Chapter 8 examines the main pathways toward autocratic imposition through a series of country cases, especially in-depth investigations of the tension-filled relationship between conservative establishment sectors and rising fascist movements. In Spain, Brazil, and Portugal, conservative elites commanded clear predominance and used fascist movements as mere auxiliaries for installing elitist authoritarianism. In Austria, Estonia, and Romania, by contrast, fascist movements achieved a striking upsurge. Deeply scared, conservative establishment sectors prevented fascist power seizures through authoritarian self-coups and then repressed the extreme-right upstarts, sometimes brutally. Similarly, authoritarian stalwarts in Hungary obstructed a regime insider’s efforts to push toward full-scale fascism.

This chapter examines how establishment sectors, ranging from the right to the moderate left, responded to the rash efforts of radical left-wingers to replicate Lenin's revolutionary success in Russia in a wide range of countries. Fearful of Communism, status-quo defenders everywhere squashed these precipitous uprisings. For this purpose, they employed excessive violence and resorted to significant "overkill." This reaction was driven by cognitive heuristics, which inspired an overestimation of the extreme-left threat and which activated loss aversion and thus prompted a disproportionately drastic response. Going beyond repression, the reaction to this early riptide of left-wing revolutionary efforts included the emergence of fascism in Italy, which arose in direct struggle against leftist contention; and the imposition of authoritarianism in Hungary, which followed upon a failed "Soviet Republic." The chapter provides substantial analyses of these two cases and explains why different types of autocracy emerged in these two countries.

Chapter 3 examines the immediate impact of the Russian Revolution, which triggered the proliferation of autocracy during the interwar years. With ample primary sources, the chapter documents how Lenin’s success quickly stimulated a wave of radical-left emulation efforts, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. Driven by cognitive shortcuts, rather than fully rational decision-making, these imitation attempts were precipitous and ill-planned; therefore, they uniformly failed. The chapter investigates the experiences of many countries, especially the Baltic States, Finland, Germany, and Hungary.

Chapter 6 explains how fascism – exceptionally – managed to seize power in crisis-ridden Germany. In this fairly modern society, conservative elites had sufficient clout to undermine liberal democracy, but not enough control to impose authoritarianism and block a fascist upsurge. The chapter explains how Hitler took advantage of these weaknesses and built a party that during the Great Depression quickly drew skyrocketing support. In this crisis, conservative efforts to maintain stability through presidential decree powers or through the imposition of an authoritarian regime failed. For apparent lack of alternatives, the NSDAP (National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – National-Socialist German Workers’ Party) eventually gained power, which Hitler immediately used to push toward totalitarianism.

Chapter 5 explains why in the eyes of many status-quo defenders, the quick and decisive defeat of Communists’ early efforts to replicate the Russian Revolution did not reliably guarantee sociopolitical stability. The main reasons were that Communism managed to survive in Russia and that Lenin’s disciples eagerly proselytized, organized, and agitated across the globe. As the world-revolutionary threat kept looming, mainstream sectors remained fearful and searched for stronger protection than liberal democracy seemed to guarantee. In this setting, fascism emerged as an attractive regime model that could reliably protect against Communism. Therefore, fascism held enormous appeal across the globe as well. In fact, Mussolini's takeover of power in Italy stimulated several imitation efforts, which – like the Communist replication attempts examined in Chapter 3 – uniformly failed as well.

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.