Entire Volume 17 issue 1 - Journal of World-Systems Research ...

BOOK REVIEWS 274
as it unified it, failing to bridge the historic divide between north and south; Catalan and Basque
elites were never fully integrated into Spain’s governing coalition; while “the statist middle class”
and old boyar aristocracy that led the Romanian national project failed to incorporate either large
landowners or the Jewish bourgeoisie. These incomplete governing coalitions created systems of
oligarchic liberalism (known as transformismo in Italy and the Canovite system in Spain).
While these nominally liberal regimes rested on restricted electorates, they did provide
the necessary legal protections to allow for the development of voluntary associations in rural
areas. In Italy, northern Italian liberal elites closely linked to the movement for national
unification fostered the development of civil society as a patronage project to create a political
base. After the 1890s, however, agrarian socialism and later Catholicism displaced elitedominated
rural associations with an increasingly autonomous civil society. In Spain, civil society
had three distinct strands: (1) socialist and republican associationism (2) regional nationalist
associationism and (3) Catholic associationism. The dominant position of the Catholic Church
and the tendency toward regional nationalism (in Catalonia and to lesser extent Basque Country)
created elite-led civic society organizations. In Romania, in contrast, the growth of civil society
was a state-led initiative connected to a national policy of industrialization.
In the context of oligarchic liberalism, however, this flowering of civil society tended to
further fragment the social elite and deepen organic crisis. While elites attempted to broaden the
support for liberal institutions, they did so from a weak base as a result of the previous failure of
intraclass hegemony. Attempts to create interclass hegemony only further weakened the support
for liberal institutions. In Italy, Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti stopped using police in labor
disputes, and tried to forge an alliance with socialists, but left the south under the heel of the
landed elite. In Spain, Primo de Riveria made a similar attempt to establish an alliance with the
socialist party and pursue a project of state-led industrialization. Unlike Giolittian Italy, however,
the Primoverrista dictatorship systematically destroyed the political parties and fledging liberal
institutions. In Romania the attempt to establish interclass hegemony was more complete. The
Partidul Naţional Ţărănesc (National Peasant Party or PNŢ) initiated universal suffrage and land
reform, something that both Italian and Spanish elites failed to accomplish. Despite these efforts,
the failure to establish intraclass hegemony put obdurate limits on the ability of state managers to
open their states to the popular classes, while retaining dominance of the ruling bloc. Giolitti
limited effective suffrage to the North. Primo de Rivera’s reforms benefited only a small segment
of the working class. The PNŢ’s land reform coincided with a new constitution that eased the
application of martial law and the manipulation of elections. The growth of civil society, then,
benefited Catholicism and socialism and only further discredited liberal institutions, as liberal
parties consistently failed to win popular support.
The failure of intraclass and interclass hegemony, in turn, led to the failure of
counterhegemony, creating a political vacuum for fascists to fill. Facing a fragmented dominant
class with no clear project, democratic forces tended to split and fragment rather than unify. In all
three countries, the urban working class, the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie failed to come
together in a meaningful alliance. In Italy, the Italian People’s Party and Italian Socialist Party did
not come together to create an effective governing coalition and, instead, pursued incompatible
programs. In Spain, republicans and socialists remained divided, with the former committed to
land reform and the latter wed to doctrinaire anti-clericism. Internal divisions within the
Romanian PNŢ between the peasantist wing and urban bloc anchored in the petty bourgeoisie
resulted in an incoherent platform that alienated the party’s base. “The rise of a fascist