The Effects of Political Violence: A Structural Equation Model of the Rise of Italian Fascism (1919–1922)

Elazar, Dahlia Sabina; Lewin, Alisa C.

doi:10.1006/ssre.1998.0638

“…There are fewer econometric studies of the rise of Italian Fascism, though there is a sizable history and sociology literature, already mentioned above. Most closely related to our work are Elazar (2000) and Elazar and Lewin (1999), who emphasize the role of Fascist violence and document a province-level correlation between Socialist support, Fascist violence and the Fascist military take-over of the provinces.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

War, Socialism, and the Rise of Fascism: an Empirical Exploration

Acemoğlu

¹

,

Feo

²

,

Luca

³

et al. 2022

The Quarterly Journal of Economics

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The recent ascent of right-wing populist movements in several countries has rekindled interest in understanding the causes of the rise of Fascism in inter-war years. In this paper, we argue that there was a strong link between the surge of support for the Socialist Party after World War I (WWI) and the subsequent emergence of Fascism in Italy. We first develop a source of variation in socialist support across Italian municipalities in the 1919 election based on war casualties from the area. We show that these casualties are unrelated to a battery of political, economic, and social variables before the war and had a major impact on socialist support (partly because the Socialists were the main antiwar political movement). Our main result is that this boost to socialist support (that is “exogenous” to the prior political leaning of the municipality) led to greater local fascist activity as measured by local party branches and fascist political violence, and to significantly larger vote share of the Fascist Party in the 1921 and 1924 elections. We also provide evidence that landowner associations and greater presence of local elites played an important role in the rise of Fascism. Finally, we find greater likelihood of Jewish deportations in 1943–45 and lower vote share for Christian Democrats after World War II in areas with greater early fascist activity.

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“…There are fewer econometric studies of the rise of Italian Fascism, though there is a sizable history and sociology literature, already mentioned above. Most closely related to our work are Elazar (2000) and Elazar and Lewin (1999), who emphasize the role of Fascist violence and document a province-level correlation between Socialist support, Fascist violence and the Fascist military take-over of the provinces. These papers do not have the detailed municipal-level data we use, do not attempt to exploit potentially exogenous variation in Socialist support, and do not explore any of the mechanisms we propose.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

War, Socialism and the Rise of Fascism: An Empirical Exploration

Acemoğlu¹,

Feo²,

Luca³

et al. 2020

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This paper combines two independent working papers, "War, Socialism and the Rise of Fascism: An Empirical Exploration" by Acemoglu, De Feo and De Luca and "World War One and the Rise of Fascism in Italy" by Russo. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

show abstract

“…There are fewer econometric studies of the rise of Italian Fascism, though there is a sizable history and sociology literature, already mentioned above. Most closely related to our work are Elazar (2000) and Elazar and Lewin (1999), who emphasize the role of Fascist violence and document a province-level correlation between Socialist support, Fascist violence and the Fascist military take-over of the provinces.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%