Curriculum vitae et studiorum

Luigi V. Majocchi was born in Vigevano (Italy) on the 11th of October 1937. Alumnus of the Collegio Ghislieri, he studied at the Law School of Pavia University where he graduated in 1959 and received the highest mark (110/110 cum laude). In his thesis, entitled “The U.S. Supreme Court procedural due process of law doctrine. A historical approach”, he aimed at identifying the theoretical connection between rule of law and federal government, on the one hand, and Raison d’Etat, on the other, through the study of the U.S. insular position and its crisis along with in­creasing U.S. involvement in World affairs. The central issue was McCarthyism. This thesis won the first prize offered, in October 1961 by the Italian-American Association, to the best work in the field of  American History. His interest in federalism originated in the Pavia campus where he met both Altiero Spinelli, who led him to striving for federalism and European unity, and  Mario Al­bertini who introduced him into the deepest aspects of the federalist culture.

During the academic year 1962-63, thanks to a Fulbright scholarship, he was a special student at  Harvard University where he did graduate level work at the Dept. of Government with professors A. Sutherland, R. Mc Closky, R. Bowie, C. Friedrich (all of them former members of the Comité d’Etudes pour la Constitution européenne which prepared papers on behalf of the Ad Hoc Assem­bly) and H. Kissinger.

From June 12th 1961 he worked with Professor B. Leoni as Assistant Professor of Theory of the State in the Faculty of  Political Science at Pavia University, a faculty which he left three years later when Professor Leoni died and he could no longer stand the feudal habits still present in the Italian academic milieu. He ran for a chair  on General History and History of Philosophy, a chair which he obtained and held at the Scientific Lyceum Taramelli in Pavia until the end of the aca­demic year 1977-78.

From 1963-64 till 1971-72 he taught at the West European Studies Center in Italy founded and administered in Pavia by the Oregon State System of Higher Education. There he offered many courses, including:  a) Political Theory,  b) Political Parties, Interest Groups and Public Opinion, c) Federalism and the Problem of European Unity, d) Contemporary Political Problems, e) Conti­nental European Governments. There he also served as a student counsellor and adviser, and a liai­son with Italian authorities, public and academic staff, giving “dynamic and satisfactory leadership to the program”. In the academic years 1970-71 and 1971-72 he was appointed resident director of this Center. In the Summer session of the academic years 1970-71 and 1971-72 he was visiting professor at Portland State University (Oregon), where he taught Political Theory:  the Western Tradition.

Before the beginning of the academic year 1978-79 Giulio Guderzo, Head of the History Dept., asked him to come back to Pavia University. He accepted and taught the seminar History of Feder­alism and European Unification. Ten years later, thanks to his initiative, a Ph. D.  degree in History of Federalism and European Unification was jointly offered by the Universities of Pavia Siena Tu­rin Genoa and Florence, from 1989-90. Ever since then  Majocchi has been a member of the staff and has been offering tutorial assistance to a large majority of the students who worked and are working for this degree. Seven doctoral theses written by students tutored by Mr Majocchi (Daniela Preda, Cinzia Rognoni, Antonella Braga, Andrea Bosco, Piero Graglia, Guido Levi, Fabio Zucca and Mauro Maggiorani) have been published, partly by Jaca Book (Milan) and partly by Il Mulino (Bologna). They are collected under the title “Historical Studies and Sources related to Federalism and European Unity”. Majocchi is a member of the scientific committee of this col­lection.

In the academic year 1989-90 he was named to the first Jean Monnet Chair for historical studies set up in Italy and taught “History of European Integration” at Pavia University, Dept. of History. The grant upholding this chair expired in 1998. Since then he has been teaching History of  Western Europe, a course which relates European Integration with the collapse of the European system of states, bipolar world equilibrium, U.S favourable attitude and, finally, federalist initia­tive. He still holds this appointment.

In the academic years 1991/92, 1992/93 and 1993/94 he has been lecturing at LIUC (Libero Isti­tuto Universitario C. Cattaneo) in Castellanza (Milan) where, in a seminar on History of Economic Theory, he taught Luigi Einaudi’s and Lionel Robbins’ contributions to the study of  the relation­ship between “laissez faire, laisser passer theories” and federal government.

In 1996 he was visiting professor at the Faculty of European Studies of Babes Bolyai University in Cluj Napoca (Rumania), where he offered a course on EU enlargement to Eastern European coun­tries after the collapse of the Soviet empire.

Since the beginning of the academic year 1998-99 he has been teaching a seminar on “Current po­litical problems of European Unification” at University of Siena,

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In 1971 Majocchi founded CESFER (Centro Studi sul federalismo, il regionalismo e l’unità euro­pea), a study centre dealing with problems of federalism, regionalism and European unity, and di­rected it until 1987. This Centre published a collection of booklets entitled “I problemi della lotta politica per il federalismo”. He directed this collection.

He was Director of the European Federalist Movement from 1980 to 1987 and Director of the In­ternational European Movement from 1984 to 1987, in Brussels. In the same years he was member of the Directory Committee of the Collège d’Europe in Bruges (Belgium). During this period of time, he co-operated closely with Altiero Spinelli supporting him in his struggle within the Euro­pean Parliament with a view to get the Draft Treaty establishing a European Union approved: first,  by the Parliament itself and, subsequently, by EC member States. He resigned and left his office in Brussels when the Draft Treaty was rejected by member States, the Euro Parliament approved the Single European Act and the European Movement refused to support Spinelli’s radical  opposition to persisting intergovernmental functional integration.

Since1990 he has been a member of the Scientific Committee of Asda Bocconi (Milan), on behalf of which he organized several seminars and colloquia, whose minutes were jointly edited with Marco Vitale and published by Il Sole24Ore Libri (Milan).

In 1995 he was appointed member of a Study Conference for European Citizenship. This Confer­ence of scholars, one from each EU country, produced a book entitled De les citoyennetés des Eu­ropéens à la citoyenneté européenne, published by Hachette (Paris).                                         
 

In 1999 he founded and is president of the Centro di studi storici sul federalismo e l’unità europea “Altiero Spinelli”, whose task is both collecting archives of either federalist militants or actors of the European unification and promoting researches in the history of federalism and European uni­fication.

His contributions to national and international scientific reviews are relevant, though not as fre­quent as those to journals and reviews dealing with the problems related to the construction of a united federal Europe. Among these journals and reviews suffice it to mention “The Federalist,” “Le Fédéraliste”, “Il Federalista”, “Fédéchose”, “Comuni d’Europa”, “Federalismo militante” and, finally, “L’Unità europea”. He was director of the last two: from 1972 till 1984 of the former, from 1974 till 1987 of the latter.

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His contribution to knowing and understanding the process of European unification in the frame­work of an increasing worldwide globalisation of economic, social and political issues is strictly connected (and openly declared as such, consistently with Max Weber’s epistemology) with his experience as a federalist “militant”, wherefrom he derived his “point of view”, which, as says Weber, both determines the selection of the object to be investigated and affects the historical recognition of facts and their interpretation. Thus the main object of his studies has constantly been what Albertini names “the initiative factor” acting in the European struggle for federalism, a factor which stands outside the normal political decision making process and is clearly illustrated by Monnet’s and Spinelli’s action,  The analyses he did and promoted among his students aimed at illustrating this factor, mostly through the biographical studies of early federalists during the Re­sistance, their ideas and actions.  Such a point of view  proved to be profitable in spelling out hy­potheses and interpretative keys on behalf of students, forced to deal with documents particularly obscure as they refer to deeds and actors still unstudied and placed in a context undefined due to the fact that European unification is a process whose  accomplishment is just a matter of conjec­ture, whether it is  a new state - a federation -, as Majocchi assumes, or a free trade area based on merely international co-operation, as the large majority of historians, political scientists and politi­cians in Europe believe.

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Majocchi spends part of his spare time in listening to music and practising sports such as biking, swimming, skiing and jogging. His knowledge of Italian,  English and French is excellent, of Spanish sufficient, of German and Rumanian poor. He married in 1968 Silvana Repossi (59   years old, psychiatrist). She is still his wife. From  this marriage he has one daughter Livia (36, en­gineer) and three sons: Piero (31, PhD in Medieval History, researcher at Padua University), Jacopo (29, financial annalist at Akros Bank, Milan; he was in the K1 1000 meters final at the Sydney Olympic games!) and Niccolò (17, Lyceum student).
 

biographies of leading actors in European unification

Most significant publications 

Books

–    MAJOCCHI  LUIGI V. ed., La violenza neo-fascista in Lombardia, Milan 1973, pp. 1-831.
–    MAJOCCHI LUIGI V. – ROSSOLILLO FRANCESCO, Il Parlamento europeo. Significato sto­rico di una ele-zione, Naples 1979, pp. 1-238.
–    MAJOCCHI LUIGI V. – VITALE  MARCO eds., Europa ‘92. Dall’Atto Unico al Governo eu­ropeo,  Milan 1990, pp 1-283.
–    MAJOCCHI LUIGI V. – VITALE  MARCO eds., Verso il 2000, il mondo che cambia. La Comunità europea di fronte ai rivolgimenti dell’89 nell’Est europeo e alla sfida americana e giap­ponese, Milan 1991, pp. 1-248.
–    MAJOCCHI LUIGI V. – VITALE  MARCO eds., Quale progetto per la città,  Milan 1993, pp. 1-287.
–   MAJOCCHI LUIGI V. – VITALE  MARCO eds., Per una nuova cultura di mercato, Milan 1994, pp. 1-186.
–   MAJOCCHI  LUIGI V., La difficile costruzione dell’unità europea, Milan 1995, pp. 1-339.
-   MAJOCCHI  LUIGI V. ed., Messina quarant’anni dopo. Il rilancio europeo e l’attualità del me­todo in vista della Conferenza intergovernativa del 1996, Bari 1996, pp. 1-303.
–   MAJOCCHI LUIGI V., L’informazione europea. Aspetti politico-valoriali e aspetti economico-amministrativi, Milan 2001, pp. 1-67.
©¤ MAJOCCHI LUIGI V., Unità europea: ieri, oggi e domani, forthcoming

Forewords

–     LORD LOTHIAN, Il pacifismo non basta,  Bologna 1986.
–    CRISTINA MERLINI, Il Collegio “Robecchi-Bricchetti” di Pavia, Pavia, 1988.
–    DANIELA PREDA, Storia di una speranza. La battaglia per la Ced e la Federazione europea, Milan 1990.
–   LUCIANO BOLIS, Il mio filo di Arianna. Diario di dieci mesi dal 29 settembre 1986 al 29 lu­glio 1987. Annotazioni – Pensieri – Ricordi, Rome 1991.
–  GIULIO GUDERZO ed., Lord Lothian. Una vita per la pace, Florence 1996.
–  MAJOCCHI LUIGI V. – VITALE  MARCO eds., Verso il 2000, il mondo che cambia. La Co­munità europea di fronte ai rivolgimenti dell’89 nell’Est europeo e alla sfida americana e giappo­nese, Milan 1991.
©¤  MAJOCCHI  LUIGI V. ed., Messina quarant’anni dopo. Il rilancio europeo e l’attualità del me­todo in vista della Conferenza intergovernativa del 1996, Bari 1996, pp. 9-14.

©¤  ROGNONI VERCELLI CINZIA, Luciano Bolis. Dall’Italia all’Europa, Bologna 2006, pp. 6-12

©¤  BRAGA ANTONELLA, Un federalista giacobino. Ernesto Rossi pioniere degli Stati Uniti d’Europa, Bologna 2007, pp. 11-17.

©¤ DALLOU ANTONELLA, Federico Chabod: l’idea di nazione e la storia d’Europa. Aosta 2008, pp. 3-10

Selected Essays

­­­­– Sulla Francia, a proposito di Challe e Duverger, in “Il Federalista” 1961, 3, pp. 164-8.
– Opinione pubblica in “Nuovissimo digesto italiano”, Turin 1964, pp. 3-6
– A propos des rapports franco-allemands, in “Le Fédéraliste” 1964, 2, pp. 96-111

–                    Europeismo in “Grande Dizionario Enciclopedico”, vol. VII, 1968, pp. 431-2.
–  Considérations au sujet du livre de Henry A. Kissinger, American Foreign Policy, in “Le Fédé­raliste” 1971, 3-4, pp. 157-67.
–  Elections du Parlement européen et irréversibilité de l’unification européenne, in “Le Fédéra­liste 1973, 3-4, pp. 122-33.
–  Le radici internazionali del neofascismo, in MAJOCCHI  LUIGI V. ed., La violenza neo-fasci­sta in Lombardia, Milan 1973, pp. XXV-LII.
–  Intervista sul federalismo, in  ALFASSIO GRIMALDI UGOBERTO - ROVATI LUCIO eds., La Resistenza e l’Europa, Milan 1981, pp. 149-210.
–  Il Parlamento europeo nella lotta politica per l’Europa, in “Il Federalista” 1981, 2, pp. 13-26.
–  La riforma istituzionale della Comunità, in LOTTI ANGELO ed., L’Europa di fronte alle sfide dell’avvenire, Milan 1985, pp. 213-38.
–  Federalism in the History of Thought: Clarence K. Streit, in “The Federalist” 1987, 1, pp. 72-87.
–  Federalism in the History of Thought: Ludwig Dehio, in “The Federalist” 1988, 2, pp. 129-55.
– Ideal Man in Classical Sociology. The views of Compte, Durkheim, Pareto and Weber, in
“International Journal of Comparative Sociology” 1987, 1-2, pp. 105-26.
– On the Jenninger case, in “The Federalist” 1989, 1, pp. 47-60.
– Schuldfrage, unità tedesca e unità europea, in “Comuni d’Europa”, 1989, 6, pp. 7-23.
– Dalla fondazione della Comunità all’Atto Unico, in. MAJOCCHI LUIGI V. – VITALE  MARCO eds., Europa ‘92. Dall’Atto Unico al Governo europeo,  Milan 1990, pp  37-57.
– Dall’Atto unico al governo europeo, in MAJOCCHI LUIGI V. – VITALE  MARCO eds., Eu­ropa ‘92. Dall’Atto Unico al Governo europeo,  Milan 1990, pp.  255-83.
– A historical Precedent of great Importance,  in “The Federalist” 1989, 2, pp. 115-20.
– La rivoluzione dell’Ottantanove nell’Est europeo. Un approccio storico, in MAJOCCHI LUIGI V. – VITALE  MARCO eds., Verso il 2000, il mondo che cambia. La Comunità eu­ropea di fronte ai rivolgimenti dell’89 nell’Est europeo e alla sfida americana e giapponese, Milan 1991, pp. 23-34.
– Nationalism and Federalism in 19th Century Europe, in BOSCO ANDREA ed., The Federal Idea. The History of Federalism from the Enlightenment to 1945, London – New York 1991, pp. 125-65.
– Actualité de l’analyse kantienne a propos de la paix, ibid, pp. 21-7.
– Federalism in the History of Thought: Edward H. Carr,  in “The Federalist” 1991, 1, pp. 53-82
– Federalism in the History of Thought: Kenneth C. Wheare, in “The Federalist” 1991, 3, pp. 73-90. 
– L’azione per il riconoscimento del diritto di voto europeo, in PISTONE SERGIO ed., I movi­menti per l’unità europea. 1954-1969, Milan 1992, 421-441.
– Diritti dell’uomo e democrazia europea, in FADDA ANTONIO ed., Per una formazione europea degli insegnanti, Cagliari 1993, pp. 51-60.
– La città nella sua relazione con la storia e la politica, in MAJOCCHI LUIGI V. – VITALE  MARCO eds., Quale progetto per la città, Milan 1994, pp. 13-78.
– Il Trattato di Maastricht. Sviluppi e limiti dell’integrazione europea, in CITTERIO FERDINANDO – VACCARO LUCIANO, Quale federalismo per quale Europa. Il contri­buto della tradizione cristiana, Brescia 1996, pp. 323-46.
– Le condizioni politiche per affermare in Italia una nuova cultura di mercato, in MAJOCCHI LUIGI V. – VITALE  MARCO eds., Per una nuova cultura di mercato, Milan 1995, pp. 13-40.
– Il rilancio europeo di Messina nella storia dell’unificazione europea, in MAJOCCHI  LUIGI V. ed., Messina quarant’anni dopo. Il rilancio europeo e l’attualità del metodo in vi­sta della Confe­renza intergovernativa del 1996, Bari 1996, pp. 25-60.
– Federalismo interno e federalismo europeo, in JACOBELLI JADER ed., Quale federali­smo per l’Italia, Bari 1997, pp. 46-71..
– Le integrazioni verticali. La Ceca, in COMMISSIONE STORICA DELLA MARINA MILITARE ed., La politica estera dell’Italia 1948-1950, Rome 1998, pp. 108-137.
– De la  citoyenneté des Européens à la citoyenneté européenne, in FRANÇOISE PARISOT BARATIER ed., Citayennetés nationales et citoyenneté européenne, Paris 1999, pp. 78-93.
– Voto europeo, rilancio del Piano Werner e progetto costituente in PREDA DANIELA ed., I mo­vimenti per l’unità europea. 1969-1985, Bologna 1999, pp. 247-291.

– Fédération d’Etats-nation? Fédération de régions ? Fédération de quoi ? in “L’Europe en formation”, 2001, 2, pp. 176-89.

þu L’opposizione antifascista e le battaglie per gli Stati Uniti d’Europa, in ANTONELLA BRAGA– SIMONETTA MICHELOTTI eds, Ernesto Rossi. Un democratico europeo, Soveria Mannelli 2009, pp. 37-45.

þu El federalismo: instrumento de análisis y meta de actión politica, in "Puento@Europa", Buenos Aires,  año VII, Número especial, Diciembre 2009, pp. 8-14.

– L’identità europea, forthcoming