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THE CORPORATIST WAVE

ANTÓNIO COSTA PINTO

CORPORATISM AND THE DIFFUSION OF “ORGANIC REPRESENTATION” IN EUROPEAN DICTATORSHIPS

2016

ICS O K N P P RW R I G A E S

COMISSÃO EDITORIAL

João Vasconcelos (coordenação)

Andrés Malamud

Annarita Gori

Filipa Vicente

João MouratoPedro Alcântara da Silva

Rui Costa Lopes

Vanessa Cunha

ISSN 2183-6930

The Corporatist Wave

Corporatism and the diffusion of “Organic Representation” in European dictatorships

António Costa Pinto

ICS WORKING PAPERS 2016

THE CORPORATIST WAVE – CORPORATISM AND THE DIFFUSION

OF “ORGANIC REPRESENTATION” IN EUROPEAN DICTATORSHIPS

António Costa Pinto

Investigador ICS-ULisboa – [email protected]

Abstract

The paper examines the role of corporatism as a set of authoritarian institutions that spread

across inter-war Europe and which was an agent for the institutional consolidation of fascist-

era dictatorships. Institutionalized, in many cases in the wake of polarized democratizations,

inter-war dictatorships tended to choose corporatism both as a process for the repression

and co-optation of the labour movement, interest groups and of elites through ‘organic’

legislatures. Powerful processes of institutional transfers were a hallmark of inter-war

dictatorships and we argue corporatism was at the forefront of this process of cross-national

diffusion of authoritarian institutions.

Key Words: Corporatism; Fascism; Dictatorship; Interest Groups; Representation

Resumo

Este paper examina o papel do corporativismo como um conjunto de instituições autoritárias

que se expandiram na Europa do periodo entre as duas guerras mundiais e que foram um

agente da consolidação das ditaduras da época do fascismo. Institucionalizadas após

processos polarizados de democratização, as ditaduras do período entre as duas guerras

escolheram o corporativismo quer como processo de repressão e cooptação do movimento

operário e dos interesses organizados, quer de elites através de parlamentos “orgânicos”.

Poderosos processos de transferência de instituições marcaram as ditaduras do período entre

as duas guerras e é aqui defendido que o corporativismo esteve na vanguarda deste processo

de difusão transnacional de instituições autoritárias.

Palavras-chave: Corporativismo; Fascismo: Ditadura; Grupos de Interesses; Representação

2

mailto:[email protected]


When in 1952, in a country far from Europe, President Laureano Gómez tried (and failed) to

reorganize political representation along corporatist lines, there were signs of it being the end

of an era that had begun with the regimes of Sidónio Pais in Portugal (1917-18), General

Primo de Rivera in Spain (1923-31) and Italian Fascism (1922-43). A Catholic corporatist with

authoritarian tendencies close to those of Francoism in Spain, and leader of the Colombian

Conservative Party, Gómez hoped to bring about constitutional reform that would have

transformed him into the president of an authoritarian, paternalist and more confessional

state with an executive that was increasingly independent of the legislature and with a

corporatist senate.1 This failed experiment marked the end of an era of authoritarian

institutional reform inspired by corporatism, which was one of the most powerful

authoritarian models of social and political representation to emerge during the first half of

the 20th century.2

Corporatism put an indelible mark on the first decades of the 20th century – during the inter-

war period particularly – both as a set of institutions created by the forced integration of

organized interests (mainly independent unions) into the state and as an organic-statist type

of political representation, alternative to liberal democracy.3 Variants of corporatism inspired

conservative, radical-right and fascist parties, not to mention the Roman Catholic Church and

the ‘third way’ favoured by some sections of the technocratic elites.4 But it mainly inspired

the institutional crafting of dictatorships, from Benito Mussolini’s Italy through Primo de

Rivera in Spain and the Austria of Engelbert Dollfuss, and the new Baltic States. Some of these

dictatorships, such as Mussolini’s Italy, made corporatism a universal alternative to economic

liberalism, the symbol of a ‘fascist internationalism’.5 In peripheral Portugal, Salazarism also

made an aborted attempt to establish a League of Universal Corporatist Action (Liga de Ação

Universal Corporativa) that was much closer to the Catholic ‘third way’ as a diplomatic means

to export the Portuguese corporatist model – the most durable of all the corporatist

dictatorships, surviving from 1933 to 1974.6 Some variants of corporatist ideology spread

across Latin America and Asia, finding fertile soil in Brazil, Turkey, India and Japan.7

When looking at 20th-century dictatorships we note some degree of institutional variation.

Parties, cabinets, parliaments, corporatist assemblies, juntas and a whole set of parallel and

auxiliary structures of domination, mobilization and control were symbols of the (often tense)

diversity characterizing authoritarian regimes.8 These authoritarian institutions, created in

the political laboratory of inter-war Europe, expanded across the globe after the end of the

Second World War: particularly the personalization of leadership, the single party and the

3


organic-statist legislatures. Some contemporaries of fascism realized some of the institutions

created by the inter-war dictatorships could be durable. As the committed early 20th-century

observer, Romanian academic and politically authoritarian Mihail Manoilescu, noted, ‘of all

the political and social creations of our century – which for the historian began in 1918 –

there are two that have in a definitive way enriched humanity’s patrimony… corporatism and

the single party’.9 Manoilescu dedicated a study to each of these political institutions without

knowing in 1936 that some aspects of the former would be long-lasting and that the latter

would become one of the most durable political instruments of dictatorships.10

In this chapter we will examine the role of corporatism as a political device, against liberal

democracy, that permeated the authoritarian right and dictatorships during the first wave of

democratization, and especially as a set of authoritarian institutions that spread across inter-

war Europe and which was an agent for the institutional consolidation of fascist-era

dictatorships. Powerful processes of institutional transfers were a hallmark of inter-war

dictatorships and we will argue corporatism was at the forefront of this process of cross-

national diffusion of authoritarian institutions, both as a new form of organized interest co-

optation by the state and of an authoritarian type of political representation that was an

alternative to parliamentary democracy.11

Social and political corporatism during the first wave of

democratization

Corporatism as an ideology and as a form of organized interest representation was promoted

strongly by the Roman Catholic Church, from the late-19th through to the mid-20th century,

as a third way of social and economic organization in opposition to both socialism and liberal

capitalism.12 Much of the model predates the Papal encyclical, Rerum Novarum (1891), and

was due to the romanticization of medieval Europe’s feudal guilds by 19th-century

conservatives who had become disenchanted with liberalism and fearful of socialism and

democracy. 13 Indeed, corporatist ideas became increasingly the vogue among younger

Catholics frustrated with ‘parliamentary’ political Catholicism. Yet its influence on the

formation of the policies of European Catholic parties in the post-war decade was limited.14

However, ‘the church’s explicit endorsement surely moved corporatism from seminar rooms

to presidential palaces’, especially after the publication of the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno

(1931).15 Pope Pius XI assumed that as a result of the Great Depression liberal capitalism and

its associated political system was in decline and that new forms of economic and social

4


organization were now needed. 16 The powerful intellectual and political presence of

corporatism in the political culture of Catholic elites ensured it became one of the most

important elements in its spread.

Corporatism became a powerful ideological and institutional device against liberal democracy

during the first half of the 20th century, but the neo-corporatist practices of some

democracies during its second half – not to speak of the use of the word within the social

sciences in the 1970s and 1980s – demands a definition of the phenomenon being studied,

and for the sake of conceptual clarity, to disentangle social from political corporatism:17

Social corporatism ‘can be defined as a system of interest representation in which the

constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, compulsory, non-

competitive, hierarchically-ordered and functionally-differentiated categories,

recognized or licenced (if not created) by the state and granted a deliberate

representational monopoly within their respective categories in exchange for

observing certain controls on their selection of leaders and articulation of demands

and support’.18

Political corporatism can be defined as a system of political representation based on

an ‘organic-statist’ view of society in which its organic units (families, local powers,

professional associations and interest organizations and institutions) replace the

individual-centred electoral model of representation and parliamentary legitimacy,

becoming the primary and/or complementary legislative or advisory body of the

ruler’s executive.

A central ideal of corporatist thinkers was the organic nature of society in the political and

economic sphere. This was based on a critique of what Ugo Spirito called the egotistical and

individualist homo economicus of liberal capitalism, which was to be replaced by a homo

corporativus, who would be motivated by the national interest and common values and

objectives.19

During the inter-war period corporatism permeated the main political families of the

conservative and authoritarian political right: from the Catholic parties and Social Catholicism

to radical right royalists and fascists, not to speak of Durkheimian solidarists and supporters

of technocratic governments associated with state-led modernization policies.20 Royalists,

republicans, technocrats, fascists and social-Catholics shared ‘a notable degree of common

ground on views about democracy and representation’ and on the project of a functional

5


representation as an alternative to liberal democracy, namely as constituencies of legislative

chambers or councils that were established in many authoritarian regimes during the 20th

century.21 However, there were differences between the Catholic corporatist formulations of

the late-19th century and the integral corporatist proposals of some fascist and radical-right-

wing parties. When we look at fascist party programmes and segments of the radical right,

like the Action Française-inspired movements, the picture is even clearer, with many

reinforcing ‘integral corporatism’ vis-à-vis the social corporatism of Catholicism. Two

examples are sufficient to illustrate this tension.

In the Spanish Second Republic, the Spanish Confederation of the Independent Right (CEDA –

Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas), formed in 1933 through the unification of

a number of conservative Catholic groups and the first party based ‘on a politically-mobilized

mass Catholicism’ (which for electoral reasons was poorly defined), called for the

establishment of ‘a corporatist, Catholic and conservative republic’ similar to the one created

by Salazar in neighbouring Portugal and that of Dolfuss in Austria.22 When José Antonio Primo

de Rivera established the Spanish Falange (Falange Española), it was immediately suggested

parliament be replaced by a system of corporatist representation that recognized the family,

the municipality, the union, the business organization and the corporation ‘as the authentic

basis of state organization’.23 However, in an attempt to differentiate its political programme

from that of CEDA, the Falange strengthened its revolutionary programme, which included

the nationalization of the banks, and José Antonio managed to unmask some of the

conservative dimensions of the corporatist state.24

In inter-war Belgium, where the Catholic unions believed the authoritarian models – even

those of the Portuguese New State – were ‘statist’ and not to be followed (they even avoided

using the word), the right-wing of the Catholic party was inclined to view them positively.25

For those on the extreme right of the Catholic party, corporatism had to be ‘the basis of

political representation and a means of organizing the working class, which had lost all of its

independence’.26 ‘Some Catholics were sympathetic towards the authoritarian regimes in

Portugal and Austria. Corporatism was an important aspect, but few Catholics wanted to

replace democracy with a corporatist and authoritarian regime’.27 Despite the differences

between Flemish and Walloons in a Catholic subculture more sensitive to the working class in

the former and more mistrustful of the ‘masses’ in the latter, corporatism permeated the

political culture of the conservative elites – particularly the Catholic elite; however, their

6


influence on institutional reform was limited. In 1938, a very moderate proposal – more a

project of social concertation than of corporatist organization – was approved by the senate.

The Rexist Party (Parti Rexiste) led by Leon Degrelle emerged from a split within Catholic

Action in November 1935. Independently of the complex path followed by Degrelle’s Rexists

on their way to fascism, this movement’s roots were within the Catholic camp and did not

escape the rule of the authoritarian radicalization of corporatist representation as a means of

differentiating themselves from the conservatives.28 However, Rexism’s growing criticism of

parliamentarianism went beyond corporatism, which was not a central theme of their

political agenda. Other examples of similar tensions could be provided – from Romania to

Portugal – as we shall see below.

Although cut from the same ideological cloth, social and political corporatism did not

necessarily follow the same path during the 20th century. The historical experience with

corporatism has not been confined to dictatorships, and in liberal democracies ‘implicit

tendencies toward corporatist structures developed both before and concurrently with the

emergence of fascism’.29 In fact, occupational representation was not limited to the world of

dictatorships, with several democracies discovering complements to the typical parliamentary

representation.30 Corporatist ideology was a particularly powerful influence in Ireland’s 1937

constitution, for example, which called for the election of groups representing interests and

services, while several other inter-war bicameral democracies introduced corporatist

representation to their upper chambers.31 France in the 1930s (and the Vichy regime) became

one of the most important locations for the spread of the most significant variant of

corporatist ideologies, witnessing ‘a veritable explosion of corporatist theorizing as

intellectuals and politicians grappled with the implications of economic depression, social

division and escalating international tension’. 32 In addition to the neo-socialists and

technocrats, many jurists and conservative and Catholic economists translated, interpreted

and promoted corporatist alternatives, with significant transnational impact, particularly the

Institute for Corporatist and Social Studies (Institut d’études corporatives et sociales).33

Many ideologists of social corporatism – particularly within Catholic circles – advocated a

societal corporatism without the omnipresent state, but the praxis of corporatist patterns of

representation was mainly the result of an imposition by authoritarian political elites on civil

society.34 In fact, ‘whatever pluralist elements there were in corporatism (notably the stress

on the autonomy of corporations), they were annihilated by a foundational commitment to a

supreme common good, infusing with a sense of purpose and direction a complex pyramidal

7


edifice that had the state at its apex’.35Under inter-war dictatorships, social corporatism

became synonymous with the forced unification of organized interests into single units of

employers and employees that were tightly controlled by the state and which eliminated

their independence: especially the independence of the trade unions. Social corporatism

offered autocrats a formalized system of interest representation with which to manage

labour relations: legitimizing the repression of free labour unions through the co-optation of

some of its groups in state-controlled unions, often with compulsory membership. Last but

not least, corporatist arrangements also sought to ‘allow the state, labour and business to

express their interests and arrive at outcomes that are, first and foremost, satisfactory to the

regime’.36

Despite some dictatorships legitimizing themselves with a corporatisme d’association that

was closer to Social Catholicism, or which had some modernizing projects, the model adopted

by the great majority of dictatorships was much closer to fascist statism.37 As one French

observer noted in 1942, after studying the practices of five European dictatorships,

‘corporatisme d’association is seen as the only true corporatism... and it does not exist!’38 In

practical terms, the institutionalization of social corporatism in most dictatorships followed

models close to the proclamations contained in the Italian labour charter (Carta del Lavoro),

thereby demonstrating its primacy. State intervention, a large imbalance between business

and labour associations (with the former having greater influence and the independence of

the latter eliminated) and the creation of strong para-state institutions, was typical of almost

all the corporatist experiments. In fact, the elimination of free unions and their forced

integration into the state was the dominant characteristic.

However, during this period corporatism was also used to refer to the comprehensive

organization of political society beyond state-social groups relations seeking to replace liberal

democracy with an anti-individualist system of representation.39 As Williamson noted, ‘what

did unite the corporatist was their indifference to the concept of democracy and democratic

norms’ and from this it was just a small step to corporations as a representational structure.40

Corporatist theorists presented a reasonable diversity of the ‘organic basis of representation

drawing on the permanent forces of society’, in their alternatives to liberal democracy, but as

the Marquis de La Tour du Pin (1834-1924) noted, this representation must be ‘essentially

consultative’.41 The curtailment of this new legislature’s powers and the autonomy of an

executive with a head of government who is not responsible to parliament is an almost

universal proposal of corporatists in early-20th-century politics.

8


George Valois, the syndicalist ideologist of French Action (Action Française) and founder of

one of the first French fascist movements, encapsulated the functions of corporatist

legislatures when he proposed the replacement of parliament with general estates (etats

géneraux). ‘This body was not to be an assembly in which decisions were made based on

majority votes or where the majority would be able to overwhelm the minority; rather, it was

to be an assembly in which the corporations adjusted their interests in favour of the national

interest’.42 In 1926, the Spanish general, Miguel Primo de Rivera, was not engaging in

intellectual romanticism when he introduced corporatist principals in his dictatorship,

proclaiming ‘the parliamentary system has failed and no-one is crazy enough to re-establish it

in Spain. The government and the Patriotic Union (UP – Unión Patriótica) call for the

construction of a state based on a new structure. The first cell of the nation will be the

municipality, around which is the family with its ancient virtues and its modern concept of

citizenship’.43 In Austria in 1934, Chancellor Englebert Dollfuss reaffirmed the words of the

Spanish general – words many dictators were either thinking privately or repeating publicly –

‘this parliament… will never, and must never, return again’. 44 From this perspective,

corporatism was an extremely appealing proposal for crafting and a powerful agent for the

institutional hybridization of inter-war dictatorships, largely surpassing the ground from

which it sprang. 45

Since representation is an essential element of modern political systems, authoritarian

regimes tended to create political institutions in which the function of corporatism was to

give legitimation to organic representation and to ensure the co-optation and control of

sections of the elite and organized interests. ‘Working out policy concessions requires an

institutional setting: some forum to which access can be controlled, where demands can be

revealed without appearing as acts of resistance, where compromises can be hammered out

without undue public scrutiny and where the resulting agreements can be dressed in a

legalistic form and publicized as such’.46Another implicit goal of the adoption of corporatist

representation, Max Weber noted, was to disenfranchise large sectors of society.47 As Juan

Linz states: ‘corporatism encourages the basic apoliticism of the population and transforms

issues into technical decisions and problems of administration’.48

Institutionalized, in many cases in the wake of polarized democratizations, inter-war

dictatorships tended to choose corporatism both as a process for the repression and co-

optation of the labour movement, interest groups and of elites through ‘organic’ legislatures.

Nevertheless, if the introduction of social corporatism was firmly associated with the

9


European dictatorships of the first half of the 20th century, their transformation into the base

element of ‘organic representation’ in the new authoritarian political institutions, particularly

the ‘corporatist parliaments’ was much more diverse, even if its spread was much more rapid

(See Table 1.1). The constitutions, constitutional revisions and their authoritarian equivalents

are a clear indication of this dynamic. In the immediate aftermath of the First World War and

the early 1920s, with the exception of the short-lived regimes of Sidónio Pais in Portugal and

Gabriel D’Annunzio in the Italian regency of Carnaro, no corporatist parliament was provided

for in any of the new constitutions, but by 1938 the number had risen exponentially.49

Table 1.1. Dictatorships and Corporatism in Europe, 1918-1945

Country Regime Type of Party System

Social Corporatism

Political Corporatism

Austria Dolfuss-Schuschnigg (1934-38) Single Strong Strong Bulgaria

Velcheg Dictatorship (1934) Royal Dictatorship (1935-44)

No Dominant

Strong Weak

Strong Weak

Croatia Ustaše Regime (1941-45) Single Medium Strong Estonia Päts Dictatorship (1934-40) Single Strong Medium France Vichy Regime (1940-44) No Strong Weak Greece Metaxas Dictatorship (1936-41) No Medium Weak Germany National Socialist Regime

(1933-1945) Single Medium No

Hungary Horthy Regime -Bethlen Period -Gömbös Period (1932-1935)

Dominant Single

Weak Strong

Weak Medium

Italy Fascist Dictatorship (1922-43) Single Strong Strong Latvia Ulmanis Dictatorship (1934-40) No Strong Medium Lithuania Smetona Dictatorship (1926-40) Dominant Strong Weak Norway Quisling Regime (1940-45) Single Medium Medium Poland Pilsudsky Dictatorship

-(1926-1935) -(1935-1940)

Dominant Single

Weak Strong

Weak Strong

Portugal Sidónio Pais Dictatorship (1917-18) Salazar’s Dictatorship (1933-74)

Dominant Single

Weak Strong

Medium Strong

Romania Royal Dictatorship (1937-40) Antonescu Dictatorship (1940-44)

Single No (after 1941)

Strong Weak

Strong No

Slovakia Tiso Dictatorship (1940-44) Single Strong Medium Spain

Primo de Rivera (1923-31) Francoism (1939-1975)

Dominant Single

Strong Strong

Strong Strong

Yugoslavia Royal Dictatorship (1929-1934) Dominant Medium No In many cases, the corporatist or economic parliaments either co-existed with and assisted

parliaments or replaced them with a new legislature with consultative functions, which

provided the government with technical assistance. The most influential theorist of

Quadragesimo Anno, the Jesuit Heirich Pesch, did mention the economic parliament as a

‘central clearing house’ of his organic view, but he left its structure to the future.50 With

10


Rerum Novarum, the corporatism frame became clearer, with a corporatist reorganization of

society associated with the strong anti-secular principals of parliamentary democracy held by

Pope Pius XII. In 1937, Karl Loewenstein saw ‘this romantic concept of organic representation’

in new legislatures trying to be a ‘true mirror of the social forces of the nation and a genuine

replica of its economic structure’.51 However, the role of corporatist bodies within the

dictatorships was, as we will see below, much less romantic.

It is from this perspective we revisit the processes of the institutional crafting of social and

political corporatism in inter-war European dictatorships, on three axes: construction of the

political authonomy of the dictator and his executive from the legislative, the creation of a

single or dominant party, the levels of state control of Interest Groups, and especially of the

union movement, and the types (and projects) of authoritarian legislatures they created.

Italian Fascism: Quick diffusion and slow institutionalization

The institutionalization of corporatism in Italy is particularly interesting because while it may

have been an element in the spread of social corporatism it was the dominant model, and its

implementation was one of the slowest and with more inter-institutional tensions that the

other transitions to authoritarianism. Even as an integral part of the PNF programme and

quickly outlined in the declaration of principles in the 1927 Charter, it was to take another 11

years for the new system to be integrated and completed with the creation of the Camara dei

Fasci e dei Corporazione.

As a declaration of the principles of Fascist corporatism, the 1927 Carta del Lavoro fell short

of the aspirations of Fascist syndicalism; however, it was the most influential document

within those dictatorships that adopted social corporatist institutions, playing a role model in

Europe and beyond. As Matteo Passeti shows, the influence of the Carta del Lavoro crossed

borders, connected intellectual circles, contaminated ideological currents and inspired policy-

making as a ‘real epochal factor’.52

Drawn up by Justice Minister Alfredo Rocco, the Carta del Lavoro defined three main

principals of Fascist social corporatism: first, the authoritarian regulation of labour conflict

through the abolition of the right to strike and lockout and the creation of the labour courts;

second, the state monopoly on labour relations through the legal recognition of a sole

employer association and a single trade union for every sector; and third, the creation of the

first corporatist bodies through the constitution of the National Council of Corporations.53

These elements created a new authoritarian model of labour relations and the subordination

11


of interest groups to the state.54 Moreover, from its promulgation in April 1927, the Carta

del Lavoro was heralded by its promoter as a ‘universal document’. In Bottai’s words, through

this corporatist charter, Italy regained its pre-eminence among nations. The great depression

increased the pace of the popularization of corporatist policies and its institutions spread

across Europe and the world. Corporatism was now, more than ever, a transnational keyword

that met the expectations of the dictators and conservative political elites.

The institutionalization of political corporatism was, however, very much slower in Fascist

Italy. In the celebrated Futurist manifesto of 1918, Filippo Marinetti announced the

‘transformation of parliament through the equitable participation of industrialists, farmers,

engineers and businessmen in the government of the country’.55 However, even before their

fusion with the National Fascist Party (PNF – Partito Nazionale Fascista), the nationalists of

Enrico Corradini and Alfredo Rocco were the most systematic ideologists of integral

corporatism and national syndicalism. For Rocco, this integral syndicalism represented both

the integration into the state of organized interests and the elimination of parliament and

senate in favour of bodies representing professions and other functional groups.56 Rocco’s

statism was perhaps the most different from Catholic corporatism since it was a strategy for

the passive and subordinated integration of the masses into the state.

Many authors stress the primacy of institutional reform over the economic question in Italian

Fascism. In the inaugural speech of the Fasci di Combattimento (Italian League of

Combatants), Mussolini immediately referred to the need for the ‘direct representation of

interests’, which was also noted in the PNF’s 1921 programme.57 Mussolini and the PNF had

institutional reform and the elimination of liberal representation in mind ever since the

March on Rome of 1922; however, the ‘legal’ nature of the Fascist seizure of power, the

presence of a monarch who was heir of the liberal period and some inter-institutional

conflicts, particularly with the PNF, ensured the process was slow and full of tension.58

The first concern of the Fascists was to secure political control of parliament, which they

quickly achieved, while eliminating its capacity for legislative initiative and declaring the

independence of the executive and the head of government.59 Following this, corporatist

representation was an ever-present in the proposals for the abolition of a parliament that

managed to continue existing – at least formally – for a few more years. The capacity to

implement fully the reform introducing corporatist representation were limited. There were

significant differences between the projects of Giuseppe Bottai, in which the institutions of

the Chamber and the senate were illogical and meaningless in a corporatist state, and more

12


moderate proposals whereby parliament, and more specifically its higher chamber, the

senate, would be transformed in line with the new principles of corporatist representation.60

In November 1927, the Grand Council discussed a plan for reform that was supposed to

determine the issue of the corporatist state once and for all, but once again there was no

outcome and the regime carried on as essentially a hybrid, retaining liberal principles

alongside corporatist ones.

In 1929, elections were replaced with plebiscites in which Italians could respond yes or no to

candidates chosen by the Fascist Grand Council from a list of names put forward by the PNF,

the Fascist syndicates and business organizations. In this way representation became organic,

accompanied with the corporatization of interest organizations as outlined in the 1927 labour

charter, and the chamber dominated by the PNF. With the shift to the plebiscitary phase, the

primary responsibility for nominating candidates to the Chamber of Deputies lay with the

national confederations of legally-recognized unions, who were to put forward 800 names,

twice the number to be elected. A further 200 names were to be put forward by charitable

bodies with legal recognition, or by organizations of national importance. The Fascist Grand

Council’s task was to select the 400 whose names would appear on the approved list and be

submitted to the plebiscite.

In 1931, Mussolini called on the Fascist Grand Council to begin reforming parliament. The

secretary of the PNF, Giovanni Giuriati, who was also president of parliament, was charged

with the project. At the beginning of the 1930s, the debate around corporatism and the

reform of representation became a hot topic.61 There were several options available within

the limited pluralism of the regime, with the former nationalist, Rocco, calling for a model of

corporatism limited more to labour relations, while Giuseppe Bottai called for a more

decentralized model without forgetting the manifest desire of the PNF to dominate the future

chamber. Farinacci opposed the proposal to turn the National Council of Corporations into a

corporatist chamber because he thought this would undermine the PNF. Giuriati finally

proposed the establishment of a Fascist legislative assembly and the dissolution of the

senate; however, Mussolini, possibly in order not to enter into conflict with the king, opposed

the abolition of the upper house of the liberal era, which the PNF subsequently

‘fascistized’.62

Another commission was then created by hierarchies of fascism and jurists, supported by civil

servants who studied the systems in Germany, Poland, Portugal and Austria.63 It was not

until 1936 – 14 years after taking power – that Mussolini was finally able to announce the

13


establishment of the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations (Camera dei Fasci e delle

Corporazioni), and with it the corporatization of political representation. After two years of

discussion, the Solmi commission concluded its work. On 7 October 1938, the Grand Council

approved the bill on the establishment of the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations and the

maintenance of a senate by royal appointment, a legacy of the liberal past. The creation of

this new chamber marked the end of the process of institutionalizing the corporatist regime.

Among other things, this endorsed the union between party and corporation, which was

subsequently approved by parliament in January 1939. The Chamber’s official opening took

place on 23 March 1939 with 682 ‘national councillors’ in attendance: 18 members of the

Fascist Grand Council, 139 from the National Council of the PNF, and 525 from the National

Council of Corporations.

An essential characteristic of the new chamber was that its members took their seats there by

virtue of their membership of other bodies within the regime, of which the most important

were the Party’s national council, provincial administrations and the National Council of

Corporations. The reform also implicitly heralded the end of the concept of a parliamentary

term, as the chamber was a permanent body: its members would only cease to be national

councillors if they were to lose their posts within one of the regime’s bodies. This chamber

then became the functional representation of the PNF’s national council and National Council

of Corporations, while members of the Fascist Grand Council became ex-officio members. A

survey of its members in 1939 allows us to note a difficult balance between counsellors of the

PNF and the corporations, with the latter being – at least formally – dominant. In practice, the

situation was different, since the PNF was also represented within the corporatist

structures.64 Because he had to recognize all national counsellors by decree, Mussolini had

the last word.

Although the Italian Fascist model of corporatism has spread around the world before its

institutionalization, the Italian example was consecrated into a bicameral political system,

with an advisory corporatist chamber and a politically controlled senate, with a strong single

party and an omnipresent Grand Council.

Corporatism in the ‘longue durée’: The Iberian experiences

The more durable experiments in the institutionalization of social and political corporatism

were the Iberian dictatorships of Primo de Rivera and the Francisco Franco in Spain and

Oliveira Salazar in Portugal. Those of Franco and Salazar especially, because their longevity

14


made them an interesting laboratory for analysing corporatist institutions. The creation of a

single or dominant party and of corporatist legislatures also presided over the consolidation

of these regimes, enabling a safer assessment of their functions.

In September 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera led a coup against the liberal regime,

issuing a manifesto to the country in which he denounced social agitation, separatism and

clientelism. His imposition of order was justification for a transitional dictatorship; however,

he held a plebiscite on a plan to change the constitutional order and institutionalize a new

regime. This was quickly implemented through the creation of a party, the Patriotic Union (UP

– Unión Patriótica) controlled by the government, of a corporatist parliament with limited

powers and an attempt to integrate all organized interests into the state with the abolition of

class-based unions. 65 The fact the dictator was a soldier was no obstacle to the

institutionalization of the regime, and Miguel Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship was an

illustration of ‘the idea that the existence of a single national interest contained in military

thinking coincides with the vision of the common good of the organic-statist model’, an

ideological element that became part of the history of 20th-century dictatorships.66 The UP

played the role of the regime party in Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, despite the regime’s

limited pluralism allowing other parties to exist legally, indicating that ‘within the regime

there is only one party’.67 In fact, the UP represented the attempt to create a party from the

top down, based on sections of the conservative elites of the previous oligarchic parties. As it

was mainly an instrument of the dictator and of the government, the UP was weak as a single

party in terms of elite recruitment and as a decision-making centre that only exercised some

functions at the local administration level.

The institutionalization of social corporatism, started at the beginning of1923, with the labour

code and culminated in November 1926 when the Labour Minister, Eduardo Aunós, signed

the law for the institution of the National Corporatist Organization (ONC – Organización

Nacional Corporativa). In particular, as in the Fascist model, the ONC was a centralized and

state-led organization with a pyramidal structure that provided control over labour relations,

but although he admitted his intellectual debt to Italian Fascism and to its primacy, the

Spanish counterpart had more concessions to the liberal tradition, including a degree of trade

union freedom, retaining the right to strike and even collaboration with part of the socialist

movement, which was not banned. Eduardo Aunós was a genuine representative of

corporatism thinking in Spain in the 1920s and 1930s.68 He was secretary to the conservative

liberal politician Cambó and influenced by traditional Catholic thought and the works of the

15


Marquis de La Tour du Pin (1834-1924). He was also an international reference of the spread

of corporatism in international organizations, as president in 1929 of the 13th International

Labour Conference and head of the International Labour Organization (ILO). After the end of

Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, it continued to be one of the most active ideologues of

corporatism in Spain, in exile during the Second Republic, and joined Falange de las JONS in

1937, becoming a minister in Franco’s government.69

A national consultative assembly was established in 1927 which, as its name suggests,

collaborated rather than legislated. This assembly, the first corporatist chamber in inter-war

Europe, consisted of 400 representatives of the state, local authorities, the party,

municipalities and professional groups, in a process controlled by the interior ministry.70

Even while participating in this corporatist assembly, some conservatives remained suspicious

of its consultative functions. On the eve of the dictatorship’s collapse in 1929, the project for

the new constitution that would result in a dramatic increase in the executive’s powers and

the establishment of a single chamber, the members of which were to be nominated by the

UP and elected by direct and corporatist suffrage in equal measure, was presented to the

public. According to the preliminary draft of the constitution, the new parliament would have

been constituted as follows: half of the members elected by direct universal suffrage, 30 life

deputies by royal appointment and the others ‘elected by special colleges of professions or

classes’.71

Some of the institutional traces of this early dictatorial experiment in the Iberian Peninsula

were also present in Portugal, which experienced one of the longest dictatorships of the 20th

century, and which until the end claimed a corporatist legitimacy. On 28 May 1926, a military

coup put an end to Portugal’s parliamentary republic. Between the end of the republic and

the institutionalization of Salazar’s New State there were seven unstable years of military

dictatorship; however, it is worth citing the project for a new constitution that the leader of

the military uprising, General Manuel de Oliveira Gomes da Costa, presented to the first

government of the dictatorship just one month after the coup: ‘A new constitution based on

the following principles: national representation by direct delegation from the municipalities,

the economic unions and the educational and spiritual bodies, with the absolute exclusion of

individualist suffrage and the consequent party representation’.72 Other projects were

discussed during the years that followed, but this example demonstrates the importance of

corporatist alternatives in Portuguese anti-democratic elite political culture. In fact, in 1918,

during the brief dictatorship of Sidónio Pais, a parliament controlled by a dominant party

16

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizaci%C3%B3n_Internacional_del_Trabajo

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizaci%C3%B3n_Internacional_del_Trabajo


formed by the government co-existed with a senate with corporatist representation;

however, it lasted only briefly.

Even although corporatism was present in the dominant ‘political families’ of the military

dictatorship, from the integralist monarchists to the republicans, the many constitutional

projects discussed and presented to Salazar, alongside the institutionalization of social

corporatism with the 1933 National Labour Statute (ENT – Estatuto Nacional do Trabalho),

expressing tensions between the integral corporatism of some, particularly the traditionalist

monarchists, and the conservative liberalism of the republicans, or between President

Carmona who was elected in 1928, and Salazar. The single party, the National Union, was

created in 1930 from above and based on the unification of conservative elites from the

various parties that supported the dictatorship, was not a focus for any tension in the

institutionalization of Salazar’s New State.73

The introduction of social corporatism by Salazar’s New State (1933-1974) in Portugal

deserves particular attention since corporatism was written into the 1933 constitution and

given a central role in determining institutional structures, ideology, relations with ‘organized

interests’, and the state’s economic policy, as well as its long duration. The foundation stone

of social corporatism was contained in the 1933 ETN. As a declaration of corporatist

principals, ETN owed a great deal to Italian Fascism’s labour charter, although, as in the case

of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, tempered by the ideals of Social Catholicism.74 With the

ETN, approved unions were the first sector to be affected, and subsequent legislation foresaw

a long series of intermediate bodies that would lead to the constitution of the

corporations.75 Social corporatism was strongly institutionalized in the Portuguese case, with

agencies to encompass virtually all social groups and professions, but until the 1950s, when

the corporations were finally created, a sizeable part of the representation of the organic

elements of the nation was chosen by the corporatist council, made up by Salazar and

ministers connected with the sector.

The founder of the Portuguese corporatist system, Pedro Teotónio Pereira, was a former

Integralist, a radical-right Action Française-inspired elitist movement, who united young

radical-right-wingers, fascists and social-Catholic civil servants within his department. The

promulgation of the ENT provoked tensions with a native fascist movement, Rolão Preto’s

National-Syndicalists (MNS – Movimento Nacional-Sindicalista) because it ‘stole [their]

thunder’.76 For NS, corporatism was a key objective and the cornerstone of its plans to

reorganize the state. Although Salazar’s programme diverged from theirs, the ETN was

17


nonetheless a severe blow to NS attempts to establish a distinct identity while allowing some

of its leaders to join the regime.

Once the ETN was established and the appropriate control mechanisms created, the

organization of labour was undertaken. The government gave the unions two months either

to accept the new system or to disband. Substantially weakened after the 1926 coup, the

unions accepted the new legislation, albeit by only a slight majority. The most important

unions were simply dissolved when they rejected the legislation. In January 1934 a strike took

place to protest the so-called ‘fascistization’ of the remaining unions; these were then

recreated from the top down by officials from within the corporatist apparatus, although

many remained based on the previous unions.

The new unions were controlled by the National Institute of Labour and Welfare (INTP –

Instituto Nacional do Trabalho e Previdência). Their governing statutes and prospective

leaders were submitted to state approval. If they diverged from the ETN, they were

summarily dissolved. Even members’ dues came under official scrutiny. In order to keep them

weak and ineffective, national representation was not permitted. The rural world was

represented by the casas do povo (community centres). The regime did not recognize social

differences in a rural society overseen by ‘associate protectors’, actually latifundistas. The old

rural unions were abolished, particularly in the latifundia-dominated south. To ensure the

working classes were culturally provided for, the National Foundation for Happiness at Work

(FNAT – Federação Nacional de Alegria no Trabalho) was created.

The importance of the corporatist system becomes clearer when examining state economic

intervention from 1930 onwards.77 The pre-corporatist institutions that could ensure smooth

relations between the state and the emerging corporatist institutions, such as the

organizations of economic co-ordination, were maintained. According to official rhetoric, they

were to disappear gradually over time as the corporatist edifice neared completion. In

practice, however, they became central features of the regime, gaining total control over the

grémios (guilds) in the agricultural sector, the weaker industrial areas and the agro-food

export sector.78 The integration of the old employers’ associations into the new corporatist

system was asymmetrical, especially when compared with labour. Decrees governing the

grémios sought to reorganize employers and the liberal professions, but in a more moderate

and prudent fashion. The employers’ associations remained tentatively active. Although

supposedly ‘transitional’, some of them lasted as long as the regime itself.

18


The development of Salazar’s constitutional project at the beginning of the 1930s and the

institutions defined by him were symptomatic of the role of the various conservative currents

supporting the dictatorship and the role of the military. The first project called for a

corporatist system for the election of both the president and parliament; however, between

this and the project presented to the public in 1932 many changes were introduced by Salazar

and his council of notables.79 In the 1932 project, there was a legislature of 90 deputies, half

elected by direct suffrage and half by corporatist suffrage. This project was strongly criticized

by some republican military officials as well as by the followers of Lusitanian Integralism (IL –

Integralismo Lusitano) and Francisco Rolão Preto’s NS while the church was more concerned

with the absence of God in the constitution.80 Republican military officials criticized the

corporatization of representation while the MNS and the IL believed the constitution had

given up too much ground to republican liberalism. President Carmona and Salazar were

mainly worried by the distribution of powers between them.

Although seen as a model corporatist regime at the end of the 1930s, the final version

approved by Salazar and submitted to a plebiscite was a compromise. Portugal became ‘a

unitary and corporatist republic’, but the president and the National Assembly were elected

through direct – not corporatist – suffrage. In fact, the constitution opted for a single

chamber, with a national assembly occupied exclusively by deputies selected by the single

party, the UN, and elected by direct suffrage; however, it also created a consultative

corporatist chamber composed of functional representatives. The National Assembly had few

powers before an executive free of parliamentary ties; however, the corporatist chamber was

to be a consultative body. The Portuguese corporatist chamber, which was made up of 109

procurators and whose meetings were private, remained a consultative body for both the

government and the National Assembly.

The longevity of the Portuguese regime and some research into Salazar’s corporatist chamber

allows us to reach some conclusions (which, unfortunately, cannot be generalized given the

absence of comparative data) about functional representation. Despite the great majority of

procurators in the chamber representing functional interests, a small group of administrative

interests were nominated by the corporatist council that was led by the dictator and which

constituted the chamber’s elite.81 In practice, these ‘political’ procurators, making up an

average of 15 per cent of all procurators, controlled the chamber.

An analysis of a large number of the corporatist chamber’s ‘advisory opinions’ during the first

decade of its operation allows us to conclude that its function within the framework of the

19


dictator’s consultation system, ‘permitted it a first hearing of the impact of public policies and

to make suggestions about the implications of the measures to be adopted’.82 Finally, it also

underlined its subordinate character compared to the National Assembly, given that its

advisory opinions were not necessarily taken into account during debates in the National

Assembly.83 However, it is worth noting that the National Assembly was also given a

subordinate role as an adviser on legislation and was closely integrated with the executive

and subservient to it in a regime, not of separation of powers but of ‘organic unity’.84

Compared with Salazarism, Franco’s neighbouring regime represented the institutionalization

of a dictatorship through a radical break with the institutional liberal past – much more so

than Italian Fascism. The product of a bloody civil war, the main characteristic of the first

years of the Franco regime was its radical break with democracy. During the early years of

Francoism, ‘the nominal structure of the Franco regime was the most purely arbitrary of the

world’.85 Officially announcing a totalitarian model following the creation of a single party

formed through the forced unification of groups that had supported him during the civil war,

FET-JONS (Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista), under Falange

leadership – even if placed under Franco’s authority – not only managed to create a party

apparatus and ancillary organizations that were much more powerful, but its access to

segments of the new political system was closer to the PNF in Mussolini’s Italy.86

Social corporatism was an essential component of Francoism and its institutions, which began

to be sketched out in nationalist-controlled areas during the civil war, where tensions existed

between the Falange’s national syndicalist model and those of groups closer to conservative

Catholics. Not all of these conflicts were doctrinal in nature; some were expressions of the

fears within the Falange that its role in the creation of the new corporatist structure would be

reduced. However, these fears were not confirmed, as both the 1938 labour charter (Fuero

del Trabajo) and the definition of the institutional structure of the Francoist labour

organization gave the Falange a central role.87 In 1940, when the syndical union law required

most workers, technicians and employers to join one of the 27 multi-function, vertical and

sectoral syndicates, the process was controlled both at the state and party level by the

Falangists.88 Despite the fascist rhetoric accompanying the creation of the corporatist system

being powerful, with the removal in 1941 of Salvador Merino, the Falangist director of

syndicates, the party’s influence was to diminish and, more significantly, the original concept

of vertical syndicates was to be replaced with employers and workers being represented in

separate sections.

20


Under Ramón Serrano Suñer’s leadership, in 1940 FET-JONS’ political committee outlined the

first project of constitutional laws, which also anticipated the establishment of a corporatist

parliament. A total of 20 of the draft’s 37 articles were devoted to it. As Stanley Payne notes,

Serrano Suñer backed a ‘more fully fascist political system than Franco was willing to

permit’. 89 The most controversial proposal contained in this project was the

institutionalization of FET-JON’s political committee as a collegiate co-ordination body

between the state and the movement: a kind of Francoist version of Mussolini’s Fascist Grand

Council. Conservatives viewed this body as the interjection of the party in the state, and

Franco dismissed it.90

Franco’s decision to create a corporatist parliament in 1942 was an important step in the

consolidation of his regime – particularly given the tide of the Second World War was turning

against fascism – and the chief institutional innovation of this phase of the redefinition of

legitimacy. Religion and organic-statist views of state-society relations did play a central

role.91 The Spanish Christian roots, the exceptional historical position of the Caudillo and

representation of the people through a system of ‘organic democracy’, were to be the main

elements of the legitimacy of consolidated Francoism after the era of fascism.92

The Spanish corporatist parliament, the Cortes, was established as an instrument of

collaboration with Franco in whom all legislative power resided as regards the formulation of

laws. The procurator’s oath was only rarely present in other ‘corporatist parliaments’ of the

period: ‘In the name of God and all the saints, I swear to carry out the duties of procurator to

the Cortes in complete loyalty to the head of state and general of our glorious armies’.93

According to the law governing the Cortes, this new legislature was to serve ‘for the

expression of contrasting opinions within the unity of the regime’. Franco, the head of state,

would continue as ‘the supreme power and to dictate legal norms’, but the Cortes would

represent ‘a valuable instrument of collaboration in that task’.94 The first Cortes consisted of

around 423 procurators, made up of 126 members of the single party’s national council, 141

from the syndical organization, 50 appointed by the Caudillo and the remainder

representatives of the municipalities, families and associations of liberal professions, etc.95

Cabinet ministers and the head of the judiciary were also members.96 The large majority of

procurators were public servants; consequently, the weight of the bureaucracy within it was

very significant.97 The first municipal elections for the appointment of procurators by the

family, trade union and corporation corps were held in 1948. The only change in the

composition of the Cortes was the introduction in 1967 of 108 family representatives,

21


formally elected through a restricted electoral system. Needless to say, the cabinet was

responsible to the head of state and Cortes was designed to advise and to deliberate upon

proposed laws coming from the government. To avoid the creation of informal factions within

Cortes, its president was nominated by Franco and the heads of commissions were

nominated by the president of Cortes. Few institutional changes took place during the

dictatorship’s long duration.

The Nazi exception and the Austrian model: Corporatism in Germany and in Dollfuss’s Austria

The fate of corporatism in the Nazi dictatorship is complex. From very early on social

corporatism was present in the Weimar Republic and during the great restructuring of the

‘organized interests’, especially of labour under Nazi rule. As stressed above, one should be

careful when using the concept of corporatism in relation to Nazi Germany, but it help us

‘understand a number of important characteristics and institutions of the regime in its

relationship with industry, commerce and agriculture’.98

The founding programme of the German National Socialist Party (NSDAP –

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), published in 1920, made mention of

‘corporatist and professional chambers’, but political corporatism remained essentially a

playground for intellectuals until 1930 with little presence in Nazi political manifestos.

Nevertheless, some sections of the Nazi elite remained sympathetic to a ‘form of socio-

political representation by hierarchically-organized occupational estates (berufsstande),

which were to bring together individual and general interests in an “organic” manner’.99

Othmar Spann’s corporatist model was partially endorsed; however, proposals for corporatist

representation in inter-war Germany were mainly contained in the political culture of

conservative and authoritarian elites and the Italian ‘Fascist corporatism was praised as an

antidote to Nazi socialism’.100 In the late Weimar period, Von Papen had taken an important

step towards authoritarian government, liberating it from dependence on shifting

parliamentary majorities; but a second chamber with representatives of the professions and

corporations, an idea that had been advanced by some corporatist thinkers, was never on the

cards. The ‘window of opportunity’ presented by the Weimar’s late authoritarian period was

closed with the Nazi rise to power in 1933.

From 1933, the Nazi regime began eliminating free trade unions, integrating them into the

state-sponsored German Labour Front (DAF – Deutsche Arbeitsfront). Cristian trade unions

assumed they enjoyed special sympathy from the Nazis because of ‘their nationalist and

22


corporatist traditions’, but they were soon disabused.101 Workers, employees, craftsmen,

trade industry and liberal professionals were to be organized into five associations, with DAF

as the peak association.102 In 1936, with the creation of the central economic chamber, the

reorganization of employers’ associations was complete and was later articulated with DAF

and the Nazi Party, which brought Nazi Germany closer to the social corporatist model.103

‘Organic’ representation was never on the cards in Nazi Germany as well. As a Nazi law

Professor wrote in 1934, ‘The German people were not a static organism in the sense of

corporatist theories, but were “followers of the Führer on the road to the

Volksgemeinschaft”.’104 The fate of the corporatist institutions in Nazi Germany shows that

the Nazis were not willing to accept institutions that might curtail Hitler’s political power, and

political corporatism was apparently incompatible with the ‘polycracy’ evolution of the Nazi

political system in the late 1930s.105

Further south, in Austria the opposite was happening in 1933 and 1934. Othmar Spann and

other corporatist ideologists had a greater presence in the political arena. In fact, the

institutionalization of Englebert Dolfuss’s dictatorship in Austria was one of the most

complete expressions of an attempt at the authoritarian fusion of social and political

corporatism under the hegemony of authoritarian political Catholicism. Its most more

significant characteristic is that it originated from an authoritarian derivation of dominant

sections of the Christian Social Party (CS – Christlichsoziale Partei), and was based on a

constitution that promoted integral corporatism and was pursued after the assassination of

Dollfuss by his successors before the indifference and sometimes hostile reaction of Austrian

National Socialists, and which was suppressed quite brutally following the 1938 Anschluss.

In Austria, corporatism was a project shared by fascist Heimwehren (home guard) and

conservative Catholics; however, the hegemony of its institutionalization by political

Catholicism was obvious.106 From the beginning of the 1920s the CS put forward proposals

for the partial corporatization of political representation and, by the beginning of the

following decade, under the leadership of Ignaz Seipel, the CS moved away from democracy.

This CS leader was one of the most important supporters of the corporatist option as the

‘true democracy’ in Austria.107 In 1929, the CS repeated some of its 1919 proposals for a

corporatist upper chamber, a proposal that was rejected by the Social Democratic Workers’

Party of Austria (SDAPÖ –Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs). However, when

Dollfuss suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament, banned the political parties and

began governing with emergency powers, the transition to authoritarianism was enabled

23


through the institutionalization of corporatist representation formalized in the 1934

constitution. In this context, the influence Heimwehr fascists had on the corporatist option

cannot be understated, since it coincided with the time they had their greatest political

influence within the new regime. As they were closer to the Italian Fascist model and to

Othmar Spann, they had been proposing projects for the corporatization of the political

system since 1930.

The 1934 constitution established a period of transition, and when Hitler invaded Austria in

1938 a large part of the corporatization process had not yet left the drawing board. According

to the new constitution, the legislative structure of the Austrian New State was based on

three pillars representing self-government in economic, state and cultural politics, and

functioning as advisory bodies. They had to offer opinion on planned legislation when

requested by the government: the state council (Staatsrat), which was a kind of upper house

made up of 40-50 men of merit and character appointed by the federal president – it was

mainly concerned with matters of state and welfare; the Federal Cultural Council

(Bundeskulturrat), which had 40 members, including two women, who were all appointed by

the federal president for a six-year term; and the Federal Economic Council

(Bundeswirtschaftsrat), which was made up of 80 people and was the only body in which the

names of the seven professional corporatist bodies were listed in the constitution.

Overarching these pillars at the top of the constitutional framework was the Federal Diet

(Bundestag). This corporatist parliament consisted of 20 delegates from the state council, 10

from the federal cultural council and 20 from the Federal Economic Council. All these council

members were supposed to be elected by these councils, but after 1934 they were appointed

directly by the federal president. The Bundestag had only limited powers to decide on

proposals from and to the federal government.

In electoral terms, the organic vote was established; however, we should not forget that as

elsewhere with the absence of organized corporations these bodies were composed of

members appointed by the president and the chancellor since only two of the seven

professional corporations had been created by 1938. The CS was dominant in many of these

advisory bodies, although during the first two years of the regime the Heimwehr had more

places within them than their electoral strength in the parliament of the democratic

period.108 The government had a great deal of autonomy in relation to these advisory

bodies, which had only limited and partial veto powers that could be circumvented by the

executive. The subjection of the legislative branch to the government left little room for the

24


expression of opinion on public policy not sanctioned by the executive.109 In fact, between

1934 and the end of the regime following the Nazi occupation, 69.31 per cent of the

legislation was adopted directly by the council of ministers.110

A central element in the institutionalization of the new regime was the creation of a single

party, the Fatherland Front (VF – Vaterlandische Front), in 1933, into which segments of the

old CS party and the Heimwehr were channelled from above. Dolfuss, who could not count on

the unanimous support of the old CSP, which he called outdated, used this organization as a

highly centralized and completely obedient political tool; however, it has been noted the VF

‘remained a bureaucratic organizational shell with no dynamic development or importance of

its own’.111 The VF was given formal status in May 1934, on the same day the corporatist

constitution came into force. Two years later it was institutionalized as the only legal party.

Dollfuss declared himself the leader of the VF and appointed Starhemberg his deputy.

Starhemberg remained deputy after Dollfuss’s assassination in July 1934 until he was

replaced by Schuschnigg in 1936, who went on to combine VF leadership with the top

position in the state.

Membership was open both to individuals and organizations loyal to the ideals of the

fatherland as a substitute for a written programme. Dollfuss dissolved the CSP, just like he

had done with all other political parties, transferring its followers and their support networks

into the VF. The backbone of the VF leadership and senior state officials belonged to the

dominant conservative politics and bureaucracy. The VF was established as a single party and

its steering committee, the Führerrat, was similar to Mussolini’s Fascist Grand Council.

Dollfuss’ successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, was able to reduce the influence of the Heimwehr and

forced it to partially unite within the VF.

Corporatism in inter-war central Europe and the Balkans

The fate of political corporatism in central Europe and in the Balkans is more diverse since

many of these authoritarian experiences were brief, giving birth in some cases to poorly

institutionalized and hybrid regimes.112 Some of them were ‘able to work within a formal

parliamentary framework with a dominant government party that obtained a majority

through corrupt electoral practices, co-optation of some political elites and outlawing or

harassing those that oppose them, and by tolerating a weak and tamed opposition’.113 While

the form of government divided conservatives and the radical right, these regimes

incorporated significant compromises that led to the establishment of poorly institutionalized

25


regimes, with semi-democratic institutions and electoral procedures.114 Inter-war Hungary

and Poland are the closest examples of this.

The stabilization of Hungary following the successful counter-revolution gave rise to a hybrid

regime under the paternal but firm leadership of Admiral Miklós Horthy; however, it was

under the premiership of Count Stephen Bethlen in 1921 that the new regime was

consolidated. Bethlen, as with so many European conservative leaders, believed democracy

was ‘suitable only for rich, well-structured and highly-cultured countries’, which was not true

of Hungary in the 1920s. Hungary needed to be somewhere ‘between unbridled freedom and

unrestrained dictatorship’. 115 He carried out a programme of electoral reform that

reconciled a reduction in the electorate with a clientelist open vote in the rural districts while

retaining the secret ballot in the major cities.

The second step was the creation of a government party that would ensure, through political

pressure and clientelistic procedures, its domination of the system. This was achieved with

the creation of the Unity Party (EP – Egységes Párt), which from 1922 won successive semi-

competitive elections during the Bethlen era. 116 To the EP-dominated house of

representatives was joined an upper house restored in 1925 along corporatist lines, with

representatives of the three religious denominations, 36 professional and economic

chambers, 76 representatives of the counties and municipalities, 48 life members appointed

by Horthy and 38 aristocrats.

When in 1932 Horthy reluctantly appointed Gyula Gömbös prime minister, despite the

fragmentation of the Hungarian extreme right, the regime began to move to the right.

Gömbös, known as ‘Gombolini’ by his political enemies, had been the leader of a right-wing

paramilitary association and was a close associate of Horthy, who nevertheless mitigated the

most radical parts of the former’s strategy. He reorganized the EP, renamed it the Party of

National Unity (NEP – Nemzeti Egység Pártja), gave it more responsibilities in respect of extra-

electoral political mobilization, provided it with a small paramilitary section and turned its

attention to mass mobilization. Gömbös also planned a system of compulsory organized

interest representation based on vertical corporatism inspired by the Italian labour charter,

with several professional chambers in which representatives of both employers and

employees would handle labour issues.

He attempted to suppress the bicameral parliament (through the creation of a council of

state to replace the senate) and presented plans for the creation of a new parliament

26


consisting of elected representatives and delegates from the municipalities, state

departments and professional corporations.117 In 1935, plans for the institutionalization of a

corporatist single-party dictatorship were presented in the electoral campaign and

announced to Goering; however, Gömbös died the following year, and with him his plans,

which had in any event been blocked for some time when the corporatist system was taken

off the agenda and the reorganization of the party suspended.118 Some of the party’s

organizations were dismantled and it was restored to its ‘original condition of an electoral

machine based on the local bureaucracy’.119

Somehow anticipating the academic discussions on hybrid or semi-democratic regimes that

were to take place at the beginning of the 21st century, in 1972 one historian of Poland

defined the inter-war Polish regime as a ‘semi-constitutional guided democracy’.120 In fact,

when Józef Pilsudski led the coup d’état that overthrew Poland’s parliamentary democracy in

1926, it did not lead to a rapid transition to dictatorship. With his origins in democratic

nationalism, which was very different from the counter-revolutionary origins of the

Hungarian leading elite at the same time, some of the dilemmas in classifying Pilsudski’s

regime do not differ greatly from those of Bethlem’s Hungary. The concentration of power,

the creation of a dominant party coalition, the Non-partisan Bloc for Co-operation with the

Government (BBWR – Bezpartyjny Blok Wspólpracy z Rzadem), to support the general in

parliament and, finally, the presentation of a new constitution and of a more coherent

dominant party were the marks of his governance.121 While Pilsudski had many powers,

parliament – despite having been diminished and controlled – continued to be a problem for

the president, given that it still represented a very significant degree of pluralism.

In 1935, a new constitution attempted to limit much that was already the functional praxis of

the regime. The executive was made responsible to the president rather than parliament,

with article two stating the president was responsible only ‘to God and history’ for the

fortune of the state, a principal later replicated by dictators like Franco in Spain.122 The

constitution provided for a bicameral system; however, the amount of legislation that could

be decided by decree was increased. The decisive break with liberal parliamentarianism was

nevertheless adopted by the electoral laws defining the legislature’s composition. The

innovation was in the definition of the electorate, which remained individual and direct,

although candidates were to be nominated organically.

The parliament (Sejm) was reduced from 444 to 208 deputies, with the country divided into

104 two-member constituencies in which the candidates were selected by local commissions

27


led by a president nominated by the government and comprising of delegates from local

government, corporations, the chambers of commerce, industry and agriculture, the liberal

professions and trade unions. The scope for manipulation by the government was impressive

and a homogeneous and obedient Sejm was assured. The upper house was later reduced to

96 members with one-third appointed by the president and two-thirds by electoral councils

elected by similar organic institutions.123 Opposition parties reacted by boycotting the

elections.

Pilsudski died in 1935 and Poland remained a dictator-less dictatorship led by his closest

military associates, although with increased factionalism. The regime’s institutional fragility

following the dissolution of the BBWR led in 1936 to the creation of the Camp of National

Unity (OZN – Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego), a regime party that was better structured and

more powerful than its predecessor, and which was more of a single party. Adam Koc, a

young Pilsudski follower, endowed the party with a youth section that he wanted to offer to

the fascist Falanga, which had a more clerical and corporatist political programme. Koc also

proposed the liquidation of the trade union movement and ‘the establishment of a system of

corporations on the fascist model’ as part of OZN’s programme; however, this option was far

from consolidated when Poland was invaded and occupied in 1939.124

In the cases of Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, the political space for corporatist

alternatives and its relations with the attempt to create dominant or single parties was

conditioned by the relationship of power between the monarchs, the conservative parties

and their leaders within the framework of ‘royal dictatorships’.

In the case of Romania, the short dictatorial experiment did not lead to a consolidated

regime, but the clear goal was to institutionalize a single-party regime. When on 10 February

1938 King Carol II suspended the constitution and inaugurated a period of royal dictatorship,

his first steps were to abolish the political parties, create a single party – the Front of National

Rebirth (FRN – Frontul Renasterü Nationale) – and hold a plebiscite on a new corporatist

constitution. The FNR became a triage party for candidates during the legislative, local and

professional elections. The deputies and senators not only had to swear loyalty to the king,

now the leader, but had to wear the FNR uniform, as they did in the opening session of the

new parliament in June 1939.

The fascists of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s Iron Guard, the Legion of the Archangel Michael, did

not respond to the royal coup d’état, and initially accepted the Legion’s dissolution.125 The

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royal dictatorship sought to steal some of the Iron Guard’s ideological appeal, adopting the

propaganda of ‘organic nationalism, family, church and the gospel of work’.126 According to

the new constitution submitted to a plebiscite in 1938, the new parliament was selected

according to the sectoral categories of agriculture, industry, commerce, the professions and

the intelligentsia. Corporations were not the base of the process but a new ‘organic’ electoral

system. At the end of 1938, however, a system of guilds (bresle) was created to frame

professional interests by field of activity or profession, and which was responsible for

collective labour contracts.127 The senate came to be made up of representatives of the

‘state bodies’ and by leaders of institutions representing professionals included in the

categories recognized by the constitution.128 Ministers were chosen by the king and were

responsible only to him while legislative initiative was transferred from parliament to the

king. Manoilescu, the theoretician of corporatism, was an eminent strategist of the royal

dictatorship’s economic policy.

Following the execution of Codreanu and other fascist leaders, and coming under Nazi

pressure to integrate them into the regime, King Carol II reorganized his single party, which

he renamed the Party of the Nation (PN – Partidul Națiunii), which incorporated the

remaining fascists and to which membership was compulsory for all public and corporatist

office holders. Corporatism was a minor ideological component for Codreanu’s Iron Guard,

despite Manoilescu’s attempts to develop it.129 As the legionary leader Ion Mota stated,

corporatism ‘is entirely colourless from a folk point of view’ and just after modification of the

‘ethnic structure of the state’ could be an option for Romania.130

In 1940, King Carol II went into exile, leaving his son to preside over a duumvirate constituted

by General Antonescu and the Iron Guard, now led by Horia Sima. During the short time the

Iron Guard was the single party of the National Legionary state, no initiatives for corporatist

reorganization were advanced. When Antonescu withdrew the Legion from government, the

regime that remained took on the appearance of a military dictatorship with a plebiscitary

tone. Antonescu concentrated all powers without a single party and with a General

Plebiscitary Assembly of the Romanian Nation’ (Adunarea Obsteasca Plebiscitara a Națiunii

Române), a pompous name for the two plebiscites he convened.131 At the municipal level,

the local councils were replaced by administrative officials, representatives of professions and

trade selected by the prefects.

Corporatism also made a brief appearance in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and, more clearly, in

Metaxas’s Greece. In Bulgaria, following Colonel Damian Velchev’s 1934 coup d’état, both

29


parliament and the political parties were dissolved with the proposal to institute corporatist

representation through the creation of seven corporations (estates) that were to provide the

basis for the election of three-quarters of the members of the new parliament, the Assembly

(Subranie).132 In 1935, the Union of Bulgarian Workers was created as a voluntary syndical

union. Also established was the ‘Social Renewal Directorate’, an educational and political

leadership organization. Plans for a single party were nevertheless blocked by the king.

Feeling his position threatened, King Boris assumed full power, inaugurating a period of royal

dictatorship the following year, with controlled parliaments and electoral laws that were

carefully constructed to ensure government control of the chamber.133

In Yugoslavia, King Alexander opened a period of ‘royal dictatorship’ in 1929 that was to last

until his assassination in France in 1934.134 Alexander imposed a new constitution in 1931,

concentrating executive power in his person, limiting the powers of the bicameral legislature

while maintaining a quasi-universal public suffrage and creating a more centralized political

system. In December 1931, the dominant party was created. Initially named the Yugoslav

Radical Peasant Democracy (JRSD), based on the names of its main parties, in 1933 it was

renamed the Yugoslav National Party (JNS).

This was the context in which the king received a constitutional proposal that consecrated

corporatism from the Serbian radical-right politician Dimitrije Ljotics (1891-1945). Appointed

minister of justice in 1931, he was the author of a constitutional project following a

corporatist model that was rejected by King Alexander. In his own words, ‘an organic

constitutional hereditary monarchy, undemocratic and non-parliamentary, based on the

mobilization of popular forces, gathered around economic, professional, cultural and charity

organizations, that would be politically accountable to the king’.135

Ljotić resigned after the king rejected his proposed constitution, theoretically because the

project was too authoritarian. However, as Stefano Petrungaro notes, bearing in mind

subsequent political developments that resulted in a mild, but nonetheless authoritarian style

of government, one can wonder whether the problem with Ljotić’s constitution proposal was

not that it was too authoritarian, but rather because it was too ‘corporatist’ for the king,

representing a threat to his dictatorial powers.136 Nevertheless, with the second federal

constitution (October 1931) and law (March 1932), the institutional framework – although

not fully corporatist – became clearer: ‘an autonomous consulting body constituted by

experts on economic and social issues’ was created and its members, proposed by the

ministers and appointed by the king, were selected from among professional organizations.

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The economic council was made up of 60 members with the ‘representatives of capital’

playing a dominant role. The workers and public employees were assigned five seats.

Nevertheless, the 1931 constitution, and the ‘limited pluralist’ elections that followed

institutionalized a dominant party, clientelist and hybrid regime. In 1934, King Alexander was

assassinated in France and Yugoslavia returned to a semi-democratic path.

The ‘Fourth of August’ regime in Greece, was established in the wake of a coup d’état led by

the prime minister, Ioannis Metaxas, who was head of a small conservative, anti-

parliamentary and royalist party. Metaxas did not create a single party following the

dissolution of parliament and the political parties, as this would have been difficult for the

king to accept; however, he did place great hope in the creation of an official youth

organization, the National Youth Organization (EON – Ethnikí Orgánosis Neoléas), which was

inspired by the fascist model. A few weeks after the 1936 coup, Metaxas’s programme was

clear, ‘the old parliamentary system has vanished forever… with its 14th point indicating “the

remodelling of society by easy stages on a corporatist national basis so that a truly national

representation may emerge”.’137 In early October 1936, he stated his intention to proceed

to ‘a carefully and methodically organized, over a period of time and gradually, organization

of [Greek] society along corporatist lines [that will become] the basis for a carefully theorized

and planned system of a corporatist national assembly that would be in accordance with the

interests of the whole nation’.138 In 1937, he ‘drew up plans for … an all-powerful corporate

state’.139 In fact, the regime embarked on a ‘programme of “horizontal” restructuring of

economic and labour relations in a pattern that revealed the influence of the Italian Fascist

and Portuguese Salazarist experiments with corporatism, with this latter being particularly

evident in his plans for constitutional reform.140 The plans became more concrete when

Metaxas designed a new system of national delegation supported by two bodies: the

supreme council of national labour and the assembly of the professions, paving the way for

the institutionalization of corporatism as a system of political representation.141 According

to several sources, the king’s opposition to corporatist representation led to the

postponement of the project, but Metaxas’s own changes to the new constitution project

highlights his own hesitation on his institutional project.

Corporatism and the presidential dictatorships of the Baltic countries

The construction of personalized authoritarian regimes in the young Baltic countries was

rapid. In 1926, a military coup d’état in Lithuania brought Antanas Smetona to power, while in

1934 an almost syncretic series of coups led to the institutionalization of presidentialist

31


dictatorships in Estonia and Latvia, which were only brought to an end with the Soviet

invasion of 1940. The most elaborate attempt to institutionalize corporatist regimes in the

region took place under Konstantin Päts in Estonia and Karlis Ulmanis in Latvia.

The institutionalization of social and political corporatism in the Baltic States illustrates both

the greater distance from the cultural matrix of corporatism in Catholicism and the radical

right, as well as its almost immediate employment as an alternative to liberal

parliamentarianism. In Estonia, for example, Päts was far removed from the ideological and

cultural origins of his peers in Southern Europe.

Despite the influence of the Catholic Church and a generous concordat in Lithuania, the swift

concentration of power to President Smetona caused a number of conflicts between the now

dominant party, the Tautininkai, and the Christian Democrats, which had initially been

involved in the pro-authoritarian coalition. By the end of the 1930s, this party had a youth

wing and a militia. Parliament eventually became a simple consultative body and the

president elected by ‘special representatives’ of the nation selected by the dominant party;

however, despite this, pressures for the official party to have a more active role were not

supported by the president.142

Corporatist economic bodies were established during the 1930s, and even if it was the

opposition Christian Democrats who explicitly advanced the idea for the creation of an

organic state, its implementation became central to Smetona’s political discourse.143 The

strategy for controlling parliament involved an electoral process in which the candidates were

selected by the municipalities and not the political parties, which had in the meanwhile been

dissolved. The dominant party obtained an overwhelming majority in the parliament that had

mere consultative powers. With Smetona being glorified as the ‘leader of the people’,

Lithuania became the first authoritarian single-party state of the Baltic countries.144

After the silencing of parliament following the 1934 coup d’état in Estonia, in 1935 Päts

dissolved the political parties and sought to create a single party, the Fatherland League

(Isamaaliit), to support the president. This party was not so very different in its origins and

initial functions from those of its peers, such as the UN in Salazar’s Portugal, the UP of Primo

de Rivera or the Fatherland Front in Austria, and its elite had been co-opted from the former

political parties. With the hostility of the local radical right organized in the Vaps movement,

which was banned and periodically persecuted, Päts’ strategy in the meanwhile illustrated

that the ‘expropriation of the more popular ideas and external forms of fascism by

32


conservative elites and dictators was a common occurrence in the 1930s’.145 Organization by

occupational groups was promoted as an alternative to parties and parliamentarianism since

corporatist organizations ‘had been a pet concept of Päts’ for quite some time’.146 He even

claimed the legacy of German social democrats like August Bebel and the ‘self-governing’

traditions of guilds.

Between 1934 and 1936, the regime created 15 professional chambers, representatives of

which would later be assigned seats in the upper house of the National Assembly. In 1935, a

transitional institution to advise the government was also created, the State Economic

Council (Riigi majandusnõukogu) with 15 members elected by the occupational chambers and

10 appointed by the president. The political system was not made wholly corporatist with the

1938 constitution: the new Riigikogu, like the National Assembly, was bicameral, the lower

Chamber of Representatives (Riigivolikogu) had 80 directly-elected members, while the upper

chamber, the state council (Riiginõukogu), had 40 members. Of the latter, 16 were chosen by

the corporatist chambers, while of the 14 institutional representatives, six were appointed ex

officio: the commander-in-chief, the heads of the Lutheran and Orthodox churches, the

rectors of the two universities, and the head of the Bank of Estonia; local governments

elected four representatives, while the civil guard, education and culture, health sector and

ethnic minorities each elected one.147 According to the constitution, the right to nominate

candidates for the office of president was given to three institutions: the Chamber of

Representatives, the state council and a council of representatives of local governments who

were each allowed to nominate one candidate.

In Latvia, Karlis Ulmanis, leader of the main right-wing Agrarian Union (LZS – Latvijas

Zemnieku Savienemiba), declared a state of siege after several attempts to revise the

constitution to limit parliamentary power. Parliament was eventually dissolved, along with

the political parties – including his own; however, unlike his Baltic neighbours, Ulmanis did

not create a single party. Nevertheless, mobilization of the members of the previous party

elite was significant. Ulmanis initially ruled via the government, and once the presidential

mandate was over, in 1936, he combined the office of the prime minister with that of the

president. He nourished a cult of personality around himself, becoming the Vadonis (leader)

of Latvia.

The institutionalization of corporatism in Latvia was the most complete of all of the Baltic

States and historians have debated the external influences on it, including the Italian and the

Austrian.148 A total of six corporations were created between 1934 and 1938, and the old

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associative and syndical structures were abolished, with the corporatist chambers being

placed under the control of the respective ministries that nominated a large number of their

members. The regime also created a state economic council and a state cultural council to

supervise the activities of the different corporatist chambers. While some observers have

noted that Ulmanis wished to create a corporatist parliament, based on this embryonic

institution, permanently replacing the ‘plenary meeting of political parties’, the project only

left some traces. The first joint meeting of the two councils was convened in 1939, but the

Soviet invasion put an end to these plans. There were claims Ulmanis was seriously

considering the possibility this ‘joint summit’ of the two councils representing the chambers

would have a central role in a future constitutional design. 149

The fate of corporatism under Axis rule

The fate of corporatism in the so-called ‘puppet’ and satellite regimes during the Second

World War is illustrative of several facets: on one hand, the degree of independence and

diversity of the national political elites in the institutional design of these regimes and the

varied condition of the occupying forces and, on the other, the ‘economy of war’ factor,

which in many cases was instrumental for the corporatist models of social and economic

intervention. In this short analysis of the countries under Nazi occupation (Vichy France,

Slovakia, Croatia and Norway) we will give priority to the former, with the understanding,

however, that it is clear the war strengthens the corporatist arrangements of state, labour

and interest groups relations.150

The decision to introduce social corporatism in Marshall Pétain’s collaborationist ‘French

state’ was an illustration of its great influence in the political culture of the French

conservative and radical-right elites. Under Vichy the tensions inherent in the approval of the

charte du travail (labour charter) were not between the corporatists and anti-corporatists,

but rather between variants of the same species.151 In addition to this, the ideological and

legitimating output based on corporatism developed strongly and was present in the

discourse of Marshall Pétain and some sections of the Vichy elite. In fact, of all the regimes

associated with the Nazi occupation, Vichy was the one in which corporatism had by far the

greatest presence and, significantly, where it was most rooted ideologically among the

political elite, their institutions and their propaganda. Nevertheless, while social corporatism

made a real attempt to become institutionalized, the same cannot be said of political

corporatism, which was only vaguely sketched out in some constitutional projects.152

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The corporatist dynamic and principles are present from the first moment in Vichy: ‘The

National Assembly concedes all powers to the government of the Republic, under the

signature and authority of Marshall Pétain, president of the council, in order to promulgate

one or more acts of the new constitution of the French state. This constitution must

guarantee the right to work, of families and of the country. It will be ratified by the nation and

applied by the assemblies that are to be created...’.153 Pétain and his inner circle expressed a

public discourse based on an organic view of society, the basis of which were the family, the

region and the profession.154 Independently of the institutional tensions in the construction

of authoritarian political institutions, the dominant cultural model in Vichy, which was

expressed in its propaganda and ideological legitimation bodies, was ‘a conscious and

organized traditionalism... that favoured images of a rural, corporatist and religious

society’.155

Marshall Pétain, like other dictators of the time, used several ‘constitutional acts’ to

concentrate legislative power to his person, and ensured ministers answered to him alone.

Both parliament and the senate were suspended before being closed entirely in 1942. Later,

in the context of a difficult regime ‘coalition’ and Nazi demands, Pétain created the office of

vice-president of the council for Pierre Laval and increased the powers of a ‘head of

government’, giving it a more bicephalous model. In Vichy, the single party that had often

been discussed was never institutionalized. Against the background of a tense ‘limited

pluralism’, which included Catholics and liberal conservatives as well as the fascist parties, the

internal tensions and Nazi power hindered its effective institutionalization, determining the

centrality of a controlled administration.156

One of the first corporatist structures to be created by the Vichy regime, even before the

approval of the labour charter, was the National Corporation of Farmers (Corporation

Nationale Paysanne). Created at the end of 1940, designed to assist with the economic and

social reorganization of the rural world and coinciding with the legacy of rural associations

defending corporatism – such as Jacques le Roy Ladurie’s Central Union of Agricultural

Syndicates (UNSA – Union Centrale des Syndicats Agricoles) – the ruralist ideology of parts of

the Vichy elite and the urgent need for the administration to reorganize and regulate

production, distribution and agricultural price policies.157

The labour charter – the law on the ‘social organization of professions’ – was introduced in

October 1941. While it was inspired by Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal,

because of the powerful presence of corporatist economists, law professors, technical

35


experts, political activists and former union leaders it was not a straight adaptation of the

charters published in these countries. The Catholic Church hierarchy, with a more nuanced

reaction than its unions, and Catholic Action both endorsed the charter.158 In addition to the

establishment of compulsory union membership and the outlawing of strikes, the charter

organized the world of work in 29 ‘professional families’.159 The report addressed to Marshal

Pétain introducing the law, stressed its ambiguities, presenting it as a kind of framework law

that would organize the future of labour relations in France, rather than as a guide to

determine the course of their development; nevertheless, the purpose of the charter was

clear: ‘the creation of future corporations that are the great hopes for France’s future’.160

The efforts of Hubert Lagardelle, a former syndicalist and head of the Ministry of Labour in

1942 and 1943, to put in place the centrepiece of the charter – single unions or professional

social committees – had limited results, with the single unions struggling to see the light of

day and the first professional social committee not inaugurated until 1943.161 In the end,

only the company social committees were created as both managers and entrepreneurs

identified in them a means of institutionalizing forced class collaboration.162

The creation of the national council (Conseil National) as a consultative chamber may have

been the embryo of a Vichy corporatist chamber, but it was short-lived and, as in many other

cases, was unable to articulate social corporatism as functional representation.163 The

context of its creation was also complex and generated tensions between Pétain and other

groups within the Vichy elite. With 213 members, this consultative chamber included 49

deputies, 28 senators and 136 representatives of social, economic and cultural interests.164

It only operated between 1941 and 1942, introducing ‘advisory opinions’ and constitutional

projects. The way in which the national council operated was not too different from the

Portuguese New State’s corporatist chamber. There were no plenary sessions, as it operated

only through commissions, and its debates were private. In some constitutional projects

discussed by the national council, there was a concern for including corporations in a future

constitution, by reflecting its integration in representative-consultative institutions, but they

never saw the light of day. At the beginning of 1944 Pétain approved a constitutional project

to introduce a compromise between liberal and corporatist representation that never came

into force, defining a parliament elected by individual suffrage (the Chamber of

Representatives) and a senate with representatives of the corporatist institutions and

members of the ‘country’s elite’, in both cases nominated by the head of state. The remaining

250 members had to be elected via colleges that incorporated departmental councillors and

36


delegates of the municipal councils.165 Corporatist representation, unlike the labour charter,

never officially figured in any Vichy constitutional text that saw the light of day.166

While Pétain’s regime proved to be poorly institutionalized, the same cannot be said of

Catholic Slovakia, a satellite state with a status similar to that of Vichy France. When the

Slovak state was created as a German protectorate in 1939, the expanded heir of Andrej

Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (HSLS – Hlinkova slovenská l’udová strana) became the single

party, led by his successor and vice-chairman, the Catholic priest Józef Tiso, under the motto

‘One God, one people, one party’.167 Greatly influenced by the Austrian Catholic Church and

by Ignaz Seipel, ‘as early as 1931, [Tiso] moved away from parliamentary democracy by

endorsing the Catholic corporatism of Quadragesimo Anno‘.168 As Tiso noted in 1930, the

nation was a single set of origins, customs and language, constituting an organic whole.169

However, despite being the guide of the dictatorship and of the single party, Tiso had to share

power with Vojtech Tuka, who was more radical and had been appointed prime minister, and

whom the Germans wished to retain.

The new constitution, inspired by Salazar’s Portugal and Dolfuss’s Austria, sought to reconcile

liberal parliamentarianism with corporatism, and within the single party, the Party of National

Unity (SSNJ – Strana Slovenskej Národnej Jednoty), the pro-corporatist clerical faction was the

most important.170 The regime’s brief existence, Tuka’s more radical faction and the

influence of Nazi Germany and of the German minority prevented the rapid evolution

towards a consolidated corporatist and organic system.171

The 1939 constitution proclaimed Slovakia a Catholic state in which ‘the nation participates in

power through the HSLS’, and in fact the single party took control of parliament.172 The

newly created council of state developed into a corporatist upper house to advise Tiso, who

had in the meanwhile become president, and who in 1942 was to be proclaimed leader by the

Slovak assembly. Members of this Privy Council included the prime minister, the president of

the Slovak assembly and members nominated by Tiso, the single party and each corporation

(stände): moreover, in a manner similar to Mussolini’s Fascist Grand Council, this council

chose the candidates for parliament.173 The implantation of a corporatist system called

Christian solidarism was then programmed. All Slovaks were obliged to join one of the

corporations (agriculture, industry, commerce, banking and insurance, liberal professions,

public servants and cultural sector employees) that replaced the unions, and the political

cadres within these corporations had to be members of the single party.174 As in other

dictatorships, the institutionalization of social corporatism was resisted by industrialists who

37


denounced the plan as ‘revolutionary’.175

After the Axis forces attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, and its territory was

partitioned between Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and other client regimes, there were

some different strategies for political control.176 In the case of Croatia, the Axis established

the Independent State of Croatia (NDH – Nezavisna Država Hrvatska) while most of Serbia

was placed under a German administration that gave some powers to a more fragile local

government. The NDH was established under the political leadership of Ante Pavelić and his

Ustasha – Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Ustaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret). The

Ustasha movement was a radical ultra-national organization associated with fascism and

terrorist political action. Ante Pavelić, a lawyer and extreme-right politician whose main

political activity in inter-war Yugoslavia was always associated with the independence of

Croatia, went into exile in Germany and Italy on a number of occasions, which was where he

founded the Ustasha. During the 1930s, the movement was increasingly influenced by Italian

Fascism and German National Socialism. By the late 1930s, however, it was developing a

racist ideology through its demand for a ‘Gothic’ identity for all Croats and by idealizing the

peasantry. The Ustasha was fiercely Catholic, identifying Catholicism with Croatian

nationalism. As corporatism became an element of ideological convergence between the

Croat Catholic movement and Ustasha, most Catholic intellectuals in Croatia supported the

construction of a social system based on an organic view of society. As the decade

progressed, the Ustasha ‘adapted the Italian Fascist model to Croatian conditions. In the case

of corporatism, as on the national question, there was an unmistakable convergence of views

between the Ustasha and radical Catholics’.177

The NDH was marked by improvisation and the disarticulation between the party and the

state, as well as by generalized and terrorist violence against all ‘foreigners’, particularly

Serbs, Jews and Roma. Ethnic cleansing was at the forefront of NDH ideology and

‘totalitarianism and violence remained woven into the very structure of the state’.178 In fact,

one of the basic goals of Ustasha ideology was to create an ‘ethnically pure Croatia’.

Decision-making within the NDR was increasingly centralized in the person of Ante Pavelić,

who arbitrarily broadened and narrowed his circle of close advisers according to

circumstances and who was ‘always very unwilling to convene government meetings’.179 The

NDH introduced most of authoritarian and fascist-inspired institutions, even though these

were often poorly developed: the single-party, a youth organization, a system of national

labour syndicates and an outline of ‘professional organization chambers’ as the beginning of a

38


social corporatist system. In 1941, the Ustasha regime established the General League of

Estate and Other Fasces (Glavni savez staliških i drugih postrojbi). Although established in the

framework of the Ustasha movement, membership of one of the 16 – later 18 fasces – soon

became compulsory, as the aim of the system was to include and to steer all of the Croatian

economy and society. In May 1941, the Ustasha leadership established special communities

(zajednice), membership of which was also compulsory and which were intended as collective

organizations for the entire economic process. The Ustasha reconvened the Croatian

parliament, the Sabor, with a reference to the medieval kingdom. Members of parliament

were selected by the Ustasha government from among five categories, and meetings were

convened just a few times after the initial session. In 1942, a consultative assembly, the state

council, was created in preparation for a corporatist parliament.

In military occupied Serbia, the German authorities established a domestic government with

very limited powers. General Milan Nedić, a radical conservative nationalist, was put at its

head. Ironically, in order to fashion the institutions and government policy, Nedić turned to

Dimitrije Ljotić, the former Minister of Justice in the Royal Dictatorship of King Alexander,

who had resigned after the rejection of his corporatist constitution. After his short time in

government, Ljotić became leader of Zbor, a radical-right party based on small fascist groups.

During the Nazi occupation, he was able to reorganize Zbor and its militia, which became of

central importance within the collaborationist Serbian administration.180 The result was a

conception of the state as a blood community, religious Christian-Orthodox mysticism and

corporatist principles.181 As with the NDH in neighbouring Croatia, several social corporatist

organizations were established, although – as in other cases where they overlapped with the

need to prepare labour to be mobilized for the Nazi war effort. Included in the plans to

improve the status of Serbia that were presented to (and rejected by) the Nazi authorities,

the project to build a new ‘organic’ political structure for the creation of a Serbian state also

included a representational structure that would be articulated through a number of

‘people’s chambers’ at the village, municipality and state level, and which would demonstrate

the ‘resurgent, persistent and flexible nature of corporatist theories in the Serbian

context’.182

Quisling’s brief and limited rule in Nazi-occupied Norway is another interesting case because

it represents the takeover of (limited) power by a small fascist party, National Unity (NS –

Nasjonal Samling), which was influenced by both National Socialism and Italian Fascism in

both its ideology and political programme, but which was closer to Nazi Germany in its

39

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasjonal_Samling


international relations.183 On the very first day of the Nazi occupation of Norway, Vikun

Quisling, the leader of National Unity, led an initially unsuccessful coup against the Norwegian

government. Sometime later, though, National Unity became the single party and the main

instrument of Norwegian collaboration. It was during one of these phases that the Nazis gave

the Norwegian authorities some scope for manoeuvre and political independence with which

to construct a regime under occupation. When the opportunity arose at the end of 1942,

Reichkommissar Terboven announced the transfer of power to Quisling, who was appointed

President-Minister of an ‘autonomous government’.

When Quisling was appointed to this position his intentions, according to one of his

biographers, were threefold: ‘to conclude peace with Germany, introduce a corporatist state

and summon a Council of the Kingdom’.184 Corporatism had been a part of National Unity’s

programme since the 1930s, calling for the organization of a corporatist chamber that would

unite workers and employers under the same umbrella. While its proposals to reverse

parliamentarianism were vaguer than those of other fascist movements, National Unity was

in agreement with all other Scandinavian fascist parties, which ‘wholeheartedly opted for

corporatist ideas’.185

Social corporatism under National Unity rule was given its first push with the creation of the

Office for Corporations within the Ministry of the Interior in 1941. Almost all voluntary

associations were to be registered ‘in order to become corporate members of the state’.186

This process to institutionalize a ‘labour corporation’ faced a strong and partially unexpected

resistance from organized interests, with even civil servants, fearing the domination of the

state apparatus by the party, expressing their discontent to the Germans.187

Quisling’s plan was quite clear as it was implemented: the creation of autonomous, legalized

guilds (corporations) ‘along Italian lines’.188 The organization of guilds licenced by the state

and the new basis for a national assembly to replace the old parliament was the realization of

the new order’s authoritarian representation. Only the state-organized guilds were

represented. A memo from the interior ministry detailed the number of representatives to be

sent by each corporatist body, noting that members of the single party ‘would be required to

act as delegates’. In total, there were 120 representatives from the 13 corporations, of which

six had been established by the spring of 1942.189 This advisory corporatist parliament, the

Riksting, consisted of two chambers: the Næringsting (Economic Chamber) and the Kulturting

(Cultural Chamber).

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Students of Quisling’s short rule in Norway offer different reasons for the abrupt end to the

project to convene the Riksting and institutionalize the National Assembly. Among the

reasons was that this Riksting, with its limited authority, did not have the unanimous support

of the National Unity leadership, who feared it would be infiltrated by the old parties. There

was also some resistance from organized interests, particularly from within the economic

sector, to the forced integration into the state, while the Nazi authorities, fearing social

conflict, viewed it with suspicion. However, the most plausible explanation may be the social

resistance to ‘corporatization’, and the lack of belief that Quisling’s controlled assembly

'could be trusted as state organs’. Quisling then decided to make plans for a legislature that

was based on the single party rather than on the corporations. However, he decided to make

the Næringsting and Kulturting advisory bodies to the ministries of industry and of culture,

respectively. He announced this plan at the National Unity convention in September 1942 and

informed the party that a new constitution would have to create a new political

representation that was mainly based on the single party. The corporatist chambers should

be, in his own words, ‘exclusively of a professional and not a political nature’.190

Concluding Remarks

Inter-war dictatorships created political institutions that were to become generalized after

the Second World War: personalized leadership; the autonomy of the executive; and a single

or dominant party system. The major contribution of corporatist models to these

dictatorships was to offer a ‘third way’ between economic and political liberalism and ‘class

struggle’ socialism that legitimized bringing the independence of the union movement to an

end and the (more limited) state structuring of interest groups. This is the most important

explanatory factor in the transnational spread of Italian Fascism’s labour charter (Carta del

Lavoro) among inter-war dictators. On the other hand, and independently of the extent of its

institutionalization, corporatism also offered an ‘organic statist’ model of political

representation as an alternative to liberal parliamentarism.

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Corporatism has been frequently and legitimately associated with the Catholic political

culture of the early 20th-century, although Fascism also codified it as an authoritarian

alternative to liberal democracy. While was present in the institutions of some democratic

regimes, it was only in the dictatorships that a serious effort was made to organize political

regimes according to corporatist ideology. The success of this process of diffusion of

corporatism among European dictatorships illustrates the pragmatic adoption of

authoritarian institutions by dictators with weaker links to the cultural background of Catholic

or Fascist corporatism. While there was some variation, the ideology of a single national

interest, typical of anti-democratic conservative elites, proved compatible with the organic-

statist core of corporatism, with the successful practical experience of some regimes leading

to its rapid diffusion.

The majority of inter-war dictatorships were personalized authoritarian regimes. Even those

regimes institutionalized following military coups or military dictatorships gave rise to

personalist regimes and attempts to create single or dominant regime parties. The

personalization of leadership within dictatorial regimes became a dominant characteristic of

the fascist era.191 However, autocrats need institutions and elites to exercise their rule, and

their role has often been underestimated as it has been taken as a given that decision-making

power was centralized in the dictators.192 To prevent the undermining of their legitimacy

and the usurpation of their authority, dictators need to co-opt elites and to either create or

adapt institutions, like controlled parliaments, corporatist assemblies and other bureaucratic-

authoritarian consultative bodies, to be the locus of the co-optation, negotiation and

(sometimes) decision-making: ‘without institutions they cannot make policy concessions’.193

On the other hand, no authoritarian regime can survive politically without the critical support

of interest groups and such modern elites as bureaucrats, managers and the military.194

Institutional transfer was a hallmark of inter-war dictatorships, but the processes of diffusion

was differentiated. In the case of social corporatism it is clear the influence of Italian Fascism

was central. The comparative analysis of the labour charters or their equivalent within these

regimes demonstrates the role-model function of the Italian Fascist labour charter to the

great majority of these dictatorships, the national adaptations of which were an expression of

the ideological and cultural diversity of the coalition that established them (see Table 1.1).

The projects of authoritarian constitutions and labour charters, albeit in less statist versions

than those of Italian Fascism, generally began with the organic principle. Social corporatism

42


as the state-led forced integration of interest groups into para-state structures and especially

of the decapitation of independent union movements transcends the inter-war period;

however, the process of political engineering through which these dictatorships provided a

channel for complex interest group structure co-optation became a blue print of the 1930s.

In the Portuguese New State, Dollfuss’s Austria, Tizo’s Slovakia and even in Spain under

Franco, political Catholicism was a greater presence than in Vichy France, Estonia or Quisling’

Norway, for example. However, this is central in the design of a common heritage for the

creation of structures of interest intermediation, for the dissolution of independent unions

and the establishment of state-led bargaining structures within these regimes. Even when

such institutions remain on paper, as in the case of Greece under Metaxas, the outlines are

very similar. The institutional design of some projects in German-occupied Europe are also

very instructive, since they were the product of regimes that found a ‘window of opportunity’

enabling them to implement social corporatism because of its local strong ideological

presence rather than as a result of pressure from the Nazi authorities. That was clearly the

case in Vichy, Slovakia and Quisling’s Norway.

The quasi-universal adoption of social corporatism by inter-war dictatorships was not always

followed, as some theorists anticipated, with the institutionalization of corporatism as a

representational structure. However, even where it was, the creation of ‘organic legislatures’

should not be separated from the creation of the regime parties – whether single or

dominant – that provided legitimation for the abolition of political pluralism, forcing the

authoritarian coalition to merge in a single or dominant party under personalized rule.

As we have seen above, very few inter-war European dictatorships existed without a single or

dominant party. If the regimes of Italy and Germany were based on a takeover of power by a

fascist party, many civilian and military rulers of inter-war Europe did not have a ‘ready-made

organization upon which to rely’.195 In order to counteract their precarious position,

dictators tended to create regime parties. Some fascist movements emerged during the inter-

war period either as rivals to or as unstable partners within the single or dominant

government party, and often as inhibitors to their formation, making the institutionalization

of the regimes more difficult for the dictatorial candidates – as in the case of Vichy or

Romania. However, almost all of the inter-war dictatorships created (or attempted to create)

43


single or dominant parties that would become the dominant political institutions in these new

regimes.

Some of these parties represent an interesting example of party formation within an

authoritarian context. Genetically, they are parties created ‘from above’ that sought to

monopolize political representation and channel and neutralize the large and contradictory

bloc supporting the dictatorship. They were a variant of ‘unified parties’, representing ‘the

fusion from above of a new political entity’ that forces existing conservative political groups

to integrate or be excluded.196 The founding agreement may, to varying degrees, include

existing parties or pressure groups. This is particularly important when elections and other

forms of constitutional representation are still in use, even if in a limited way, as was the case

in Hungary and Poland. Such parties generally lack a representational monopoly and co-exist

with other ‘organic’ political institutions over which they have no control and have a party

apparatus with limited independence from the government and administration. The absence

of a codified ideology is also a product of their being a post facto creation. In some

dictatorships, where corporatism became an important element of the official ideology – as in

Salazar’s Portugal – the single party was defined as the ‘national corporation of politics’,197

and the names of these parties symbols of the organic-statist projects of the dictatorships:

the Primo de Rivera’s Patriotic Union, Salazar’s National Union, the Hungarian Party of

National Unity and the Polish National Unity Camp. The failed attempts at creating royal

dictatorships in Romania (Party of the Nation) and Yugoslavia (Yugoslav National Party) were

examples of the same pattern. Regardless of their origins though (whether predating the

dictatorship or created from above following the breakdown of the previous regime) or their

nature (whether mass or elite parties) they performed similar roles in the new political

system by providing an institutionalized interaction between the dictator and his allies and

political control over corporatist institutions in the majority of inter-war dictatorships.

Corporatist theorists may have diverged in terms of organic political representation, but

contextual factors were central to the design of new forms of representation. The ideology of

the corporatist state as a state based on functional rather than individual forms of

representation was perhaps most powerful in the authoritarian sectors of the right in inter-

war Europe: nevertheless, its implementation in the dictatorships was incomplete and much

less universal. Despite the primacy of social corporatism, the constitution of organic political

representation as an alternative to parliamentary democracy also plays a central role in the

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institutional development of inter-war dictatorships, transcending – and in many cases

incorporating – historical fascism. Mussolini’s Italy has a much more limited role in the

dissemination of corporatist legislatures: as noted above, the comparative analysis of

constitutions and processes of institutional reform show Portugal under Salazar and Austria

under Dollfuss had a more significant role. Moreover, Italian Fascism was undergoing

institutional reform right up until the end of the 1930s: the Fascist and Corporatist Chamber

was not created until 1938.

The diversity of legislatures designed by authoritarian constitutions and institutional reforms

suggests the domination of mixed systems of single or dominant party legislatures with

corporatist chambers.198 Very few inter-war European dictators had, from the start, the

institutional power General Franco had in 1939, with the majority of them experiencing great

difficulties with the institutional design of their regimes, leading them into an

accommodation with the more prominent members of the coalitions that brought them to

power. In such cases, the ‘institutionalized interaction between the dictator and his allies

results in greater transparency among them, and by virtue of their formal structure,

institutions provide a publicly observable signal of the dictator’s commitment to power-

sharing’.199 Nevertheless, however appealing the principle of corporatist representation may

have been to authoritarian rulers, the creation of corporatist legislatures was much more

difficult to implement in many dictatorships, even when it had been part of the dictators’

programme. In some countries, such as in Greece, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, it was blocked by

monarchs who feared losing their power, while in others, such as Portugal, it was the initial

compromise with segments of conservative liberal parties that led to the institutionalization

of bicameral systems with a corporatist chamber and a parliament controlled by the

dominant or single party. In Austria, although never fully implemented, the pattern was for

almost integral functional representation.

To conclude, as far as can be observed from the case-studies analysed above, the political

institutions of the dictatorships – even authoritarian legislatures– were not as many students

of fascism have suggested, merely window dressing. Dictators also need compliance and co-

operation and in some cases, in order ‘to organize policy compromises, dictators need these

institutions’ that can serve as forums in which factions, and even the regime and its

opposition, can forge agreements‘, that can help authoritarian rulers maintain coalitions and

survive in power.’200 As we have seen, corporatist parliaments are not just institutions for

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legitimizing dictatorships, they can also be the locus of that process. If this is so, corporatism,

with a single or dominant party, was the inter-war dictatorships’ most powerful institutional

device and certainly their lowest common denominator.

1 J. D. Handerson, Conservative Though in Twentieth Century Latin America, The Ideas of Laureano Gómez, Athens, Center for Latin American Studies, 1988; D. Nicolás Motta, Laureano Gómez Castro y su Proyeto de Reforma Constitucional (1951-1973), Bogota: Universidad de Rosário, 2008. 2 A. C. Pinto, The Nature of Fascism Revisited, New York, SSM-Columbia University Press, 2013, particularly Chapter 7, ‘Fascism, corporatism, and authoritarian institutions in inter-war European dictatorships’. 3 Like Alfred Stepan and Juan Linz, we use this expression to refer to the ‘vision of political community in which the component parts of society harmoniously combine… and also because of the assumption that such harmony requires power and the unity of civil society by “the architectonic action of public authorities” – hence “organic-statism”.’ See A. Stepan, The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1978; J. J. Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 2000, pp. 215-17. 4 See P. J. Williamson, Varieties of Corporatism: A Conceptual Discussion, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985. 5 On the expansion of corporatist ‘internationalist thought’ attempted in Fascist Italy, see S. Cassese, Lo Stato fascista, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010, pp. 89–98; J. Steffek, ‘Fascist Internationalism’, Millenium: Journal of International Studies, 2015, September 2015, 44, pp. 3–22; M. Pasetti, L'Europa corporativa: Una storia transnazionale tra le due guerre mondiali, Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2016. 6 M. de Lucena, A Evolução do Sistema Corporativo Português, Vol. 1: O Salazarismo, Lisbon, Perspectivas e Realidades, 1976; H. J. Wiarda, Corporatism and Development: The Portuguese Experience, Amherst, MA, University of Massachusetts Press, 1977; J. M. T. Castilho, Os Procuradores à Camara Corporativa, 1935–1974, Lisbon, Texto, 2010. 7 D. Musiedlak, ed., Les Experiences Corporatives dans L’Aire Latine, Bern, Peter Lang, 2010; A. C. Pinto and F. P. Martinho, eds, A Vaga Corporativa: Corporativismo e Ditaduras na Europa e na America Latina, Lisbon, Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2016; T. Parla and A. Davison, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order?, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004; M. Franke, ‘Fascist Italy: Ideal template for India’s economic development?’, in H. Schultz-Forberg, ed., Zero Hours: Conceptual Insecurities and New Beginnings in the Inter-war Period, Brussels, P. I. E. Peter Lang, 2013, pp. 77–115; R. Hofmann, The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952, Ithaca, NY, and London, Cornell University Press, 2015. 8 A. Perlmutter, Modern Authoritarianism: A Comparative Institutional Analysis, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1981, p. 10.

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9 M. Manoilescu, Le Parti Unique: Institution Politique des Regimes Nouveaux, Paris, Les Oeuvres Françaises, 1936, p. viii. 10 M. Manoilescu, Le Siècle du Corporatisme, Paris, Librairie Felix Alcan, 1934; Manoilescu. 11 For a typology of outcomes of diffusion in this period, see K. Weyland, Making Waves: Democratic Contention in Europe and Latin America since the Revolutions of 1848, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 35–77. 12 M. Conway, ‘Catholic politics or Christian democracy? The evolution of inter-war political Catholicism’, in W. Kaiser and H. Wohnout, eds, Political Catholicism in Europe, 1918–45, vol. 1, London, Routledge, 2004, pp. 235–51. See Pollard in this volume. 13 See O. Von Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, London: Cambridge University Press, 1922. 14 S. N. Kalyvas, The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. 15 R. Morck and B. Yeung, ‘Corporatism and the ghost of the third way’, Capitalism and Society, 5, no. 3, 2010, p. 4. 16 C. S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade after World War I, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975 (2015). 17 For an overview of this literature on corporatism, the ‘new corporatism’ and neo-corporatism, see P. J. Williamson, Varieties of Corporatism: A Conceptual Discussion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985; Corporatism in Perspective, London: Sage, 1989; J. L. Cardoso and P. Mendonça, ‘Corporatism and beyond: An assessment of recent literature‘, ICS Working papers, 1, University of Lisbon, 2012. 18 P. C. Schmitter, ‘Still the century of corporatism?’, in F. B. Pike and T. Stritch, eds, The New Corporatism: Social-Political Structures in the Iberian World, Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1974, p. 94. 19 C. Bastien and J. L. Cardoso, ‘From homo economicus to homo corporativus: A neglected critique of neo-classical economics’, The Journal of Social Economics, 36, 2007, pp. 118–27. 20 O. Dard, ‘Le corporatisme entre traditionalistes et modenisateurs: Des groupements aux cercles du pouvoir’, in Musiedlak, Les experiences corporatives, op. cit., pp. 67–102. 21 P. J. Williamson, Corporatism in Perspective, op. cit., p. 32. 22 S. G. Payne, Franco y José António: El Extraño Caso del Fascism Español, Madrid: Planeta, 1997, p. 116. 23 Ibid, p. 178. 24 F. B. Garcia, El Sindicalismo Vertical: Burocracia, Control Laboral y Representación de Interesses en la España Franquista (1936–51), Madrid: Centro de Estúdios Políticos e Constitucionales, 2010. 25 D. Luyten, ‘La receptions des corporatismes étrangers et le débat sur le corporatisme en Belgique dans les années trente à l’aune des transfers politiques’, in O. Dard, ed., Le Corporatisme dans L’Aire Francophone au XX ème Siècle, Bern: Peter Lang, 2011, pp. 139-148.

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26 D. Luyten, ‘Un corporatisme belge, réponse à la crise du liberalisme’, in O. Dard and E. Descamps, eds, Les Relèves en Europe d’un Après-Guerre à L’autre: Racines, Réseaux, Projets et Postérités, Brussels: P. I. E. Peter Lang, 2005, p. 201. 27 E. Gerard, ‘Religion, class and language: The Catholic Party in Belgium’, in W. Kaiser and H. Wohnout, eds, Political Catholicism in Europe, p. 106. 28 M. Conway, Collaboration in Belgium: Léon Degrelle and the Rexist Movement, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003, p. 45. 29 L. Panitch, ‘The development of corporatism in liberal democracies’, Comparative Political Studies, 10, no. 1, 1977, p. 629. 30 See S. F. Riquelme, ‘La era del corporativismo: La representación jurídica-política del trabalho en la Europa del siglo XX’, Revista de Estudios Histórico-Jurídicos, XXXI, 2009, pp. 399–425. 31 K. Lowerstein, ‘Occupational representation and the idea of an economic parliament’, Social Science, October 1937, p. 426. On Ireland see as an element of the debate within Catholic circles, E. J. Coyne, ‘The vocational structure of Ireland’, The Irish Monthly, 66, no. 780, June 1938, pp. 394–402. 32 M. Hawkins, ‘Corporatism and third-way discourses in inter-war France’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 7, no. 3, 2002, p. 302. 33 S. Caplan, ‘Un laboratoire de la doctrine corporatiste sous le régime de Vichy: l’Institut d’études corporatives et sociales’, Le Mouvement Social, 195, Abril–June 2001, pp. 35–77; A. Chatriot, ‘Un débat politique incertain: Le corporatisme dans la France des années 1930’, Les Études sociales, 157–158, 2013, pp. 231–244. 34 Stepan, The State and Society, op. cit., p. 47. 35 C. Laborde, Pluralist Thought and the State in Britain and France, 1900–1925, London: Macmillan, 2000, p. 165. 36 W. Kim and J. Gandhi, ‘Co-opting workers under dictatorship’, The Journal of Politics, 72, no. 3, 2010, p. 648. 37 See M. Feldman, M. Turda, T. Georgescu, eds, Clerical Fascism in Interwar Europe, London: Routledge, 2008. 38 L. Baudin, Le Corporatisme. Italie, Portugal, Allemagne, Espagne, France, Paris: Libraire Generale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1942, p. 141. 39 D. A. Chalmers, ‘Corporatism and comparative politics’, in H. J. Wiarda, ed., New Directions in Comparative Politics, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991, p. 63. 40 Williamson, Varieties of Corporatism, p. 63. 41 Ibid. p. 69. 42 See A. Chatriot, ‘Georges Valois, la representation professionelle et le syndicalisme’, in O. Dard, ed., Georges Valois: Intinéraire et Receptions, Berne: Peter Lang, 2011, p. 65. 43 Cited in J. L. Gómez Navarro, El Regimen de Primo de Rivera, Madrid: Catedra, 1991, p. 234. 44 H. Wohnout, ‘Middle-class governmental party and secular arm of the Catholic Church: The Christian Socials in Austria’, in Kaiser and Wohnout, Political Catholicism, op. cit., p. 184.

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45 On this process of hybridization in inter-war dictatorships see A. C. Pinto and A. Kallis, eds, Rethinking Fascism and Dictatorship in Europe, London: Palgrave, 2013. 46 J. Gandhi and A. Przeworski, ‘Authoritarian institutions and the survival of autocrats’, Comparative Political Studies, 40, no. 11, 2007, p. 1282. 47 M. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1968, pp. 1, 298. 48 And ‘those chambers are only components in their regimes… no legislature in an authoritarian regime has either the formal or de facto power to question the ultimate authority of a ruler or ruling group’. See J. J. Linz, ‘Legislatures in organic-statist-authoritarian regimes: The case of Spain’, in J. Smith and L. D. Musolf, eds, Legislatures in Development: Dynamics of Change in New and Old States, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979, pp. 91, 95. 49 See B. Mirkine-Guetzevitch, Les Constitutions de l’Europe Nouvelle, Paris, Delagrave, 1928 and the revised and expanded edition of 1938; Pedro Velez, Das Constituições dos Regimes Nacionalistas de entre-guerras, Lisbon, Imprensa de Ciências Sociais (Forthc. 2017). 50 P. Misner, ‘Christian democratic social policy: Precedents for third-way thinking’, in T. Kselman and J. A. Buttigieg, eds, European Christian Democracy: Historical Legacies and Comparative Perspectives, Notre Dame, IN, Notre Dame University Press, 2003, p. 77. 51 K. Loewenstein, ‘Occupational representation and the idea of an economic parliament’, p. 423. 52 Saverio Battente, Alfredo Rocco: Dal Nazionalismo al Fascismo, 1907-1935, Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2005. 53 A. Gagliardi, Il Corporativismo Fascista, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2010; M. Pasetti, ‘Neither bluff nor revolution: The corporations and the consolidation of the Fascist regime (1925–1926)’, in G. Albanese and R. Pergher, eds, In the Society of Fascists: Acclamation, Acquiescence, and Agency in Mussolini’s Italy, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 87–107. 54 See D. D. Roberts, The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979. 55 See A. Gagliardi, Il Corporativismo Fascista, p. 4. 56 A. J. de Grand, The Italian National Association and the Rise of Fascism in Italy, Lincoln, NE, and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1978, p. 100. 57 F. Perfetti, ‘La discussion sul corporativismo in Italia’, in Musiedlak, Les Experiences Corporatives, pp. 102–115; Gagliardi, Il corporativismo fascista. 58 See F. Perfetti, Fascismo e Riforma Istituzionali, Florence, Le Lettere, 2013. 59 D. Musiedlak, Lo Stato Fascista e la sua Classe Politica, 1922-43, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2003; G. Adinolfi, ‘Political elite and decision-making in Mussolini’s Italy‘, in A. C. Pinto, ed., Ruling Elites and Decision-Making in Fascist-Era Dictatorships, New York, NY, Columbia University Press, 2009, pp. 19-54. 60 See I. Stolzi, L’Ordine Corporativo: Poteri Organizzati e Organizzazione del Potere nella Riflessione Giuridica dell'Italia Fascista, Florence, Giuffrè Editore, 2007; Antonio Esposito, Giuristi e Stato Corporativo, Tricase, Youcanprint, 2015.

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61 Perfetti, ‘La discussion’. 62 P. Colombo, La Monarchia Fascista, 1922-1940, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2010, p. 105. 63 M. di Napoli, ‘The Italian Chamber of Fasci and Corporazioni: A substitute for parliament in a totalitarian regime’, W. Brauneder and E. Berger, eds, Repräsentation in Föderalismus und Korporativismus, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 1998, p. 257. 64 Musiedlak, ‘Le corporatisme dans la structure’; J.-Y. Dormagen, Logiques du Fascisme: L’État Totalitaire en Italie, Paris, Fayard, 2008. 65 M. A. Perfecto, ‘Influências ideológicas no projecto de corporativismo político-social da ditadura de Primo de Rivera (1923-1930)’, Penélope 5, 1991, pp. 99-108. 66 Navarro, El regimen de Primo de Rivera, p. 86. 67 Ibid, p. 207. 68 M. A. Perfecto Garcia, ‘Corporativismo y catolicismo social en la Dictadura de Primo de Rivera’, Studia Historica, Historia Contemporánea, Vol. II, 1984, University of Salamanca, p. 123–147. 69 S. F. Riquelme, ‘Politica, autoridade y trabajo: Eduardo Aunós y estado corporativo en España’, La Razón Histórica, no 10, 2010, pp. 17–31. 70 See J. J. Linz, ‘La Assemblea Nacional de Primo de Rivera’, Obras Escogidas, Vol 6: Partidos y Elites Políticas en España, Madrid, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2013, pp. 83–100. 71 See Velez, Das Constituições. 72 Cited in A. Madureira, O 28 de Maio: Elementos para a sua Compreensão, Lisbon, Editorial Presença, 1978, p. 27. 73 See M. Braga da Cruz, O Partido e o Estado no Salazarismo, Lisbon, Editorial Presença, 1988. 74 F. Patriarca, A Questão Social no Salazarismo, 1933-47, Lisbon, Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 1995: F. P. Martinho, A Bem da Nação: O Sindicalismo Português entre a Tradição e a Modernidade, Rio de Janeiro, Civilização Brasileira, 2002. 75 P. C. Schmitter, Portugal: Do Autoritarismo à Democracia, Lisbon, Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 1999; H. J. Wiarda, Corporatism and Development: The Portuguese Experience, Amherst, MA, University of Massachusetts Press, 1977. 76 Report of the British Embassy cited in A. C. Pinto, The Blue Shirts: Portuguese Fascism in Interwar Europe, New York: SSM-Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 169. 77 See Álvaro Garrido, ‘Le corporatisme de l’État Nouveau portugais: Un débat sur l’institutionnalisation économique de la nation’, Storicamente, Vol. 11, 2015, pp. 1–22. 78 See N. L. Madureira, ‘Cartelization and corporatism: Bureaucratic rule in authoritarian Portugal, 1926–45’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 42, 1, 2007, pp. 79–96 79 A. Araújo, A Lei de Salazar, Lisbon, Tanácitas, 2007; N. Estevão, ‘A câmara corporativa no Estado Novo: Composição, funcionamento e influência’, doctoral dissertation, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, 2009; Paula Borges Santos, ‘O modelo político do

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estado autoritário português: A ideia corporativa na constitucionalização do Regime (1931–1933)’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, no. 27, 2015, pp. 59–84. 80 Pinto, The Blue Shirts. 81 J. M. T. Castilho, Os Procuradores à Câmara Corporativa, 1935–74, Lisbon, Texto, 2010. 82 Estêvão, ‘A câmara corporativa’. 83 Castilho, Os Procuradores. 84 Wiarda, Corporatism and Development, p. 101. 85 S. G. Payne, The Franco regime, 1936–75, Madison, WI, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1987, p. 323. 86 M. Jerez Mir, ‘Executive, single party and ministers in Franco’s regime, 1936–45’, in Pinto, Ruling elites. 87 S. G. Payne, Fascism in Spain, Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. 88 F. B. Garcia, El Sindicalismo Vertical: Burocracia, Control Laboral y Representación de Interesses en la España Franquista (1936–51), Madrid, Centro de Estúdios Políticos e Constitucionales, 2010. 89 Payne, The Franco Regime, p. 285. 90 Ibid. p. 260. 91 Linz, ‘Organic-statist-authoritarian’. 92 R. Gunther, Public Policy in a No-Party State: Spanish Planning and Budgeting in the Twilight of the Franquist Era, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1980, p. 36. 93 Cited in Linz, Obras Escogidas, p.105. 94 Gómez Navarro, Primo de Rivera, p. 2. 95 B. Diaz-Nosty, Las Cortes de Franco, Barcelona, DOPESA, 1972; M. Á. Giménez Martínez, Las Cortes Españolas en el Régimen de Franco: Nacimiento, Desarrollo y Extinción de una Cámara Orgánica, Madrid, Congreso de los Diputados, 2012. 96 A. G. Morales, Autoritarismo y Control Parlamentário en las Cortes de Franco, Murcia: Departamento de Derecho Político, 1977. 97 R. B. Martinez, Poder de la Burocracia y Cortes Franquistas, 1943-71, Madrid: Instituto Nacional de Administración Publica, 1978. 98 V. Berghahn, “Corporatism in Germany in Historical Perspective”, A. Cox and N. O’Sullivan, eds., The Corporate State. Corporatism and the State Tradition in Western Europe, London: Edward Elgar, 1988, p. 116. 99 W. Abelshauser, ‘The first post-liberal nation: Stages in the development of modern corporatism in Germany’, European History Quarterly, Vol. 14, 1984, p. 301. 100 See Wolfgan Schieder, ‘The German right and Italian Fascism’, H. Momsen, ed., The Third Reich: Between Vision and Reality, Oxford, Berg, 2001, p. 53. 101 W. L. Patch, jr., Christian Trade Unions in the Weimar Republic, 1918–1933: The Failure of ‘Corporate Pluralism’, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1985, p.217.

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102 H. Weber, ‘Political design and system of interest intermediation: Germany between the 1930s and the 1950s’, in W. Rant, J. Nekkers and F. Van Waarden, eds, Organising Business for War: Corporatist Economic Oganization during the Second World War, Oxford, Berg, 1991, p. 119. 103 See M. Broszat, The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich, London, Longman, 1981, pp. 133–192. 104 R. Höhn, ‘Die Wandlung im staatsrechtlichen Denken’, 1934, p. 35, Cited by Klaus Neumann , this book. 105 See M. Broszat, The Hitler State. 106 P. Pasteur, ‘“Austrofascisme” ou regime autoritaire corporatiste chrétien?’, in C. Horel, T. Sandu and F. Taubert, eds, La Périphérie du Fascisme: Le Cas de L’Europe Central entre les Deux Guerres, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2006, pp. 111–22; Les États Autoritaires en Europe, 1919-45, Paris, Armand Colin, 2007, p. 120. 107 K. von Klemperer, Ignaz Seipel: Christian Statesman in a Time of Crises, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 247. 108 Pasteur, Les États Autoritaires, p. 160. 109 A. Diamant, Austrian Catholics and the First Republic: Democracy and the Social Order, 1918–34, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1960, p. 269. 110 H. Wohnout, ‘A chancellorial dictatorship with a “corporative” pretext: The Austrian constitution between 1934 and 1938’, in G. Bishof, A. Pelinka and A. Lassner, eds, The Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era in Austria: A Reassessment, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 2003, p. 151. 111 Ibid, p. 156. 112 For the use of concept in relation to early 21st-century politics, see L. Morlino, ‘Are there hybrid regimes? Or they are an optical illusion?’, European Political Science Review, Vol. 1, 2, 2009, pp. 273–296. 113 Linz, ‘Organic-statist-authoritarian’, p. 92. 114 A. Janos, East Central Europe in the Modern World, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2000. 115 Cit. in A. Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825-1945, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1982, p. 210. 116 W. M. Batkay, Authoritarian Politics in a Transitional State: Istvan Bethlen and the Unified Party in Hungary, 1919–26, New York, NY, EEM-Columbia University Press, 1982. 117 I. T. Berend, Decades of Crises: Central and Eastern Europe before World War Two, Berkeley, CA, California University Press, 1998; J. Vonyó, ‘Tentative de l’organization totale de la société hongroise sous le gouvernement de Gyula Gömbös’, in Horel, Sandu and Taubert, La Périphére du Fascisme, p. 59; M. Ormos, Hungary Between the Wars, New York, EEM-Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 254–58. 118 M. Ormos, ‘The Horthy era and the fascist epilogue: 1921–1945’, in M. Ormos and B. K. Király, eds, Hungary: Government and Politics, 1845–2000, New York, NY, EEM-Columbia

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University Press, 2001, pp. 216–274; I. Romsics, István Bethlen: A Great Conservative Statesman of Hungary, New York, NY, EEM-Columbia University Press, 1995, p. 335. 119 Janos, Politics of Backwardness, p. 290. 120 A, Polonsky, Politics of Independent Poland, 1921–39: The Crisis of Constitutional Government, Oxford: Clarendon, 1972, p. vii; S. Levitsky and L. A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War, New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 2010. 121 The predominance of Roman Catholicism in Poland did not give rise to strong Catholic parties, and although the ‘detailed model of a corporatist system that made provision for setting a new vertical power system at whose head would be a corporatist national chamber’ was part of the small Christian Democratic Party’s programme, this did not influence Pilsudski’s institutional reform. See L. Kuk, ‘A powerful Catholic Church, unstable state and authoritarian political regime: The Christian Democratic Party in Poland’, in Kaiser and Wohnout, Political Catholicism, p. 157. 122 See B. Mirkine-Guetzevitch, Les Constitutions de l’Europe Nouvelle, Vol. 2, , p. 441; E. D. Wynot Jr., Polish Politics in Transition: The Camp of National Unity and the Struggle for Power, 1935-39, Athens, The University of Georgia Press, 1974, p. 24. 123 The electorate could send a delegate to these commissions, but they required 500 notarized signatures, which was a worthless procedure. See Polonsky, Independent Poland, p. 397; Wynot, Polish Politics in Transition, p. 26. 124 Polonsky, Independent Poland, p. 430. 125 I. Tiu, The Legionary Movement after Corneliu Codrianu, New York, NY, EEM-Columbia University Press, 2009. 126 J. Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, Seattle, WA, and London, University of Washington Press, 1974, p. 311. 127 E. Cristoforeanu, “Tendenze corporative nella legislazione economica della Romania”, Annuario di Diritto Comparato e di Studi Legislativi, Vol. 14, 1940, pp. 728–729. 128 M. Djuvara, ‘La nouvelle constitution roumaine et son esprit’, Revue du Droit Public et de la Science Politique en France et à L’Étranger, Vol. 56, 1939, pp. 277–308. 129 Z. Ornea, The Romanian Extreme Right: The 1930s, New York, NY, EEM-Columbia University Press, 1999, pp. 244–264. 130 H. L. Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1951, p. 231; M. Platon, ‘The Iron Guard and the “Modern State”: Iron Guard leaders Vasile Marin and Ion I. Moţa and the “new European order”’, Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies, 1, 2012, pp. 65–90. 131 D. Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antunescu and his Regime, Romania, 1940-44, London, Palgrave, 2006, p. 72. See C. Iordachi, “A Continuum of Dictatorships: Hybrid Totalitarian Experiments in Romania, 1937–44”, A. C. Pinto and A. Kallis, eds, Rethinking Fascism and Dictatorship in Europe, pp. 233-271.

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132 R. J. Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 159. 133 Ibid, p. 162. 134 See, C. Axboe Nielsen, Making Yugoslavs: Identity in King Aleksandar's Yugoslavia , Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2014.

135 Cited in J. Byford, ‘Willing bystanders: Dimitrije Ljotić, “shield collaboration” and the destruction of Serbia's Jews’, in R. Haynes and M. Rady, eds., In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe, London: I. B.Tauris, p. 297. 136 See Petrungaro, this book. 137 Cited in H. Cliadakis, Fascism in Greece: The Metaxas Dictatorship 1936–1941, Rupolding, Verlag Philipp Rutzen, 2014, p. 47; J. Kofas, Authoritarianism in Greece: The Metaxas Regime, New York, NY, EEM-Columbia University Press, 1983, p. 65. 138 Metaxas, Speeches and Thoughts, 1, pp. 45-50, Cited by A. Kallis, this book. 139 H. Cliadakis, Fascism in Greece, p. 47. 140 A. Kallis, ‘Neither fascist nor authoritarian: The 4th of August regime in Greece (1936–41) and the dynamics of fascistisation in 1930s Europe’, East Central Europe, 37, 2010, pp. 303–330. 141 C. Sarandis, ‘The ideology and character of the Metaxas regime’, in R. Highan and T. Veremis, eds, The Metaxas Dictatorship: Aspects of Greece, Athens, ELIAMEP, 1993, p. 156; S. V. Papacosma, ‘Ioannis Metaxas and the “Fourth of August” dictatorship’, in F. Bernd, ed., Balkan Strongman: Dictators and Authoritarian Rulers of South-East Europe, London, Hurst, 2006, p. 187. 142 A. Eidintas, ‘The presidential republic’, in A. Eidintas, V. Zalys and A. E. Senn, eds, Lithuania in European Politics: The Years of the First Republic, 1918–40, Vilnius, Valga, 1997, pp. 111–137. 143 Ibid, p. 121. See also L. Sabaliunas, Lithuania in Crisis: Nationalism to Communism, 1934–1940, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1972, p. 42. 144 G. von Rauch, The Baltic States: The Years of Independence, 1917–40, New York, NY, St Martin’s Press, 1995, p. 164. 145 See A. Kasekamp, ‘Fascism by popular initiative: The rise and fall of the Vaps movement in Estonia’, Fascism, 4, 2015, pp. 155–168. 146 A. Kasekamp, The Radical Right in Interwar Estonia, London, Macmillan, 2007, p. 121. 147 Constitution of the Republic of Estonia, 1938, p. 84. 148 A. Plakans, The Latvians: A Short History, Stanford, CA, The Hoover Institution Press, 1995. 149 Von Rauch, The Baltic States; Pasteur, Les États Autoritaires, p. 166. See also A. Stranga, ‘The political system of Karlis Ulmanis’ authoritarian regime (15 May 1934–17 June 1940)’, Studia Universitatis Cibiniensis: Series Historica, Vol. 9, 2012, pp. 51–56.

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150 See W. Rant, J. Nekkers and F. van Waarden, eds, Organising Business for War: Corporatist Economic Oganization during the Second Wold War, Oxford, Berg, 1991. 151 See, J.-P. le Crom, Syndicats, Nous Voilà! Vichy et le Corporatisme, Paris, Editions del’Atelier, 1995 and, ‘La defense du corporatisme integral, sous Vichy, ses acteur leurs inspirations, leurs réalizations’, Les Études Sociales, no. 157–158, 2013, pp. 245–259. 152 As in other cases, interpretations of corporatism and Vichy have become conceptually and empirically polarized and the concept of corporatism (or neo-corporatism or dirigisme) was also changing. See, O. Dard, ‘Le corporatisme en France à l’époque contemporaine: Tentative de bilan historiographique et perspectives de recherches’, Histoire, Economie et Société, 1, 2016, pp. 45–57. 153 Cited in G. Berlia, ‘La loi constitutionnelle du 10 juillet 1940’, Revue du Droit Public et de la Science Politique, Vol. 60, 1944, pp. 45–57. 154 M. Cointet-Labrousse, Vichy et Le Fascisme: Les Hommes, les Structures et les Pouvoirs, Brussels, Editions Complexe, 1987, p. 179. 155 P. Ory, ‘Preface’, in C. Faure, Le Project Culturel de Vichy, Lyon, CNRS-Presses Universitaire de Lyon, 1989, p. 7. 156 M. O. Baruch, Servir l'État Français: L'Administration en France de 1940 à 1944, Paris, Fayard, 1997. 157 See I. Boussard-Decaris, Vichy et la Corporation Paysanne, Paris, Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1980; R. O. Paxton, Le Temps des Chemises Vertes: Révoltes Paysannes et Fascisme Rural. 1929–1939, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1996. 158 See H. D. Walls, Politics, Society and Christianity in Vichy France, Oxford, Berg, 241–264. 159 Le Crom, Syndicats. 160 Cited in L. Baudin, Le Corporatisme, Paris, Librairie General de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1942, p. 213. 161 See J. Jennings, Syndicalism in France: A Study of Ideias, Basingtoke, Macmillan, 1990; C. Bouneau, ‘Une expérience corporative: Hubert Lagardelle et la Charte du Travail du régime de Vichy’, in D. Musiedlak, ed., Les Expériences Corporatives dans L’Aire Latine, Bern, Peter Lang, 2011, pp. 345–368. 162 H. Joly, ed., Les Comités d’Organisation et l’Économie Dirigée du Régime de Vichy, Caen, Centre de recherche d’histoire quantitative, 2004. 163 See M. Cointet, Le Conseil National de Vichy 1940-1944: Vie Politique et Réforme de l'État en Régime Autoritaire, 1940–1944, Paris, Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1989. 164 Cointet, Vichy et le Fascisme, p. 61. 165 M. Duverger, Constitutions et Documents Politiques, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1971, pp. 167–176. 166 Which led one of these experts to state that ‘the Vichy regime was not corporatist, but instead deserves the more precise term of pre-corporatist’, see Cointet, Vichy et le Fascisme, p. 189. 167 J. K. Hoensch, Catholics, the State and the European Radical Right, 1919–45, New York, NY, EEM-Columbia University Press, 1987, p. 174.

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168 J. M. Ward, Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia, Ithaca, NY, and London, Cornell University Press, 2013, p. 119. 169 N. Nedelsky, ‘The wartime Slovak state: A case study on the relationship between ethnic nationalism and authoritarian patterns of governance’, Nations and Nationalisms, 7, 2, 2001, p. 221. 170 Y. Jelinek, The Parish Republic: Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, New York, NY, EEM-Columbia University Press, 1976, pp. 47–51; Poli and Salmi, ‘Lo stato corporativo’, p. 173. 171 Ward, Priest, pp. 211–217. 172 A. Soubigou, ‘Le “clerico-fascisme” slovaque fut-il une religion politique?’, in T. Sandu, ed., Vers un Profil Convergent des Fascismes? ‘Nouveaux Consensus’ et Religion Politique en Europe Central, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2010, p. 79. 173 Hoensch, Catholics, p. 180; Poli and Salmi, ‘Lo stato corporativo’, pp. 165–186. 174 Soubogou, ‘Clerico-fascisme’, p. 76. The six corporations created by the constitution were called estates. See J. Lettrich, History of Modern Slovakia, New York, NY, Praeger, 1955, pp.147–148. 175 Ward, Priest, p. 207. 176 See J Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia: Occupation and Collaboration, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2001. 177 M. Biondich, ‘Radical Catholicism and fascism in Croatia, 1918–1945, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8, 2, 2007, p. 396. 178 R. Yeomans, Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941–1945, Pittsburgh, PA, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013, p. 26. 179 I. Goldstein, ‘Ante Paveliċ, charisma and national mission in wartime Croatia’, in A. C. Pinto, R. Eatwell and S. U. Larsen, eds, Charisma and Fascism in Interwar Europe, London, Routledge, 2007, pp. 87–96. 180 See P. Cohen, Serbia’s Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History, College Station, TX, Texas AM University Press, 1996, p. 38. 181 M. Ristović, ‘General M. Nedić – Diktatur, Kollaboration und die Patriarchalische Gesellschaft Serbiens 1941–1944’, in E. Oberländer, ed., Autoritäre Regime in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa 1919–1944, Padeborn, Ferdinand Schöningh, 2001, pp. 646–650: J. P. Newman, Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 228-229. 182 Petrungaro in this book. 183 See H. F. Dahl, Quisling: A Study in Treachery, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 110–117. 184 See P. M. Hayes, Quisling: The Career and Political Ideias of Vidkun Quisling, 1887–1945, Newton Abbot, David and Charles, 1971, p. 278. 185 U. Lindstrom, Fascism in Scandinavia, 1920-1940, Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1985, p. 20; See S. Garau, Fascism and Ideology: Italy, Britain and Norway, London, Routledge, pp. 209–210.

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186 Dahl, Quisling, p. 212. 187 See O. K. Hoidal, Quisling: A Study in Treason, Olso, Norwegian University Press, 1989, pp. 575–578. 188 Dahl, Quisling. 189 Hayes, Quisling, p. 285; Dahl, Quisling, p. 274. 190 Cited in Dahl, Quisling, p. 277. 191 More than half of all 20th-century authoritarian regimes ‘initiated by militaries, parties, or a combination of the two, had been partly or fully personalized within three years of the initial seizure of power’. See B. Geddes, ‘Stages of development in authoritarian regimes’, in V. Tismaneanu, M. M. Howard and R. Sil, eds, World Order after Leninism, Seattle, WA, and London, University of Washington Press, 2006, p. 164. 192 A. C. Pinto, ed., Ruling Elites and Decision-Making in Fascist-Era Dictatorships, New York, NY, Columbia University Press, 2009. 193 Geddes, ‘Stages of development’ p. 185. 194 Perlmutter, Modern Autoritarianism, p. 11. 195 J. Ghandi, Political Institutions under Dictatorship, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 29. 196 J. J. Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, Boulder, Lynne Rienner, 2000, p. 134.

197 Marcello Caetano, O Sistema Corporativo, Lisbon, o Jornal do Comércio e das Colónias, 1938, p . 51

198 We should not underestimate these authoritarian constitutions since they serve to consolidate autocratic coalitions in power. Uncertainty is very great at the beginning of a new authoritarian regime and constitutions represent ‘one key mechanism through which political actors other than the dictator can codify their right and interests’. M. Albertus and V. Menaldo, ‘Dictators as founding fathers? The role of constitutions under autocracy’, Economics & Politics, 24 (3), 2012, pp. 279-306. See also, T. Ginsburg and A. Simpser, eds., Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2014.

199 M. W. Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 57.

200 Gandhi Political Institutions, p. viii; Geddes, ‘Stages of development’, p. 164.

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