The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini's Italy

The question of how ordinary people related to totalitarian regimes is still far from being answered. The tension between repression and consensus makes analysis difficult; where one ends and the other begins is never easy to determine. In the case of fascist Italy, recent scholarship has tended to tilt the balance in favour of popular consensus for the regime, identifying in the novel ideological and cultural aspects of Mussolini's rule a 'political religion' which bound the population to the fascist leader.

The Party and the People presents a different picture. While not underestimating the force of ideological factors, Paul Corner argues that 'real existing Fascism', as lived by a large part of the population, was in fact an increasingly negative experience and reflected few of those colourful and attractive features of fascist propaganda which have induced more favourable interpretations of the regime. Distinguishing clearly between the fascist project and its realisation, Corner examines the ways in which the fascist party asserted itself at the local level in the widely-differing areas of Italy, at its corruption and malfunctioning, and at the mounting wave of popular resentment against it during the course of the 1930s - resentment and hostility which, in effect, signalled the failure of the project. The Party and the People, based largely on unpublished archival material, concludes by suggesting that the abuse of power by fascists mirrors much wider problems in Italy related to the relationship between the public and the private and to the modes of utilisation of power, both in the past and in the present.

Paul Corner, Professor of European History, University of Siena

Educated at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, Paul Corner has taught in Borneo, England, and Italy. He was research fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford, then Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of Italian Society at the University of Reading, and - since 1987 - has been
Professor of European History at the University of Siena in Italy where he is also Director of the Centre for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. Author of many publications relating to Italian Fascism and to totalitarianism in general, he has lectured widely on the subject in both Europe and
America.

Introduction
Part I: The Project, the Party, and the Fascist State
1. Postwar Palingenesis: Forming the Fascist Project
2. The Rise of Provincial Fascism: Periphery and Centre in the Years before 1925
3. Stabilisation in the Provinces: the Party Adapts
4. Party and State
5. Provincial Battles: Problems in the Party
6. The Provincial Party: Activity and Reputation
Part II: The Party and the People in the 1930s
7. Growing Disjunctions: PNF Rule and Popular Reaction
8. Perceptions of the Party
9. The Crisis of the late 1930s and the 'Totalitarian Phase' of Fascism
10. The Flight from the Enchanter
11. The Failure of the Party
Select Bibliography
Index of Names