Un concetto neutralizzato. L’interesse nazionale e la crisi delle élite politiche

[Autom. eng. transl.] The objective of this paper is to reflect on a specific conceptual twist concerning the idea of national interest and to try to understand the reasons that induce political elites to renounce their leading role considering, precisely, the national interest as something that others have defined or should define and not as the product of their daily action. An example of this propensity is quite evident when they use the expression "national interest" in reference to the policy of the European Union: with the intention of "defending it" they make it coincide, from time to time, with the single fractional interest and not they elaborate it as a unitary synthesis of different conflicting interests, to be considered in turn as part of a further, future supranational political synthesis. As we will see, however, this simplification declination is favored (and perhaps partly justified) by another process of "neutralization", which is broader and more complex, involving the European institutions themselves. In fact, if the "neutralization" of the national interest by the domestic elites has caused a clear conceptual distortion, in the case of the European institutions the removal of the political dimension precluded the possibility that a European interest could actually be devised.