Abstract
In inter-war European conservative circles, particularly those of the Catholics and those close to Action Française, António de Oliveira Salazar’s New State was praised as an example of a ‘good dictatorship’: one that avoided most of the totalitarian and pagan elements of Mussolini and Hitler. Salazar’s dictatorship and its political institutions have been the subject of wide-ranging interpretive debate and some dimensions challenge common assumptions about inter-war fascism. The first concerns its relatively long duration, surviving the ‘era of fascism’ and much of the Cold War, ending only some years after the natural and peaceful death of its dictator in the 1970s. The second and most important concerning its ability to adapt institutions that, while inspired by certain aspects of Italian Fascism, were shaped by the armed forces, the Catholic Church and other institutions.
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Notes
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Adinolfi, G., Pinto, A.C. (2014). Salazar’s ‘New State’: The Paradoxes of Hybridization in the Fascist Era. In: Pinto, A.C., Kallis, A. (eds) Rethinking Fascism and Dictatorship in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137384416_7
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