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European Fascism: The Unfinished Handbook

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2012

ANTÓNIO COSTA PINTO
ANTÓNIO COSTA PINTO*
Affiliation:
Institute of Social Science, University of Lisbon, Av. Professor Anibal Betencourt 9, 1600–189 Lisbon, Portugal; acpinto@ics.ul.pt
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Extract

Fascism continues to fascinate scholars within the social sciences, perhaps as much as communism, that other great non-democratic ‘-ism’ of the twentieth century. The topic also seems to be of continuing interest to the student and commercial book markets. In some cases bland repetition is the norm, but the pressure from commercial publishers often results in some excellent syntheses, even if based on secondary material, and that is not to mention the biography genre, which is always attentive to charismatic leaders and dictators — the more cruel the better. Moreover, the already voluminous academic literature on contemporary dictatorships often returns to the fascist and dictatorial regimes of the inter-war period. It is therefore only natural that Fascism should be incorporated in a series of handbooks published by Oxford University Press.

Type
Review Article
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , May 2012 , pp. 287 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 However, most only include the dictatorships established after 1945. For an overview of this literature in ‘text-book’ form see Ezrow, Natasha and Frantz, Erica, Dictators and Dictatorships: Understanding Authoritarian Regimes and their Leaders (London: Continuum, 2011)Google Scholar.

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3 Lyttelton, Adrian, ‘Concluding remarks’, in Pinto, Antonio Costa, ed., Rethinking the Nature of Fascism (London: Palgrave, 2011), 272Google Scholar.

4 For a defence of the political religion concept in the study of political history, see Gentile, Emilio, Politics as a Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, and for the study of Fascism, see Griffin, Roger, ed., Fascism, Totalitarianism ad Political Religion (London: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar. See also Roberts, David D., ‘Political Religion' and the Totalitarian Departures of Inter-war Europe: On the Uses and Disadvantages of an Analytical Category' and the reply of Carl Levy, ‘Frustrated of Islington’, Contemporary European History, 18 (2009), 381–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 415–18.

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10 According to the editor, this group promoted their ideas in the academic journal Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, but Emilio Gentile had left the journal several years before, while the journal also changed editors, focus and even its title.

11 For two excellent anthologies introducing these authors and the main interpretations since the 1960s, see Kallis, Aristotle, ed., The Fascist Reader (London: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar and Iordachi, Constantin, ed., Comparative Fascist Studies: New Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2009)Google Scholar.

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24 See Gagliardi, Alessio, Il corporativismo fascista (Bari: Laterza, 2010)Google Scholar and the excellent study of para-state organisations associated with interest organisations, Dormagen, Jean-Yves, Logiques du fascisme: L'état totalitaire en Italie (Paris: Fayard, 2007)Google Scholar.

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26 For a explicit use of these definitions see, for example, Griffin, Roger, The Nature of Fascism (London: Pinder, 1991)Google Scholar; Janos, Andrew, East Central Europe in the Modern World. The Politics of the Borderlands from Pre- to Postcommunism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Feldman, Mathew and Turda, Marius with Georgescu, Tudor, eds, Clerical Fascism in Inter-war Europe (London: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar.

27 See Linz, Juan, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000)Google Scholar.

28 For more on these historiographical debates, see Miley, Thomas Jeffrey, ‘Franquism as Authoritarianism: Juan Linz and his Critics’, Politics, Religion and Ideology, 12, 1 (2011), 27–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jenkins, Brian, ed., France in the Era of Fascism: Essays on the French Authoritarian Right (New York: Berghahn, 2005)Google Scholar; Dobry, Michel, ed., Le mythe de l'allergie française au fascisme (Paris: Albin Michel)Google Scholar, Pinto, António Costa, Salazar's New State and European Fascism (New York: SSM-Columbia University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Pasteur, Paul, ‘‘Austrofascisme’ ou Régime Autoritaire Corporatiste Chrétien?’, in Horel, Catherine, Sandu, Traian and Taubert, Fritz, eds, La Péripherie du fascisme: Le cas de l'Europe centrale entre les deux guerres (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005), 111–22Google Scholar. For an overview of the research and debates on Fascism in central and Eastern Europe, both in conceptual and empirical terms, see Iordachi, Constantin, ‘Fascism in Inter-war East Central and Southeast Europe: Towards a New Transnational Research Agenda’, East Central Europe, 37 (2010), 161–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 See Soucy, Robert, French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933–1939 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995)Google Scholar and Kéchichian, Albert, Les Croix à L'Âge des Fascismes: Travail, Famille, Patrie (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2006)Google Scholar.

30 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism.

31 Paxton, Robert O., The Anatomy of Fascism (New York, NY: Knopf, 2004)Google Scholar.

32 An excellent analysis of the relations between Fascism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism is Linz, Juan J., Fascismo, Autoritarismo, Totalitarismo: Connessioni e differenze (Roma: Ideazione, 2003)Google Scholar.

33 Geddes, Barbara, ‘Stages of Development in Authoritarian Regimes’, in Tismaneanu, Vladimir, Howard, Marc Morjé and Sill, Rudra, eds, World Order after Leninism (Seattle, WA: The University of Washington Press, 2006), 164Google Scholar.

34 In relation to the Italian fascist regime, see Goffredo Adinolfi, ‘Political Elite and Decision-Making in Mussolini's Italy’, in Pinto, ed., Ruling Elites, 19–54.

35 Perlmutter, Amos, Modern Authoritarianism: A Comparative Institutional Analysis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 11Google Scholar.

36 See Friedrich, Carl J. and Brzezinski, Zbniew K., Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

37 See Brooker, Paul, Twentieth-Century Dictatorships: The Ideological One-Party States (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 9–10Google Scholar.

38 Gandhi, Political Institutions, 29.

39 Geddes, ‘Stages of Development’, 164.

40 Gandhi, Political Institutions, 20.

41 See Andeas Schiedler, ‘The New Institutionalism in the Study of Authoritarian Regimes’, Working Paper N. 215, 2009, CIDE, Mexico DF. For a overview of a ‘rational choice’ approach to the study of dictatorships see Wintrobe, Ronald, ‘Dictatorship: Analytical Approaches’, in Boix, Carles and Stokes, Susan, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 363–94Google Scholar.

42 See Michel Dobry, ‘Desperately Seeking “Generic Fascism”: Some Discordant Thoughts on the Academic Recycling of Indigenous Categories’, in Pinto, ed., Rethinking, 53–84.