Chapter10 summarizes the book’s central findings, which highlight a massive backlash to Communism as well as fascism. Due to this double deterrent effect, revolutionary Communism and counter-revolutionary fascism rarely spread during the interwar years; instead, fear of these two extremes led to the overthrow of liberal democracy by the advocates of conservative authoritarianism. The chapter then emphasizes that cognitive-psychological insights are crucial for understanding the tremendous turmoil and terrible death toll of the interwar years. The subsequent section stresses that the horrors culminating in the 1940s exerted their own deterrent effects, which fostered the revival of political liberty and democratic consolidation in Western Europe. Because democracy has in recent years faced a rightwing-populist challenge, the last section highlights how this threat differs fundamentally from fascism. This study of the past thus helps to calm present fears.

After Chapter 6 explained the unusual rise of fascism in Germany, Chapter 7 analyzes the reasons for the much more common imposition of conservative authoritarianism in the less developed countries of Eastern and Southern Europe and Latin America, where establishment sectors kept fascist movements under control. The chapter discusses the complex and tension-filled relations of these right-wing groupings, which cooperated in battling the radical and not-so-radical left, yet divided on what type of autocracy – conservative authoritarianism versus fascist totalitarianism – to install. The chapter explains how fascist movements emerged in many countries, but how establishment sectors subdued them to hierarchical, exclusionary forms of autocracy. Interestingly, however, these authoritarian regimes often imported elements of fascism, such as corporatism, though they used these alien institutions only as instruments for their own top-down rule, and even as weapons against domestic fascists.

Appreciating how government budgeting systems and policies vary is best understood by comparing and analyzing the political cultural, historic, economic, and institutional contexts in which they are formulated, adopted, and executed. This book argues that even similar-appearing institutions and budgetary procedures may very well differ in practice due to the influence of a government’s political cultural and historical experiences.

The great budgetary transformation of central Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union demonstrates the critical importance of economic context, political culture, history, and institutions in the recreation of public financial management systems. Since the collapse of the USSR, countries in this region have served as fiscal laboratories that experiment with budgetary reforms. This includes countries like Hungary and Poland that joined the European Union.

This chapter examines budgeting in the United States, its budgetary institutions, culture, and policies, from the founding of the republic in the 1700s through the Trump administration. The US Constitution is the world’s oldest functioning government document, and its budgetary rules reflect the country’s ongoing debate about fiscal federalism, and how the federal goverment should manage its fiscal and macroeconomic policies.

Latin America has stignificantly improved its budgetary effectiveness during the past thirty years, despite a widespread variation in political, demographic, and income levels. Bureaucratic authoritarian regimes have evolved into contribute to public finance stabilization. Significant problems remain in the financing of such basic services as education and health care. Expenditure control weakenesses remain at the managerial and operational levels of government.

Though geographically diverse, China, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Iraq share some interesting commonalities. All have been heavily influenced by external, primarily European, budgetary models and practices. After the 1949 Revolution, China turned to the Soviet Union for five-year planning and budgetary models and guidelines. Iraq, a former British colony also turned to the Soviet Union for guidance during the Cold War, and more recently its budgetary processes have been influenced by the American occupation. Like Iraq, Nigeria was a British colony, and Indonesia a former Dutch colony, and both these countries were influenced by their colonial histories.