Fascism displays an ambivalent stance towards parliamentary democracy. Explain. (2023, 20 Marks)
Fascism denounced parliament as a talking shop yet reached power through it. The ambivalence is not mere hypocrisy; it has a structure. Fascism was hostile in doctrine to parliamentary institutions, instrumental in practice towards constitutional procedure, and committed to a plebiscitary claim that it alone embodied the people.
Hostile in Doctrine
- Parties were cast as factions splitting an organic nation. The Doctrine of Fascism (1932) denied that number, merely by being number, can direct human societies.
- The leader principle made representation redundant: if the leader embodies the national will, every representative distorts it.
- Carl Schmitt‘s The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923) supplied the theory. Parliamentarism rests on the liberal faith in open discussion, which mass parties and backroom bargaining had hollowed out. Democracy, by contrast, means the identity of rulers and ruled, which acclamation can express. Hence Bolshevism and Fascism were certainly antiliberal but not necessarily antidemocratic.
Instrumental in Practice
Italy
- The Fascists held only 35 seats after the 1921 election. After the March on Rome (October 1922), King Victor Emmanuel III declined to impose martial law and appointed Benito Mussolini Prime Minister at the head of a coalition.
- Parliament itself passed the Acerbo Law (1923), which gave two-thirds of the seats to the largest list if it won at least 25 per cent of the vote: a legislature voting for its own irrelevance.
- In the April 1924 election the government lists won about 65 per cent amid intimidation. Giacomo Matteotti denounced the fraud and was murdered in June. Mussolini’s speech of 3 January 1925 opened the way to the single-party state.
Germany
- The Nazis became the largest party with 37.3 per cent in July 1932. Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor on 30 January 1933, on the advice of conservatives who believed they could tame him.
- The Enabling Act (23 March 1933) passed 444 to 94, with Communist deputies excluded, SA men lining the chamber and only the Social Democrats opposed: legality used to end legality.
A Rival Claim to Democracy
Neither regime called itself undemocratic. The Doctrine styled fascism an organized, centralized, authoritarian democracy, and both regimes staged plebiscites to show acclamation. Fascism rejected pluralism, deliberation and limits, not popular legitimacy. Harold J. Laski (Democracy in Crisis, 1933) added a class reading: property tolerated democracy only while it stayed secure.
The Contemporary Debate
- Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (How Democracies Die, 2018) show that democracies now die at the hands of elected leaders, through executive aggrandisement (Nancy Bermeo).
- The radical right has taken the electoral path. The AfD came second in Germany’s February 2025 election with 20.8 per cent; in May 2025 German domestic intelligence classed it as extremist, a designation suspended pending litigation. Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy descends from the post-fascist MSI, has governed through Italy’s constitutional institutions since October 2022.
- Scholars disagree on the label. Cas Mudde calls such parties populist radical right: radical within democracy, unlike the extreme right that rejects it. Robert O. Paxton, long reluctant to use the term, applied it to Donald Trump after the Capitol attack of 6 January 2021. Others speak of post-fascism.
- B. R. Ambedkar warned on 25 November 1949 that hero-worship in politics is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship. The basic structure doctrine (1973) and the 44th Amendment (1978) later entrenched limits that an elected majority cannot remove.
Conclusion
“Fascism used democracy to destroy democracy” captures the tactic but misses the doctrine. Fascism kept popular sovereignty as acclamation while destroying representation as choice. Democracy’s defence therefore lies less in elections than in institutions no winner can dismantle.