This book compares the Italian Fascist and the Spanish Falangist political cultures from the early 1930s to the early 1940s, using the idea of the nation as the focus of the comparison. It argues that the discourse on the nation represented a common denominator between these two manifestations of the fascist phenomenon in Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain. Exploring the similarities and differences between these two political cultures, this study investigates how Fascist and Falangist ideologues defined and developed their own idea of the nation over time to legitimise their power within their respective countries. It examines to what extent their concept of the nation influenced Italian and Spanish domestic and foreign policies. The book offers a four-level framework for understanding the evolution of the fascist idea of the nation: the ideology of the nation, the imperial projects of Fascism and Falangism, race and the nation, and the place of these cultures in the new Nazi continental order. In doing so, it shows how these ideas of the nation had significant repercussions on fascist political practice.

This book shows how a multidisciplinary approach combining conceptual and methodological tools from political history and political science can help to develop a deeper understanding of contemporary political phenomena including democracy, populism, war, and forced migrations, among others. Throughout the eleven chapters, the volume brings together senior academics and early-career scholars to explore this innovative approach through a broad range of case studies which are not specific to any particular nation but are characteristic of contemporaneity worldwide. Both the international character and the interdisciplinary appeal of this book are reinforced by the fact that the editors and contributors come from different countries and diverse academic traditions. This book is aimed at scholars, researchers and postgraduate students interested in interdisciplinary approaches and working on politics and global phenomena in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This book compares the Italian Fascist and the Spanish Falangist political cultures from the early 1930s to the early 1940s, using the idea of the nation as the focus of the comparison. It argues that the discourse on the nation represented a common denominator between these two manifestations of the fascist phenomenon in Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain. Exploring the similarities and differences between these two political cultures, this study investigates how Fascist and Falangist ideologues defined and developed their own idea of the nation over time to legitimise their power within their respective countries. It examines to what extent their concept of the nation influenced Italian and Spanish domestic and foreign policies. The book offers a four-level framework for understanding the evolution of the fascist idea of the nation: the ideology of the nation, the imperial projects of Fascism and Falangism, race and the nation, and the place of these cultures in the new Nazi continental order. In doing so, it shows how these ideas of the nation had significant repercussions on fascist political practice.