"Political Lexicon" is a series edited by Carlo Galli, in which eleven volumes have already been published: Constitution, Representation, Freedom, State, Democracy, Interest, Revolution, Tolerance, Authority, and Community. The series' aim is to comprise an essential encyclopaedia that describes the historical evolution of the main concepts on which modern political discourse is based. Among political key terms, "government" is the most difficult to separate from its practical applications. Therefore the text addresses the topic with a dual approach: its conceptual development and actual institutional, constitutional, and administrative systems which have existed from ancient Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages, Renaissance Florence and up to French absolutism. The volume then traces the advent of contemporary governmental systems stemming from English constitutional history, the American and French revolutions' institutional experiments and the practices of 19th-century monarchies.

Paolo Colombo teaches History of Contemporary Constitutional Systems in the Faculty of Political Science at the Catholic University of Milan.