Corporatism and Authoritarian Institutions in Interwar European Dictatorships

Abstract

This paper examines the role of corporatism as a political device against liberal democracy that permeated the political right during the first wave of democratisation, and especially as a set of authoritarian institutions that spread across interwar Europe and which was an agent for the hybridisation of the institutions of fascist-era dictatorships. Powerful processes of institutional transfers were a hallmark of interwar dictatorships, and we will argue corporatism was at the forefront of this process of cross-national diffusion, both as a new form of organised interest representation and as an authoritarian alternative to parliamentary democracy. The diffusion of political and social corporatism, which with the single-party are hallmarks of the institutional transfers among European dictatorships, challenges some rigid dichotomous interpretations of interwar fascism.