NAZIONALIZZAZIONI E POLITICA INTERNAZIONALE

During the twentieth century intervention with respect to economic and productive activity became a normal practice for nearly all states. While, in the nineteenth century, laissez-faire liberalism generally prevailed, and the defence of private property was considered the fundamental role of the state, the twentieth century saw the affirmation in some countries of Marxist-Leninist theories, which assigned the state property rights in the means of production, the arrivail on the world scene of the new Keynesian approach, which assigned the state the role of promoting and stabilizing economic and social development, and, lastly, the great worid revolution consisting in colonial emancipation, which, though a political phenomenon, constituted an implicit move towards economic independence. All of these factors brought about an upheaval in the situation that had been consolidated since the second half of the nineteenth century — a century that saw the consolidation of a hegemony of the most developed countries which exercised control over the naturai resources of less developed countries, above all of the colonies conquered by European states in the period of imperialist expansion. The problem of nationalizations, or international expropriations, arose out of the conflict that developed between countries exporting capital, which tended to protect the property of their citizens abroad, and countries importing capital, which decided without warning to take over full responsibility for their own economce resources. It is crucial to note, in this connection, the presence, on the one hand of states with a long liberal tradition, which have often suffered losses in terms of the property of their own citizens and, on the other hand, of international actors exhibiting a socialist state structure or of recent liberal tradition, which claim sovereignty over their own resources. For this reason, international nationalizations need to be re-examined in the light of the ideological, political and economic structure of the single states. They concern, in other words, national sovereignty, general political economy choices, the position held within the international community and relations with various other international state-actors, aiming, in the last analysis, to take account of the role adopted, since the nineteen-sixties, by the main international organization, the United Nations