Journal of Contemporary History , Vol. 21, No. 2, (Apr., 1986), pp. 163-177.

Stanley G. Payne

Fascism and Right Authoritarianism in the

Iberian World - The Last Twenty Years

To many observers during the late 1930s, the expansion of the Axis
powers was closely connected to the development of the Spanish Civil
War. Yet despite the passionate interest of so many writers and intellec-
tuals in the Spanish conflict, scholarly inquiry was delayed by two full
decades and, when it finally emerged, coincided chronologically with
the development of the 'fascism debate' during the 1960s. By that point,
there was mounting attention 'o the Spanish variant of fascism, and also
to the evolution of the Franco regime, the last major dinosaur of the
fascist era to survive. Thus the bibliography on Spanish fascism, virtually
non-existent in 1960, had become comparatively extensive by the time
of Franco's death in 1975, while the Spanish regime had become pro-
portionately the most broadly studied authoritarian system in the world
after that of the Soviet Union.
The years immediately following its demise in 1975 produced an
outpouring of books on contemporary history in Spain. Though many
of these dealt with the recent history of the left and of the opposition
to the Franco regime - works that in most cases could not have been
published earlier - considerable new literature also appeared on the
dictatorship and its various components. Yet all this was highly uneven
in both quality and coverage, and was often rather personal, politicized
and/or journalistic. Serious scholarly publication has proven somewhat
spasmodic, and within Spain has been mostly monographic or specialized,
heavily concentrated in certain areas - such as Church-State relations
- while passing over some dimensions altogether. Comparative analysis,
moreover, is poorly developed in both Spanish and Portuguese historical
study, which concentrates almost exclusively on domestic issues. Broad-
range interpretative studies are also uncommon, though the younger
generation of scholars shows somewhat greater interest in this than their
predecessors.

Journal of Contemporary History (SAGE, London, Beverly Hills and New Delhi),
Vol. 21 (1986), 163-177.
164 Journal of Cofitemporary History

It is thus not particularly surprising that Spanish scholarly literature

of the past decade has added only a certain amount to our knowledge
of such things as the fascist enterprise in Spain or even the comparative
dimensions of the Franco regime itself. What has been accomplished
has come about primarily through the accretion of monographic books
rather than from any major conceptual or interpretive breakthroughs or
major works of synthesis. In general, fascism as a topic has generated
relatively little scholarly interest in Spain itself. The new university
generation of the 1960s and 1970s, ideologically conditioned primarily
by a sort of second-hand, imported Marxism (to which Spaniards made
no significant contribution of their own whatever), was little disposed
to curiosity about so confusing a phenomenon as fascism or even the
serious study of right-wing authoritarianism in general.
Recent literature is weakest of all with regard to the question of
origins. This is due in part to the fact that the latter seem so faint and
inconsequential in the case of Spain, where nationalism, for example,
was weaker than in any of the other larger countries of Europe prior
to 1936. Thus there has been no 'nationalist problem' to investigate in
Spanish historiography other than the reverse problem of regional
micronationalism, which has drawn great attention in recent years.
The cultural components that developed the intellectual and theoretical
ambience for extremist nationalism elsewhere were largely lacking in
Spain as a whole, and thus few specimens of 'pre-fascist culture' have
been identified for investigation. The movement from conservative
liberalism to moderate authoritarianism, at first less pronounced in
Spain than in some other countries, has been studied only in one key
province in Ignacio de Loyola Arana PCrez's El monarquismo en
Vizcaya durante la crisis del reinado de Alfonso XIII (1917-1931)
(Pamplona 1982).
The first Spanish dictatorship, that of Primo de Rivera, has, however,
become the subject of a major new work by the Israeli scholar Shlomo
Ben-Ami, whose Fascism from Above: The Dictatorship of Primo de
Rivera in Spain 1923-1930 (Oxford 1983) is the most extensive and
important inquiry yet undertaken of Franco's predecessor. It attempts,
among other things, to place the Primo de Rivera regime within the
context of the right-wing and only proto-fascist authoritarianism of
backward southern and eastern Europe during the interwar period, a
perspective that in general terms is undoubtedly correct. Moreover,
Ben-Ami admits that 'there is no denying that Primo de Rivera was no
Mussolini, and his regime no fascism', thus eventually conceding the
exaggeration of his chosen title. His thesis is that nonetheless during the
Payne: Fascism in the Iberian World 165

1920s a more direct and coherent project of institutionalized dictatorship

was developed than has generally been thought, one that at least initiated
the style and rhetoric and began to assemble the individual building-blocks
for a more enduring authoritarianism, and thus in germ conceived most
of the concepts and structures that would later flourish under the Franco
regime. ' So long as one discounts the extravagance of his title and
understands that little direct and categorical fascism was involved, it is
possible to agree with Ben-Ami that the regime of the 1920shas generally
been underestimated with regard to the novelties, styles and concepts
which it contributed to the elaboration of a subsequently more enduring
Spanish authoritarianism.
Another re-evaluation of the radical right early in the century is Colin
M. Winston's Workers and the Right in Spain, 1900-1936 (Princeton
1985), a highly original re-examination of the Sindicatos Libres, which
has found that one radical sector of that movement did abandon the
traditional right during the late 1920s and move in the direction of
categorical fascism. Its direct contribution to the eventual organization
of Spanish fascism was, however, slight, but one of several strands
of ideological and organizational prolegomena that became virtual
dead ends.
A significant gap filled during the past decade is the study of Carlist
traditionalism during the Republic and Civil War, ably treated in Martin
Blinkhorn's Carlism and Crisis in Spain 1931-1939 (Cambridge 1975).
Its chapter on 'Carlism and fascism' clearly and accurately draws the
pertinent ideological and other distinctions between fascism and the
traditionalist right, and the work in general helps to clarify the uneasy
relationship between the two.
The literature on political Catholicism has grown more rapidly in recent
years than that of any other area of Spanish conservatism, but it deals
mainly with the Franco regime and virtually none of it attempts to focus
specifically on the Catholic relationship to categorical fascism. The chief
movement of political Catholicism under the Republic, the CEDA, was
commonly accused of being an instrument of 'clerical fascism', and
considerable new light has been cast on it by two notable studies of the
1970s. The first, Richard A. H. Robinson's The Origins of Franco's
Spain (London 1970), may somewhat underestimate the party's
authoritarian tendencies, while the second, Jose Ram6n Montero, La
CEDA (Madrid 1977, 2 vols.), probably exaggerates them.
Altogether, the question of the relationship between fascism and the
right in Spain during the 1930s is still awaiting definite treatment, even
though the main lines of discussion concerning this have long been clear.
166 Journal of Contemporary History

The chief contribution since the death of Franco is Raul Morodo's Accibn
Espaiiola (Madrid 1980), which fully delineates the doctrines and
activities of the main sector of the radical right under the Republic. What
is missing, however, is an equally systematic study of the role of Accidn
Espaiiola activists in the later construction of the Franco regime, in which
they played such an important part.
Falangism itself has been the subject of several recent scholarly
works. None of these alter scholarly perspectives very drastically,
but they do add further detail and insight concerning individual facets
or the evolution of the movement in specific periods. Javier Jimtnez Cam-
pos, El fascismo en la crisis de la Segunda Repliblica Espaiiola (Madrid
1979), is by far the best account in Spanish of the early years of the
Falange and the most systematic study in any language of its ideological
basis and political relations. The main conclusion of Jimtnez Campos
is to deny any 'revolutionary' uniqueness to Falangism and any ultimate
ideological or political autonomy for fascism in Spain. The latter point
is indisputably correct, though the former is still contested by surviving
party veterans.
The early role of Franco's official FET as State Party has been
extensively studied in Ricardo Chueca's recent El fascismo en 10s
comienzos del rkgimen de Franco (Madrid 1983). If its results, like those
of Jimtnez Campos, little alter the general understanding of the trajectory
of the movement, they nonetheless add a wealth of detail and analysis
for the years 1937-45. Though excessive space is devoted to preliminary
background, the book provides careful treatment of the FET's principal
political institutions, the Servicios Nacionales, the party militia, press
and propaganda, the youth organization, educational groupings, and the
Falangist role in the syndical system. Its principal conclusions once more
underline the severe limitation of Falangist power and influence under
the Franco regime.
The best general account of the Falange as State Party, particularly
for the later years, is still the monograph by Juan Linz, 'From Falange
to Movimiento-Organizaci6n: The Spanish Single Party and the Franco
Regime, 1936-1968',4 which analyzes the transformations of the
organization over three decades. Though not a study of a Falangist
institution per se, a useful recent work is Miguel A. Aparicio's El
sindicalismo vertical y la fomuzcibn del Estado franquista (Barcelona
1980). It constitutes the only scholarly monograph on the state syndical
system, even though limited by its restrictions to the 1940s and the fact
that it is more a juridical-organizational study than an extensive socio-
economic treatment.
Payne: Fascism in the Iberian World 167

The only recent attempt at a general account of the party, Sheelagh

Ellwood's Prietas las jlas: Historia de Falange Espahola 1933-1983
(Barcelona 1984), is not very successful. This thin work does not
constitute a new history but only traces a brief and sketchy general
account. The final chapter, comprising about one-fifth of the book, is
the most original, for it presents a brief synthesis of the long history
of 'dissident Falangism'. The latter topic, though not of truly prime
importance, is worth the attention given it here and might even deserve
fuller study.
Adequate biographies are a comparative rarity for any period of Spanish
history, and thus it is scarcely surprising that the passage of time has
added little to significant biographical literature on the main figures of
Falangism. Proportionately, the best of recent works is the dissertation
of Douglas Foard on Ernesto GimCnez Caballero, who introduced Italian
fascist ideology into Spain. The only published version is the slightly
bowdlerized translation by the aged protagonist himself, published in
Madrid in 1975, but there is also Foard's article 'The Forgotten Falangist:
Gimenez C a b a l l e r ~ ' .Two
~ admiring, full-length biographies of the
organizational founder of Spanish fascism, Ramiro Ledesma Ramos,
appeared during the last years of the regime, but lacked the level of critical
analysis required for a significant contribution to understanding. Much
the same can be said of writing about JosC Antonio Primo de Rivera,
who in quantity has perhaps received more published attention than any
other figure of modern Spain, save Franco himself. Admiring biographies
continue to appear at home and abroad,' but the only new book to add
a little more useful information has been Ian Gibson's En busca de Jost
Antonio (Barcelona 1980).
Spanish memoir-writing is notoriously scant, but the death of Franco
opened the floodgates for the protagonists of the last half-century. Three
Falangist notables have produced useful memoirs. The most prolific is
Ram611 Serrano Stiaer, the foreign minister and cunadisimo of delicate
health who nonetheless has surpassed his more.famous brother-in-law
in longevity, a circumstance that he has exploited to publicize his own
version of policy and government affairs during the early years of the
regime at considerable length. Altogether there are now four accounts.
The partial memoir Entre Hendaya y Gibraltar (Mexico City 1947),
published immediately after the war to exculpate himself after consider-
able vilification as the 'Axis minister', was followed three decades later
by the full memoirs, Memorias: Entre el silencio y la propaganda, la
Historia c o r n f i e (Barcelona 1977). To these have been added the volume
of interviews conducted and edited by Heleno Saaa, Elfranquismo sin
168 Journal of Contemporary History

mitos: Conversaciones con Serrano ShRer (Barcelona 1982), and a sort

of authorized political biography by his admirer Fernando Garcia
Lahiguera, Ramon Serrano Shher: Un documento para la historia
(Barcelona 1983). Part of what Serrano has to say is fairly convincing,
and his several accounts are indispensable for an understanding of the
evolution of Falangism and of the regime.
Perhaps the best - certainly the best written - Falangist memoirs
are those by Dionisio Ridruejo, once the best of all the Falangist writers
and orators. Ridruejo of course became the great repentant, the 'Spanish
Djilas' who had once, with some exaggeration, been labelled the 'Spanish
Goebbels'. His first political memoir, Escrito en Espaiia (Buenos Aires
1962), was published abroad during the middle years of the regime,
while the second and lengthier Casi unas memorias (Barcelona 1976)
was a more general autobiography cut short by the author's death,
reaching barely beyond the Civil War. The only notable memoir left
by a major figure of the 'Franco-Falange' is Jose Luis de Arrese's
Una etapa constituyente (Barcelona 1982), which presents a sometimes
frank discussion of internal manoeuvrings within the government in the
final Falangist phase prior to the entry of the vaunted 'technocrats'.
Since the literature on Falangism and on the Spanish regime in general
had already become quite extensive prior to the death of Franco, it
cannot be said that the new material of the past decade and more
has greatly altered the general perspective and understanding of these
topics, though knowledge of detail has been considerably enriched
and certain gaps have been filled. This is partly due to the fact that
only a few of the new books are rigorous scholarly studies, and those
that are tend to be fairly narrow in focus. It is also because broader
works of interpretation and comparison are not congenial to the Spanish
scholarly idea-world, and because many of the main issues had already
been settled earlier.
Fascism in Spain may, from a certain perspective, not be considered
as a theme of the mast major importance on the grounds that it was
totally secondary to the development of a long-lasting system of right-
wing authoritarianism. If one then turns to the Francoist system as
a more significant topic, dealing with one of the longest right-wing
dictatorships in the world, the results nonetheless are not greatly different.
One major narrative history of the regime has appeared, Ricardo de
la Cierva's Historia del franquismo (Barcelona 1975-8, 2 vols). It
is certainly the longest and best-informed of all the narrative accounts
of the regime, but it is rambling, not well organized and offers a
paucity of analysis or theoretical discussion. It is a mine of information
Payne: Fascism in the Iberian World 169

about government intrigue and the personalities of leading figures

of the regime, however, and is the fullest single historical reference
we have.
Several useful sociological studies of the political Clite of the regime
have appeared. Both Carlos Viver Pi-Sunyer, El personal politico de
Franco (19361945) (Barcelona 1978) and Miguel Jerez Mir, Elites
politicas y centros de extraccibn en Espana, 1938-1957 (Madrid 1982)
provide considerable bio-sociological data on the upper levei of the
Falangist bureaucracy. Amando de Miguel's widely read Sociologia del
franquismo (Barcelona 1975) is, however, not so much a sociological
study as an analysis of the varied ideological facets of the regime and
of the several 'political families' that comprised its Clite.
Authoritarian rule in modern Spain has not come about by fascist
movements or political mobilization in general but by means of military
intervention, and so it is not surprising that a rapidly growing bibliography
has developed on the subject of pretorianism and the military in national
affairs. Most of this consists of narrative history with little concern for
theory, broader interpretation or comparative analysis. Its results are
thus similar to those of the new literature on fascism and the right, in
that these studies help to clarify many individual problems and throw
more light on the Spanish military as an institution in an area of prime
importance that has been heretofore much less developed than the study
of the Franco regime. The new literature on the military and its pretorian
role thus has considerable importance in its own right, even though the
reader is sometimes left to draw his own inferences in terms of broader
conceptual interpretation. Analytic taxonomy does not extend much
beyond the typology of the pronunciamiento, with no attempt to fit the
complex and long-enduring Spanish phenomena into a comparable
framework such as would be found in Amos Perlmutter's R e Military
and Politics in Modem Times (Cambridge 1977).
By contrast, the new literature on Portuguese authoritarianism is
comparatively richer and more original, not necessarily because of deeper
research or greater intellectual brilliance on the part of its authors, but
simply because the study of Portugal had been so greatly neglected prior
to 1974. In the breaking of newer ground, moreover, some of the new
Portuguese scholars have tried to ask more fundamental questions which
would permit a clear new conceptualization of recent Portuguese history.
To employ the phrase of Herminio Martins, Portugal is the land of the
'negative superlative', that is, the country at the bottom of all the west
European indices of economic growth, social development, literacy and
so on. The result has been a problematic national role and identity that
170 Journal of Contemporary History

cannot so easily be simply assumed on its own terms, as in the case of

Spain. For Salazar and his Estado Novo, as for Portuguese expansionists
for half a millennium, Portugal could only be properly identified and
defined in terms of an imperial role in the world abroad. The terms of
this identity were neatly if extravagantly reversed by some of the leftist
ideologists of the Portuguese revolution of 1974-5, who alleged that the
modestly developed structure of Portuguese society and institutions placed
the country not within the framework of western Europe but in the
category of 'Third World' countries in need of socialist revolution. In
Spain, the erosion of Francoist national traditionalism was replaced by
a new identity with the culture and institutions of social democratic
western Europe for the majority and regional micronationalism for the
minority, whereas the continuing frustrations of Portugal and its lagging
approximation to western Europe have left a more acute identity crisis
in their wake.
The origins, character and evolution of the authoritarian system (and
of its various components) have thus constituted one of several key
problems for the new generation of Portuguese scholars, beginning with
the search for origins. These are proportionately rather more varied and
complex than in the case of Spain, at least considering the much smaller
size of the country, because Portugal underwent a longer period of direct
political turmoil, lasting from 1908 almost to the end of the 1920s. In fact,
Manuel Villaverde Cabral has attempted to identify the first exemplar
of a modern Portuguese authoritarianism among certain of the radical
Republicans of the 1890s,'O a syndrome somewhat analogous to the
'iron surgeon' invoked by Spanish Regenerationists of the turn of the
century.
One of the peculiarities of Portuguese political development has been
a certain precocity in the introduction and consolidation of certain new
political forms compared with some other countries of southern and
eastern Europe. The movement to emergency dictatorship under the
constitutional monarchy occurred as early as 1906, and less than five
years after the inauguration of the First Republic a partially extra-
parliamentary government was formed under a military head. At mid-
point in its brief history, the Republic temporarily broke down altogether
when the former army officer Sidonio Pais essayed his charismatic and
populist form of 'Repdblica Nova' in 1917-18. A Nationalist Party was
initiated in Portugal long before its equivalent in Spain, and by the early
1920s conservatives had begun to search for some sort of overt author-
itarian solution more directly than was the case in Spain. The new style
and content of Action Fran~aisewas followed earlier and more extensively
Payne: Fascism in the Iberian World 171

in Portugal than anywhere else, and Catholic politics also moved toward
the definition of an authoritarian solution more directly in Portugal. All
these early essays in the direction of a modern Portuguese authori-
tarianism have been elucidated to greater or lesser degree by the new
scholarship of the past decade.
Yet in Portugal as in other European countries a viable authoritarianism
was difficult to achieve, and all the early projects failed. By 1923-4 the
first direct though totally abortive efforts to imitate Italian fascism had
been attempted, l2 but even after the final overthrow of the parliamen-
tary system in 1926 no clear alternative was generated by the new military
regime. l 3 In Portugal it proved as difficult as in Spain ant elsewhere
to find a viable approach and institutional formula. The recent research
of Ant6nio Costa Pinto14 and several others reveals the rivalries and
manoeuvrings among diverse groupings of the radical and authoritarian
right in the effort to construct a new system.
No general account of the Estado Novo has been written to date,
however, and the student will find the best overall treatment in the
two general histories of contemporary Portugal in English by Richard
Robinson" and Tom Gallagher. l6 The former foreign minister, Franco
Nogueira, has made Salazar the subject of the longest apologetic
biography1' ever written on a major figure in any of the twentieth-century
authoritarian regimes, but there are no full scholarly treatments of the
creator of the Estado Novo or any other of its principal actors. The real
Portuguese fascists, the Blue Shirt National Syndicalists of Rolao Preto,
have finally received specific attention, l8 however, and a number of
monographs have been published on individual features of the regime. l9
Attention has particularly focused on the nominally corporative structure
of the Portuguese system from 193213 to 1974, for it originally claimed
to be the world's first fully corporate state. Portuguese corporatism has
been examined in the greatest detail by Howard Wiarda and Manuel de
Lucena. Wiarda's Corporatism and Development: The Portuguese
Experience (Arnherst 1977) places the Estado Novo within the context
of developmental systems, but its final chapter on how the system really
worked is inadequate to treat the gap between structural theory and
reality. Lucena's two-volume A evolu~iiodo sisterna corporativo por-
tugues (Lisbon 1976) is longer, more detailed and devotes the second
volume to Caetano's attempt to revitalize corporatism after the passing
of Salazar. 20 Philippe C. Schmitter's brief monograph, Corporatism and
Public Policy in Authoritarian Portugal (London-Beverly Hills 1975),
is particularly good on the early construction of the corporative system,
paralleling the chronological emphasis of his three major articles on the
172 Journal of Contemporary History

structure and basis of the regime itself. 2' The verdict of these studies
is less than revolutionary, finding that much of the corporative system
did not function or even exist as it was supposed to, but they go far to
explain the nature of its structure, the kind of function that it did possess
and the extent of its role in stabilizing the regime.
Studies of the military in Portugal have been fewer than in Spain -
perhaps because the role of the military was slightly less important
- and have focused primarily on the MFA and the armed forces in
the revolution of 1974-5. Despite the existence of an occasional mono-
graph for the nineteenth centuryZ2and a few articles dealing with the
earlier part of the present century,23this is a major area in need of
treatment.
Salazar made more of an effort than most other rightist dictators of
the 1930s to dissociate himself, at least part of the time, from fascism,
yet this has inevitably been the most convenient epithet for most of the
Portuguese intelligentsia to use in labelling the regime since 1974. The
main collection of studies on the dictatorship is simply entitled 0fascism
em Portugal (Lisbon 1980). Students of corporatism view it either
through the categories of corporatism or authoritarianism, however, and
at least one attempt has been made to define it within the Latin American-
derived concept of bureaucratic authoritarianism. 24 The full complexity
of the Estado Novo's political self-definitions and alterations of structure
has been brought out best in a brief article by Manuel Braga da Cruz,
'Notas para uma caracteriza~zopolitica do salazarismo'. 2' Manuel
de Lucena once tried to define it as 'a fascism without a fascist party', 26
yet for the strict analyst this must inevitably be something of a non-
sequitur.
If the Estado Novo and the Franco regime as it evolved were not strictly
fascist, the resulting taxonomic problem is not readily resolved for lack
of adequate alternative categories. The east European regimes of the
1930s did not last long enough to constitute a full historic period of right-
authoritarian regimes in non-industrialized countries, and generally have
not been studied jointly and comparatively as a group. The only alternate
set of regimes functioning within the context of at least partially
European-type societies and cultures that might be considered for com-
parative taxonomic purposes would be the Latin American dictatorships
of the past half-century. Authoritarian rule in Latin America had usually
been conceptualized under the simple rubric of military regimes or
pretorianism, with only a few exceptions, but in the early 1970s two
new concepts - corporatism and bureaucratic authoritarianism - were
developed to interpret them.
Payne: Fascism in the Iberian World 173

Theorists of corporatism found in Luso-Hispanic institutions a long-

established framework of strong and controlling government, based on
social relations dominated by clientahsm and patronage between powerful
Clites and the common society that reached all the way into the colonial
period, its origins rooted in old-world Luso-Hispanic institutions. Though
Latin American states, like Spain and Portugal, adopted the nominal
forms of liberal constitutionalismand parliamentarianism during the early
nineteenth century, their actual functioning diverged greatly from the
pattern of northern Europe and the English-speaking world, with power
expressed and arbitrated through corporatist relations. The emergence
of modern dictatorships intermittently from 1930 onwards merely for-
malized and further elaborated patterns that in some ways had long been
characteristic of the Luso-Hispanic world. Some corporatist theorists also
included Spain and Portugal within their interpretative scheme, positing
a 'natural' historically evolved corporatist framework as the basis of
authoritarian rule in the entire Luso-Hispanic world. 27
Bureaucratic authoritarianism emerged as a concept with the publication
of Guillermo O'Donnell's Modernization and Bureaucratic Authori-
tarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley 1973). It was
advanced as a tool for the interpretation and analysis of the new South
American dictatorships of the 1960s, established well after the end of
the European fascist era and following a generalized breakdown of the
post-second world war democratic systems that, only a few years earlier,
had seemed to represent the wave of the future. The new dictatorships
were not simply military governments, but more sophisticated regimes
that sought to institutionalize themselves, at least up to a certain point,
and to develop effective mechanisms for promoting economic develop-
ment and modernization. 07Donnelldeveloped a neo-Marxist framework
to conceptualize the phenomenon, explaining it as the result of a crisis
of conflicting demands for participation and distribution in societies
undergoing significant industrialization. Though this was analogous to
the old Marxist notion of'the 1920s and 1930s concerning European
fascism, the example of the latter was not generally invoked, for the
new South American dictatorships did not generate mass movements or
large state parties and eschewed much of the ideology and trappings of
fascism.
Both corporatist authoritarian institutions and a bureaucratically struc-
tured, non-mobilized dictatorship are phrases that correctly describe
aspects of contemporary or recent Latin American regimes, just as they
describe significant aspects of the Spanish and Portuguese systems during
much of their history, as well as some of the East European regimes of
174 Journal of Contemporary History

the inter-war period. There remains the question of whether they constitute
useful analytic categories that are the most specific and accurate for the
systems to which they are used to refer, and also whether or not they
can usefully be extended to describe Iberian or other European regimes
in a more illuminating manner than fascism or the vague general catch-
all of rightist authoritarianism.
Critics of the general concept of Iberian corporatism point out that
in the late Middle Ages corporative institutions were more feebly
developed in the peninsula than in many other parts of Europe and as
formal mechanisms almost all disappeared in the transition to liberalism
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In a trenchant review of
the existing literature on the modern state and Latin American institutions,
Alfred Stephan has concluded that the authoritarian corporatism of what
he calls contemporary 'organic-statist' regimes is a recent development
emerging from major new political and social crises, not the evolved
product of traditional culture and institutions per se. A study group
formed in 1975 by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies of
the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science
Research Council considerably modified the original concept of bureau-
cratic authoritarianism. Its conclusions placed much greater stress on
political variables responsible for the onset of such regimes and sub-
stantially reduced the degree of economic determinism that had informed
the first formulation of the idea.29
The only broad and inclusive typologies of modern authoritarian
regimes are those developed by Juan J. Linz30 and Amos Perlmutter. "
Leaving aside several sub-categories, Linz posits four main types of
authoritarian regimes - sultanist, oligarchic-bureaucratic-military,
populist-bureaucratic (andlor military), and mobilizational authoritarian
- and two types of communist regimes - totalitarian mobilizational and
post-totalitarian or authoritarian. Perlmutter abstracts modem authori-
tarian regimes into five categories: bolshevik, nazi, fascist, corporative
and pretorian, two of the five categories containing only one regime
each.
The Iberian regimes have always presented a special taxonomic
problem because their long duration and partial mutability seemed to
enable them ,to fit into somewhat different taxonomic categories in
different periods of their evolution. Thus the Franco regime might be
considered pretorian in 1936 and 1937, fascist or semi-fascist from 1937
to 1945, Catholic corporatist from 1945 to 1957 and modernizing,
bureaucratic and authoritarian from 1957 to 1975 (having discarded some
of its main corporatist features after 1957). In Perlmutter's taxonomy it
Payne: Fascism in the Iberian World 175

is simply classified as a corporatist regime, which makes the most sense

in terms of the general taxonomic framework that he employs.
Analysts may debate such taxonomies endlessly, yet there does seem
to be some utility in the effort to sort out the main types of modern
authoritarianism. The interpretation of the Iberian regimes requires
a more historicist framework than that applied to shorter-lived or more
rigid systems. The semi-fascist aspects of the Franco regime were paral-
leled only in Europe, yet the corporatist and increasingly technocratic-
bureaucratic character of both Iberian systems did have something in
common with major aspects of the more sophisticated South American
dictatorships. Though the new historical literature in Spain and Portugal
reveals little interest in relating the analysis of their dictatorships to those
of other regions, it does enable us to gain a clearer understanding and
a fuller perspective of the successive alterations in policy and structure,
and offers the hope that a full history of Spanish and Portuguese
authoritarianism may soon be possible.

Notes

1. For a synopsis of this thesis, see Ben-Ami's article 'The Dictatorship of Primo de
Rivera: A Political Reassessment', Jouml of Contemporary History, 12, 1 (January 1977),
65-84, as well as his 'The Forerunners of Spanish Fascism: Uni6n Patridtica and Uni6n
Monhrquica', Journal of Contemporay Histoy, 9 , l (January 1974),49-79, which employs
a very broad typology of fascism.
2. More briefly, see Winston's 'The Proletarian Carlist Road to Fascism: Sindicalismo
Libre', Journal ofContemporary History, 17, 4 (October 1982), 557-85.
3. The best (and certainly the broadest) of more than a dozen works on Church-state
relations under the Franco regime is Guy Hermet, Les catholiques dans 1 'Espagnefranquiste
(Paris 1980), 2 vols. Also important is Javier Tusell, Franco y 10s cat6licos (Madrid 1984),
which deals with the neo-Catholic ministries of 1945-57 and the role of Javier Martin
Artajo, as semi-fascism was drastically de-emphasized by the regime.
4. In S. P. Huntington and C. H. Moore (eds.), Authoritarian Politics in Modem Society
(New York 1970), 128-201.
5. Journalof Contemporary History, 10, 1 (January 1975), 3-18.
6. Both were entitled Rarniro Ledesma R a m s , and the second of them, by JosC Ma.
Sdnchez Diana (Madrid 1975) is clearly the more to be recommended.
7. For example, Arnaud Imatz, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera et la Phalange Espagnole
(Paris 1981).
8. The most general are the works of Manuel BallbC, Orden publico y militarism
en la Espah constitutio~l(l8I2-1983)(Madrid 1983), Carlos Seco Serrano, Militarism
y civilismo en la Espaha contempordnea (Madrid 1984) and Jose Ramon Alonso, Historia
176 Journal of Contemporary History

politica del Ejkrcito espaizol (Madrid 1974). Julio Busquets Bragulat, Pronunciamientos
y golpes de Estado en Espaiia (Barcelona 1982) provides a list and description of all the
main attempted coups and pronunciamientos, a typology of which is presented in Miguel
Alonso Baquer, El model6 espaiiol de pronunciamiento (Madrid 1983). The other principal
specialized studies are Fernando Femindez Basterreche, El Ejkrcito Espaiiol in el siglo
XIX (Madrid 1978); Daniel R. Headrick, Ejkrcito y politica en E s m (1-1898) (Madrid
1981); Carolyn P. Boyd, Pretorian Politics in Liberal Spain (Chapel Hill 1979); and Gabriel
Cardona, Elpoder militar en la Espafu contemporha hmta la Guerra Civil (Madrid 1983).
9. For some suggestions concerning periodization and a comparative framework for
Spanish pretorianism, see the introduction and conclusion to my Ejkrcito y sociedad en
la Espaiia liberal 1808-1936 (Madrid 1977), 5-15, 489-95.
10. Manuel Villaverde Cabral, Portugal na alvorada do skculo XX (Lisbon 1979),
105-10.
11. The fullest treatment of a major sector of the Portugese right for the early period
is Manuel Braga da C m , A democracia cristir e o salazarismo (Lisbon 1978). The forth-
coming book on Sidonio Pais by Joao Medina will doubtless be of prime importance.
Moreover, the general political context has been greatly elucidated by Douglas Wheeler's
study of the politics of the First Republic, Republican Portugal (Madison 1978).
12. These are described in Ant6nio JosC Telo, Decdncia e queda ah Primeira Repziblica
Portuguesa (Lisbon 1980), vol. I.
13. Two new works on the military regime of the late 1920s are Arnaldo Madureira.
0' 2 8 de Maio ': Elementos para a sun compreensiro (Lisbon 1978) and Jorge Campinos,
A ditadura militar, 19261932 (Lisbon 1975).
14. In the form of several unpublished conference papers on such themes as 'Fascismo
e movirnento fascista nos finais de la Republics: 0 s "nacionalistas lusitanos" (1923-1925)';
'A direita radical e a ditadura milfir: A Liga Nacional 28 de maio (1928-1933)'; and
'From Military Dictatorship to Salazar's New State: Fascism and Authoritarianism in the
Portugese Thirties'.
15. R. A. H. Robinson, Contemporary Portugal (London 1979).
16. Tom Gallagher, Portugal: A Twentieth-CenturyInterpretation (Manchester 1983).
17. Franco Nogueira, Salazar (Lisbon 1977-83), 5 vols.
18. Joao Medina, Salazar e os fascistas (Lisbon 1979).
19. For example, Jorge Campinos, Opresidencialismo do Estado Novo (Lisbon 1979);
Maria Filomena M6nica, Educaciro e sociedade no Portugal de Salazar (Lisbon 1978);
Lopes Arriaga, Mocidade Portuguesa (Lisbon 1976); and Ant6nio Costa Pinto and Nuno
Afonso Ribeiro, Acciro Escolar Vanguardista (1933-1936) (Lisbon 1980). A number of
books deal at least in part with the policy of the Estado Novo in Africa. Malyn Newitt,
Portugal in Afn'ca: The Last Hundred Years (London 1981), provides the best perspective.
20. A synopsis of Lucena's work may be found in his chapter, 'The Evolution of
Portugese Corporatism under Salazar and Caetano', in L. Graham and H. Makler (eds.),
Contemporary Portugal (Austin 1979), 47-88.
21. Philippe C. Schmitter, 'The "RCgime d'ExceptionM that became the Rule: Forty-
Eight Years of Authoritarian Domination in Portugal', ibid., 3-46; 'The Social Origins,
Economic Bases and Political Imperatives of Authoritarian Rule in Portugal',in S. Larsen
et al. (eds.), Who Were the Fascists? (Bergen-Oslo 1980), 435-66; and 'Po& et significa-
tion des elections dans le Portugal autoritaire (1933-1974)', Revuefrancaise de science
politique, 27 (1) (1977), 92-122.
22. For example, Fernando Pereira Marques, ExCrcito e sociedade em Portugal no
declinio do Antigo Regime e advent0 do Liberalismo (Lisbon 1981).
Payne: Fascism in the Iberian World 177

23. Douglas L. Wheeler, 'The Military and the Portuguese Dictatorship, 1926-1974:
"The Honor of the Army" ' and Lawrence S. Graham, 'The Military in Politics: The
Politicization of the Portuguese Armed Forces',in L. Graham and H. Makler (eds.),
op. cit., 191-220,221-56 and the articles by Maria Carrilho, Jo5o B. Serra and L. Salgado
de Matos in A. Sedas Nunes et al. (eds.), A formacZio de Portugal contemporaneo (Lisbon
1982), I , 1155-64, 1165-96.
24. Stanley G. Payne, 'Salazarism: "Fascism" or "Bureaucratic Authoritarianism"'
in Estudos de Histdria Portuguesa (Lisbon 1983), 523-31.
25. In A forma@o de Portugal contemporaneo, I, 773-94.
26. A evolu@o do sistema corporativo portugues, I, 23.
27. See Howard J. Wiarda (ed.), Politics and Social Change in Latin America: The
Distinct Tradition (Amherst 1974); F. B. Pike and T. Stritch (eds.), The New Corporatism:
Social-Political Structures in the Iberian World (Notre Dame 1974); and J. M. Malloy
(ed.), Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh 1977). Wiarda's
book on Portuguese corporatism represented the broadest attempt to extend this concept
to the Iberian peninsula. Some further discussion of the connection between right authori-
tarianism in Spain and in Spanish America will be found in M. Falcoff and F. B. Pike
(eds.), The Spanish Civil War, 1936I939: American Hemispheric Perspectives (Lincoln
1982).
28. Alfred Stepan, The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Princeton
1978). A somewhat different perspective on Hispanic statism is offered by Claudio VBliz,
The Centralist Tradition of Latin America (Princeton 1980).
29. David Collier (ed.), The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton 1979).
For specific remarks about the implausability of successful transfer of institutionalized
Luso-Hispanic-type authoritarianism to Latin America see Philippe C. Schmitter, 'The
"Portugalization" of Brazil?' and Juan J. Linz, 'The Future of an Authoritarian Situation
or the Institutionalization of an Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Brazil',in A. Stepan
(ed.), Authoritarian Brazil (New Haven 1973), 179-232, 233-54.
30. Juan J. Linz, 'Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes' in F. Greenstein and N. Polsby
(eds.), Handbook of Political Science (Reading, Mass. 1975), 111, 175-41 1.
3 1. Amos Perlmutter, Modem Authoritarianism:A Comparative Institutional Analysis
(New Haven 1981).

Stanley G. Payne
is Hilldale-Jaime Vicens Vives Professor of
History at the University of Wisconsin. His
most recent books are Fascism: Comparison
and DeJinition (1980) and Spanish
Catholicism (1984).