Italian Fascism and the Allure of Citizenship, 1922-1945

FAIN: FT-291885-23

Roberta Pergher
Indiana University (Bloomington, IN 47405-7000)

Research and writing leading to a book on the role of citizenship in fascist Italy.  

Citizenship has become an important analytical concept for historians but mainly in relation to democracies. This is the first monograph to use it as a window onto Fascist Italy. Citizenship’s two dimensions – marker of national belonging and warrant of rights – offer an ideal perspective from which to explore Fascism’s central projects: asserting and expanding power in relation to other peoples and territory, and redefining the relationship between regime and citizen. I show that, surprisingly, the Fascists left preexisting citizenship legislation unchanged, actually extended citizenship to imperial subjects, and retained it for Italian Jews even after 1938. For all the regime’s attack on established liberal norms, I argue that it was deeply affected by new international understandings of sovereignty and self-determination. Finally, all too relevant for today, I show how an authoritarian regime could supplant democracy and yet draw considerable internal and international support.