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The objective of this chapter is twofold: (1) to analyse meanings and practices regarding the work-family balance of fathers from different social and cultural backgrounds and (2) to explore how infancy experts and workplace cultures can influence the paid work and childcare reconciliation practices of native and immigrant fathers in Italy, in particular, from the point of view of fathers making the transition to parenthood. Little attention is paid to the role of infancy experts and workplace cultures in shaping fathers’ reconciliation perspectives. Moreover, little research has been dedicated to parenting practices among immigrant families from the fathers’ point of view. We investigate how parenthood is perceived and experienced by native and immigrant fathers, focussing on cultural differences with regard to beliefs about gender roles, children’s needs and childbearing. Our work is based on a qualitative analysis of 61 qualitative interviews with fathers, born in Italy, Romania, Peru and Morocco living in (the north of) Italy, carried out between 2010 and 2015. The results show how both infancy experts and workplace cultures tend to reinforce the widespread hegemonic ideals on ‘good father as provider’ both for natives and for immigrant fathers, despite their different socio-cultural backgrounds.

German legal historians of nineteenth and twentieth centuries defined the main characteristics of the corporations and believed that one renaissance institution, the Casa di San Giorgio at Genoa (1407–1805), was similar to the corporations of later centuries. This paper proposes to reverse this perspective: did the founders of early modern corporations know the financial model of the fifteenth century Casa di San Giorgio? The research shows the connection between the model of the Casa di San Giorgio and the Mississippi Company of John Law (1720), the famous financial scheme and bubble. The history of the Casa di San Giorgio was mainly transmitted through a passage of Machiavelli’s History of Florence (VIII, 29). The paper offers new biographical evidence that Law had been to Genoa and introduces sources connecting the genesis of Law’s scheme for the Mississippi Company in France with the model of the Casa di San Giorgio.

The aim of this chapter is to argue that charisma is a collective representation, and that charismatic authority is a social status that derives more from the “recognition” of the followers than from the “magnetism” of the leaders. I contend further that a close reading of Max Weber shows that he, too, saw charisma in this light.

I develop my argument by a close reading of many of the most relevant texts on the subject. This includes not only the renowned texts on this subject by Max Weber, but also many books and articles that interpret or criticize Weber’s views.

I pay exceptionally close attention to key arguments and texts, several of which have been overlooked in the past.

Writers for whom charisma is personal magnetism tend to assume that charismatic rule is natural and that the full realization of democratic norms is unlikely. Authority, in this view, emanates from rulers unbound by popular constraint. I argue that, in fact, authority draws both its mandate and its energy from the public, and that rulers depend on the loyalty of their subjects, which is never assured. So charismatic claimants are dependent on popular choice, not vice versa.

I advocate a “culturalist” interpretation of Weber, which runs counter to the dominant “personalist” account. Conventional interpreters, under the sway of theology or mass psychology, misread Weber as a romantic, for whom charisma is primal and undemocratic rule is destiny. This essay offers a counter-reading.

The events surrounding the financial crisis of 2008 are well known, and subject to a broad level of agreement. Less accepted are theories regarding the larger context within which this crisis was able to unfold. Much has been made of the financialization of the American economy and the lax regulation of new financial instruments, both of which stem from the trend toward a laissez-faire economic policy that has characterized the United States since the late 1970s. I do not take issue with these claims. Instead, I argue that these developments have an earlier and deeper source: a breakdown in the ability of large American corporations to provide collective solutions to economic and social problems, a phenomenon that I term “the decline of the American corporate elite.” From a group with a relatively moderate political perspective and a pragmatic strategic orientation, this elite, through a series of historical developments, became a fragmented, largely ineffectual group, with a high degree of societal legitimacy but a paradoxical lack of power. I trace the history of this group, from its origins in the early 1900s, through its heyday in the post-World War II period, to its decline beginning in the 1970s and escalating in the 1980s. I argue that the lack of coordination within the American business community created the conditions for the crises of the post-1980 period – including the massive breakdown of 2008 – to occur.

This chapter analyses recent reforms of the derivative claim in the UK as implemented by the Companies Act 2006. Recent reforms and modernisation of company law is part of a drive to facilitate enterprise and enhance the attractiveness of the UK as a location in which to do business. The reforms of derivative claims are, naturally, part of this wider drive. The chapter focuses on those areas that are particularly relevant to the question of whether the new legal framework relating to derivative claims is likely to promote these goals.