IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ssa/lemwps/2015-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Austerity and Repressive Politics: Italian Economists in the Early Years of the Fascist Government

Author

Listed:
  • Clara Elisabetta Mattei

Abstract

The historical forerunners of contemporary austerity are still largely unexplored. This essay considers the "liberal phase" of Fascist Italy (1922-1925) as a case study to explain austerity as a full-blown rationality, that is intrinsically, and simultaneously, theory and practice, encompassing the moral, the economic and the political. My explanation moves beyond the interpretation of austerity as the post-1980, neoliberal recipe of price deflation and budget cuts. The Italian case draws attention to a neglected connection: that between austerity and repression. Austerity was the guiding principle of the Fascist economic agenda during the 1920s. It served to extinguish the effects of the democratization process of the post-WWI years. The paper examines the work of four distinguished economists, Maffeo Pantaleoni, Luigi Einaudi, Alberto De Stefani and Umberto Ricci, who -in different roles as professors, journalists, advisors, and policy-makers- can be considered the source, the guardians and the enforcers of Fascist austerity.

Suggested Citation

  • Clara Elisabetta Mattei, 2015. "Austerity and Repressive Politics: Italian Economists in the Early Years of the Fascist Government," LEM Papers Series 2015/17, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
  • Handle: RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2015/17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2015-17.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Germà Bel, 2011. "The first privatisation: selling SOEs and privatising public monopolies in Fascist Italy (1922--1925)," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 35(5), pages 937-956.
    2. Blyth, Mark, 2013. "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199828302.
    3. Piero Bini, 2013. "Captains of Industry and Masters of Thought. The Entrepreneur and the Tradition of Italian Liberal Economists from Francesco Ferrara to Sergio Ricossa," Rivista italiana degli economisti, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 1, pages 87-130.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Achim Truger, 2015. "Implementing the golden rule for public investment in Europe," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 138, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    2. Jörg Bibow, 2018. "How Germany’s anti-Keynesianism has brought Europe to its knees," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(5), pages 569-588, September.
    3. Mark Setterfield, 2024. "Managing the Discontent of the Losers Redux: A Future of Authoritarian Neoliberalism or Social Capitalism?," FMM Working Paper 98-2024, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    4. Fraccaroli, Nicolò & Giovannini, Alessandro & Jamet, Jean-François & Persson, Eric, 2022. "Ideology and monetary policy. The role of political parties’ stances in the European Central Bank’s parliamentary hearings," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    5. Ivo Arnold, 2021. "An Interest Stabilisation Mechanism to Unburden the ECB," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 56(5), pages 274-277, September.
    6. Costa Cabral, Nazare, 2022. "The European Monetary Integration Trap: incomplete sovereignty and the State-mimicking method," MPRA Paper 115245, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Gasperin, Simone, 2022. "Lessons from the past for 21st century systems of state-owned enterprises: The case of Italy's IRI in the 1930s," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 599-612.
    8. Clément Fontan & François Claveau & Peter Dietsch, 2016. "Central banking and inequalities," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 15(4), pages 319-357, November.
    9. Samuel Brazys & Aidan Regan, 2016. "These Little PIIGS Went to Market: Enterprise Policy and Divergent Recovery in European Periphery," Working Papers 201517, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    10. Lars P. Feld & Ekkehard A. Köhler, 2023. "Standing on the shoulders of giants or science? Lessons from ordoliberalism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 195(3), pages 197-211, June.
    11. Kovács, Olivér, 2023. "Az intézmények fejlődése és a fejlődés intézményesülése. Benczes István: Gazdasági növekedés és versenyképesség intézményi perspektívában. Ludovika Kiadó, Budapest, 2022, 264 o [The evolution of in," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(9), pages 1043-1051.
    12. Philipp Heimberger & Jakob Kapeller, 2017. "The performativity of potential output: pro-cyclicality and path dependency in coordinating European fiscal policies," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(5), pages 904-928, September.
    13. Hugh Goldsmith, 2014. "The Long-Run Evolution of Infrastructure Services," CESifo Working Paper Series 5073, CESifo.
    14. Giovanni Dosi & Marcello Minenna & Andrea Roventini & Roberto Violi, 2021. "Making the Eurozone work: a risk-sharing reform of the European Stability Mechanism," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 299(1), pages 617-657, April.
    15. Tim Congdon, 2015. "In Praise of Expansionary Fiscal Contraction," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 21-34, February.
    16. Melissa Heil, 2022. "Debtor spaces: Austerity, space, and dispossession in Michigan’s emergency management system," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(5), pages 966-983, August.
    17. Scott L. Greer, 2015. "States, Debt & Power: ‘Saints’ & ‘Sinners’ in European History & Integration, by Kenneth Dyson," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 45(3), pages 1-10.
    18. Pompeo Della Posta & Mario Morroni, 2022. "The credibility of monetary policy and the fiscal response to the pandemic in the Eurozone," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 77-96, April.
    19. Stephen C. Nelson, 2015. "Paper Entanglements: Why (and How) Keynes’s Ideas about Sovereign Debt Still Matter," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(6), pages 492-508, November.
    20. Julia Heslop & Josh Chambers & James Maloney & George Spurgeon & Hannah Swainston & Hannah Woodall, 2023. "Re-contextualising purpose-built student accommodation in secondary cities: The role of planning policy, consultation and economic need during austerity," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(5), pages 923-940, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Austerity; Repressive Politics; Economists as Consultants; Fascism;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2015/17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/labssit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.