This section contains a review by the Italian historian Emilio Gentile of Paul Corner's new book on the Fascist Party and public opinion, and of Christopher Duggan's intimate history of Mussolini's Italy. The review is followed by responses from Corner and Duggan, and the section concludes with comments by Gentile.
From the first Italian Fascism proclaimed its aim of nationalising, centralising and moralising Italian politics. During the regime the cult of the ethical state was the most obvious and continuing expression of this ambition. This article argues that the decline of Fascism, already very evident by the end of the 1930s, was closely linked to the regime's failure to realise these objectives and that this failure was in large part a consequence of the difficulties experienced by Fascism in changing the relationship between the provinces and the centre in terms of the way in which power was perceived and employed in the provinces. It is argued that these difficulties were implicit in the way in which Fascism had been understood by its provincial supporters from the very beginnings of the movement. Almost all studies of nineteenth-century Italy draw attention to the particular relationship between central government and local administration which developed after unification. 1 Although convinced of the need for administrative centralisation, the first governments after 1861 also believed that local autonomies had to be respected in order that the message of a victorious liberalism could spread down to the grassroots of the towns and villages of a country largely new to liberal practices. Cavour's centralising thrust was blunted, therefore, by the desire of the politicians who followed him to tread carefully where local elites were concerned. The resulting tensions between the centre and the periphery produced a relationship between central and local government which was to characterise Italy for decades: thus, although local government was formally dependent on the centre, the latter was sufficiently weak to have to rely on the collaboration of local government and local notables in order to realise its objectives. Deals had to be struck and this required
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