Sergio Fabbrini

Background

Fabbrini was born in Pesaro. He did his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Trento, Italy. Starting his university studies in 1969, he took the four years degree in Sociology in 1973, graduating with laude with a dissertation on the role of the state in Italian post-second world war economic miracle. Because there was not yet a doctoral program in Italy in the 1970s, he got a three years scholarship (1974–1977), equivalent to a Ph.D. program, for specializing in political economy. His research concerned the place of the state and politics in the theories of classical political economists, thus published in the 1977 dissertation on “Thinking Over the Theory of Value of Classical Political Economists”.

He then got the equivalent of a four years post-doc fellowship (1977–1981) to investigate “The political economy of the welfare state”, researching at the Department of Economics, Cambridge University, United Kingdom and Department of Economics at Trento University. In the beginning of the 1980s, thanks to a NATO Fellowship and an Italian CNR Scholarship, he researched for three years at the University of California at Riverside and Berkeley. Since the beginning of the 1990s he has taught periodically at the University of California at Berkeley, Department of Political Science and Institute of Governmental Studies.

Scholarly contributions

He has published fifteen books, two co-authored books and fourteen edited or co-edited books or journals’ special issues, and more than two hundred scientific articles and essays in seven languages in comparative and European government and politics, American government and politics, international relations and foreign policy, Italian government and politics, and political theory. According to a review in 2010:

In books and articles over the last decade, Italian political scientist Sergio Fabbrini has been scrambling to understand [the] recent ebb and flow in transatlantic relations. Anti-Americanism in Europe and anti-Europeanism in the United States, Fabbrini argues in America and Its Critics, have challenged the viability of NATO and, prior to Obama’s election, called into question the ability to cooperate on global concerns from terrorism to global warming. At the same time, however, Fabbrini has devoted several articles and an entire book, Compound Democracies, to the thesis that the United States and Europe are converging at an institutional level as examples of what he calls “compound democracies.” Over the long term, in other words, the two political systems are becoming more alike even as the politicians themselves, in the short term, articulate a different set of political values.

Regarding his main recent contributions: (1) he brought the analysis of the European Union (EU) back to the comparative framework; (2) he showed that the EU cannot be analyzed with the categories utilized for nation states; (3) he developed a more comprehensive distinction between national democracies on the basis of their functional logic and institutional structure; (4) he elaborated the original model of ‘compound democracy’ for explaining the functioning logic and the institutional structure of democratic unions of states (as the EU, but also the United States and Switzerland), thus distinguishing between unions of states and nation states; (5) he defined an unprecedented model for understanding political leadership in contemporary governmental systems.

Teaching

He was Jemolo Fellow at the Nuffield College, Oxford University. He was Jean Monnet Chair Professor at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, European University Institute in Florence and Visiting Professor in the Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute in Florence. He was Fulbright Assistant Professor at Harvard University in 1987-1988. He lectured, among others, in Canada (Carlton University), in Mexico (El Colegio de México, Mexico City), in Argentina (University of Buenos Aires and Universitad Abierta Interamericana), in Ecuador (Quito Simon Bolivar University), in China (Nanjing University), in Japan (Osaka University, Tokyo Imperial University and Sapporo University), in Thailand (Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok), in the Philippines (University of Philippines-Diliman, Manila) and in several US and European universities. At the LUISS School of Government he is the director of the Master in International Public Affairs, while teaching in other graduate courses offered by the School.

Recognition

He won the 2011 “Capalbio Prize for Europe”, the 2009 “Filippo Burzio Prize for the Political Sciences” and the 2006 “Amalfi European Prize for the Social Sciences”. He was awarded an honorary professorship by the Universidad Interamericana of Buenos Aires (Argentina). He was the Editor of the 9-volumes series on “The Institutions of Contemporary Democracies” for the Italian publisher G. Laterza. He is a referee for academic journals such as “American Political Science Review”, “Comparative Political Studies”, “Perspective on Politics”, “Political Behavior”, “European Journal of Political Research”, “West European Politics” and “European Political Science”. He was member of the Steering Committee of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Standing Group on European Union. He is currently a member of the executive board of the IPSA (International Political Science Association), Research Committee on "European Unification". He is member of several academic associations and organizations.

Personal life

Married with Manuela Cescatti, they have two sons. He practiced different sports. In the 1960s, he sailed with the ‘Flying Dutchman’ for the pre-Olympic games; in the 1970s and 1980s he played soccer and basketball with the university teams; in the 1990s he started skiing to attract his wife; in the 2000s, he went to cycling to teach his sons; in 2008 he challenged them to run the New York Marathon (that they did in three hours while he did it in less than five hours).>

In English and Spanish

In Italian