"It is somewhat ironic that this book comes out in the centenary of Political Theology, first published in 1922. In the end, one of the main claims we shall make here is that Carl Schmitt's celebrated essay has been unduly overemphasised and that it formulated a theory of law and a conception of normality that he himself dismantled a few years after its publication. A related claim will be that interpretations that identify a connection between Political Theology and successive works such as The Concept of the Political (1928) and Constitutional Theory (1928) are wrong in at least one important respect: through those works, Schmitt tried to pull himself out of the quagmire in which he was bogged down in 1922, viz., the problematic conception that we shall dub "exceptionalist decisionism." But we shall have to go further. Works that are coeval with Political Theology, such as Dictatorship (1921) and Roman Catholicism and Political Form (1923), offer much leeway for criticising exceptionalist decisionism, either because the notions of exception and decision are thinner and more tenable (as is the case with Dictatorship), or because there is no room at all for any of them (as is the case with Roman Catholicism and Political Form). In sum, as a celebration of Political Theology, this book cuts a poor figure"--

Mariano Croce is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome. He held the post of Marie Curie Fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of Antwerp, where is co-leader of the research line in kinship studies. His books include The Legal Theory of Carl Schmitt (2013, with Andrea Salvatore), The Politics of Juridification (2018), and The Legacy of Pluralism: The Continental Jurisprudence of Santi Romano, Carl Schmitt, and Costantino Mortati (2020, with Marco Goldoni).

1. What is exceptionalist decisionism? Reinterpreting Political Theology; 2. Looking backward: Schmitt before exceptionalist decisionism; 3. How exceptionalist decisionism came about: Schmitt and coeval critics; 4. A fresh start: Schmitt and state pluralism; 5. Out of the exceptionalist quagmire: The notion of institution in Schmitt's thinking; 6. The politics of normality: Schmitt's concrete-order thinking; 7. Doing away with politics: Schmitt's juristic institutionalism; Index.