📘 Why This Question Matters
Democracies aim to manage incompatible interests peacefully, yet many still experience political violence. Historical legacies of fascism may reappear because local networks pass on three types of resources across generations:
- supremacist identities and anti-democratism (the "know what")
- violent practices (the "know how")
- paramilitary ties and personnel (the "know whom")
📚 What Was Traced in Italy
- The Italian fascist movement that emerged in the 1920s is the focal historical exposure.
- The outcome period is political violence in the 1970s–1980s, when neofascist groups became active.
- The core hypothesis is that the local strength of the fascist party before the regime’s institutionalization preserved these resources and later predicted violence.
📊 New Subnational Data and Research Design
- An original subnational dataset links early local fascist party strength to later measures of neofascist political violence across Italian provinces.
- The analysis leverages variation in pre-regime fascist presence to assess long-run associations more than forty years after the 1920s.
🔑 Key Findings
- Provinces where the fascist party was stronger before institutionalization experienced higher levels of neofascist political violence in the 1970s–1980s.
- New catalyzing political events helped surface these local legacies: specifically, appointments of a Minister of Interior were followed by increased neofascist violence in provinces with stronger early fascist presence.
🌍 Why It Matters
These results show that authoritarian movements can leave durable local footprints—ideational, practical, and organizational—that resurface under enabling conditions and pose threats to democratic stability decades later.
