ABSTRACT
Although, today, the study of conspiracy theories is widely acknowledged and firmly established within the disciplines of political science and political theory, it is worth remembering that it is a relatively recent topic of research within the field. If Hofstadter’s seminal work The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays (1964) is usually mentioned as the first significant contribution, it is fair to say that, since antiquity (see Chapter 5.1), conspiracies, both real and imagined, have been a subject for analysis, with political philosophers and political actors over the centuries, like the ancient Roman Suetonius or Machiavelli during the Renaissance, addressing the issue. Later, in the nineteenth century, the French philosopher Guizot (1845) seems to be the first to distinguish, in pure political terms and taking into consideration the social context in which they occur, the real conspiracies to topple governments, the ‘pseudo-conspiracies’ forged by rulers to strengthen their power and silence their opponents, and the purely imagined conspiracy. Guizot also clearly warned against the temptation to believe in ‘conspiracy theories’ even though this expression does not appear as such: ‘the number and frequency of conspiracies demonstrate the poor state of the society and the government misbehaviour’ but it is nonetheless dangerous to ‘seek or only see conspiracy where there is none’ (132).
