Nifo published De Regnandi Peritia, a heavily plagiarized version of the still unpublished The Prince. Nifo transformed The Prince into a scientific treatise on all forms of government. In such a scientific treatise, there was no space for an exhortation to liberate Italy from the barbarians. The final chapter was thus excluded from Nifo's plagiarised work. 4 Those who, like Nifo, interpreted Machiavelli as the founder of a neutral science of politics, could not explain why The Prince ends the way it does. For instance, the German scholar Hermann Conring, who

Data di pubblicazione: 15 febbraio 2017Questo articolo è pubblicato nell'ambito delle iniziat... more Data di pubblicazione: 15 febbraio 2017Questo articolo è pubblicato nell'ambito delle iniziative della sezione 'Il mondo dell'intelligence' nel sito del Sistema di informazione per la sicurezza della Repubblica (Approfondimenti)Gli strumenti più utilizzati da chi lavora per i servizi segreti non sono affatto segreti. Sono invece a disposizione di chiunque abbia la pazienza di leggersi un libro[1] o, in mancanza di tempo, anche solo un articolo. Questi strumenti non sono quelli che servono per reclutare e gestire una spia. Al riguardo conosciamo qualche principio generale, come le ragioni che solitamente spingono una persona a spiare contro il proprio gruppo di appartenenza. Ma nessuna agenzia entrerà mai nel dettaglio rivelando come comunica con i propri informatori in territorio ostile. Tuttavia, solo una piccola parte di chi lavora per un’agenzia d’intelligence si troverà mai a reclutare una spia. La maggior parte invece farà un lavoro più simile a quello di un acc...

For democratic countries, intelligence agencies are a threat and a necessity. They often provide ... more For democratic countries, intelligence agencies are a threat and a necessity. They often provide vital information for national security, but they can also engage in unauthorized activities, like attempting to remove their own government, i.e. subversion, and/or manipulating intelligence for political purposes, i.e. politicization. I develop and test a typological theory of the relationship between intelligence agencies and policy-makers in democratic countries. I answer three questions: how can intelligence agencies be controlled? When will politicization occur? When will intelligence agencies engage in subversion?

Spies and Their Masters, 2020

Intelligence and National Security, 2016

Abstract In the summer of 1964, Italian security forces and the President of the Republic attempt... more Abstract In the summer of 1964, Italian security forces and the President of the Republic attempted to remove the US-backed Italian center-left government. The attempt did not succeed, but the threat to do so was used to curtail the government’s reformist program. This article shows that the State Department and the CIA misunderstood the plans of the Italian President and security officers, dismissing the possibility of a forceful removal of the center-left, despite having a long-standing hierarchical relationship with Italian intelligence. US officials failed because of poor analytic tradecraft and because of two unintended consequences of international intelligence hierarchies: an excessive reliance on liaison over penetrations and the increased freedom of maneuver of Italian intelligence when faced with multiple, competing principals.

Intellectual History Review, 2017

Niccolò Machiavelli looks at us with an ironic smile. He escapes us, deceives us and at times eve... more Niccolò Machiavelli looks at us with an ironic smile. He escapes us, deceives us and at times even mocks us: "For some time now, I never say what I think, nor do I think what I say, and even if I tell the truth sometimes, I hide it among so many lies, that it's hard to find it again." 1 That ironic smile hides a tragic figure. Usually well hidden, it reveals itself in the moments of deepest desperation. "So if I sometimes laugh or sing,/", he wrote soon after being tortured and imprisoned, "I do it because I have just this one/ Way of giving vent to my bitter cry." 2 I want to uncover what lies at the heart of this tragedy using Machiavelli's own interpretative technique. Uncovering a complex, at times deceitful figure is a problem that Machiavelli himself faced repeatedly in his years as Florentine Secretary. Whether it was Cesare Borgia or Caterina Sforza, Machiavelli had to interpret the gestures and words of statesmen that were masters of deception. The strategy he developed to uncover these statesmen's intentions was based on the analysis of human passions, on uncovering the fundamental trait that defined a man's character. I apply Machiavelli's strategy of interpretation to Machiavelli himself. I do so by relying extensively on his letters and his comedies. Machiavelli would have envied the wide access that we have to the most private works of our subject of study. Had he had access to similarly private works by Cesare Borgia, his job as the Florentine envoy would have been much easier. Through this work of interpretation of human passions, I will uncover the irreconcilable disconnect which shapes Machiavelli's tragedy. On one hand, he relates to his objects of desire by entirely abandoning himself to them, regardless of how unachievable they are. On the other, to obtain these objects of desire his analytical mind develops strategies which take pride in their adherence to what he called the "effectual truth of the matter." 3 His incapacity to reconsider his objectives in light of the means at his disposal and his tendency to transfer all of himself into his objectives determined Machiavelli's successes and failures. He repeatedly failed when he had to set his own goals, or when he approached a problem with empathy. He succeeded when he was given precise and limited objectives and when he understood that he did not share the goals of those he was studying. The next section discusses how other scholars have struggled to understand the fundamental disconnect at the heart of Machiavelli's tragedy, focusing on the final exhortation of The Prince. The third section describes Machiavelli's interpretative strategy. The fourth section applies this strategy to his personal writings in order to understand what passions animated him, and then uses these passions to interpret some famous passages of The Prince. The fifth section looks at his political successes and failures and explains them in light of this fundamental disconnect between goals and means. The final section asks whether Machiavelli was aware of this fundamental disconnect. Looking at his comedies and at his epistolary exchanges with Francesco Guicciardini, I conclude that he was ironically self-aware. How could a realist embrace such unrealistic goals? Machiavelli most famously embraced an unrealistic goal in the concluding exhortation of The Prince. This was far from being the only time he did so, but by focusing on the interpretations of The Prince's twenty-sixth chapter I can review the literature relating to my central problem. After being kicked out of power, exiled and tortured by the Medici, why was Machiavelli appealing to the Medici themselves to liberate Italy from the barbarians? Did he think that such an enterprise was feasible? If so, why did he reach a conclusion which, by virtually all accounts, was utterly implausible? We can identify three ways in which readers of Machiavelli have reacted to this puzzle. First, many scholars simply ignored the final chapter of The Prince. As early as 1523 the Aristotelian Agostino Nifo published De Regnandi Peritia, a heavily plagiarized version of the still unpublished The Prince. Nifo transformed The Prince into a scientific treatise on all forms of government. In such a scientific treatise, there was no space for an exhortation to liberate Italy from the barbarians. The final chapter was thus excluded from Nifo's plagiarised work. 4 Those who, like Nifo, interpreted Machiavelli as the founder of a neutral science of politics, could not explain why The Prince ends the way it does. For instance, the German scholar Hermann Conring, who