PATERNALISMO. – Paternalistic is said of any policy directed from above (emperor, king, lord) that takes account of the needs of its “subjects”: in classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance alike, the myth of the good ruler of the state, understanding and “fatherly,” took shape. In the age of the Counter-Reformation, the problem once again came to the fore with the theorists of raison d’état (v.); among others, Bellarmine set forth precise formulations concerning the need for princes to love all their subjects with “servile” and “paternal” charity, so that they might not be unjustly burdened (cf. De officio principis christiani, Rome 1619).
Taking into account its differences from earlier theories and practical applications, the eighteenth-century movement of enlightened despotism must also be regarded as paternalistic. Enlightened despotism arose and grew stronger within the broader climate of the “Enlightenment,” both through a movement from below determined by the economic and social strengthening of the middle class, and through the numerous reforming writers who expressed the new ideological demands on the level of public opinion. Despotism and the Enlightenment are not, in their essence, mutually exclusive: in enlightened despotism, the element that still prevails is the despotic one, but it is “enlightened,” that is, subjected to the law of Raison in the political-administrative and economic-social spheres. The reforming principles favored physiocracy, fiscal and customs reform, and jurisdictionalism. Naturally, not all the theories were applied rigorously or comprehensively in practice: Maria Theresa of Austria supported economic reforms; her son Joseph II attached greater importance to jurisdictionalism and to religious reform itself; Frederick II of Prussia was in practice more a “sovereign” than a man of the “Enlightenment” (or at least he was an adherent of the Enlightenment in criminal law, religious toleration, and culture, but not in military absolutism); Catherine II of Russia inclined toward economic reform; Leopold I of Tuscany toward physiocracy and jurisdictionalism; Charles III of Bourbon toward social reform and jurisdictionalism, and so on. Eighteenth-century paternalism was so broad a movement that in certain sectors it also affected the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Genoa, and the Papal States themselves.
After the eighteenth century, the word p. was at times used “from above” to conceal or justify political movements or the activities of rulers that were essentially conservative, reactionary, or dictatorial in character.