Across the world, the study of political and legal theory and the history of political and legal thought
remains organized almost exclusively around the European and Western tradition. Such a paradigm is
increasingly untenable in our global and postcolonial present. The conference Towards a Global History
of Political and Legal Theory aims to challenge this perspective by exploring how this area of studies
can be systematically broadened to incorporate non-Western approaches and traditions of thought.
Political and legal philosophy has never belonged to a single civilization. Across continents and
centuries, societies have developed distinct and sophisticated theories of political authority, social order,
justice, and legitimate rule. That the mainstream of the discipline has long confined itself to Western
thinkers, doctrines, and institutions is a historical contingency, not a scholarly necessity — and one that
leaves relevant intellectual traditions from Asia, Africa, indigenous societies, and nomadic peoples
largely outside its frame.

This conference aims to provide a contribution to the development of a Global History of Political and
Legal Thought by bringing into dialogue the diverse traditions that have shaped governance across the
world: Confucian meritocracy and Vedic conceptions of dharma, Buddhist kingship and African
communal institutions, nomadic steppe governance and Islamic political philosophy, revolutionary
Soviet thought and modern postcolonial nation-building projects, among others. By taking these
questions seriously on a global scale, the conference invites scholars and students to move beyond a
Eurocentric understanding of political development and to engage with political thought as a dynamic,
multi-civilizational, and still-unfinished intellectual history.

The conference is promoted by the Chair of History of Political Thought, BA degree in Political Sciences
and International Relations at the University of Messina.