This article examines how Fascism’s economic autarky impacted on church construction in the late 1930s. The shortage of copper in Italy due to sanctions imposed by the League of Nations and the ensuing Italian policy of self-sufficiency led to the installation of loudspeakers instead of bells in newly erected churches. The amplified sound of recordings and of tubular bells could be heard from far greater distances than that of traditional bells. Although these technologies disregarded the Catholic Church’s directives on utilising modern technical equipment in liturgy, their use was tolerated because of the economic circumstances. Indeed, some clergy endorsed these sound systems as a means of modernising the Church and as an act of patriotism. The practice, however, risked conflating ecclesiastical and Fascist broadcasts since the use of loudspeakers for political propaganda was widespread. In one case, the Fascist anthem Giovinezza was played regularly from a church belfry: after the war, furious citizens destroyed this audio system. The decision by dioceses as to whether to adopt technological alternatives to bells exposed the conflicting positions within the Church towards both modernity and the Regime.

Italian anti-fascists started to emigrate from the moment that Mussolini seized power. These émigrés, or fuorusciti, tried to organise themselves to put an end to Mussolini’s regime, but found themselves confronting a number of unexpected difficulties in their host countries. Among them, Giustiza e Libertà (GL) was one of the most active organisations. One of the problems they had to face was the issue of how best to deal with their hosts without compromising their integrity as Italians, and as patriots. The case of Paolo Vittorelli (Raffaele Battino), who is the subject of this article, presents a clear case study of this issue and shows how close collaboration between Italian anti-fascists and western democracies (in this case, the United Kingdom) was hindered by ideological problems. The study of such episodes helps us to shed light not only on the mentality of the GL émigrés, but also on the way the Italian Resistance would later approach the issue of working together with the Allies during the Italian campaign of 1943–1945.

During the years leading up to and during the First World War, patriotic films featuring self-sacrificing child protagonists formed an important sub-genre of Italian film production. This article looks at Film Artistica Gloria’s Cuore series (1915–1916), adapted from De Amicis’ novel, with particular attention given to the two war-themed films, Il tamburino sardo (UK: The Sardinian Drummer Boy, 1915) and La piccola vedetta lombarda (The Little Lookout from Lombardy, 1915). An examination of the way in which advertising, reviews, and promotional materials worked to reframe these Risorgimento stories within a new historical context shows how the transmedial relationship between the novel, films and paracinematic texts helped to transform De Amicis’s civically-minded patriotic tales into an endorsement of Italy’s intervention in the First World War.

This article examines the Italian policy framework on the employment of disabled people. It discusses the strengths and limitations of Law 68 of 12 March 1999 (Regulation on the right to work of disabled people). Despite it having been enacted 16 years after being passed, Law 68/99 still faces problems in its implementation. The data analysis shows the propensity of firms to flout their obligations with regard to the recruitment of disabled people, preferring instead the risk of being sanctioned. In order for Law 68/99 to have a positive effect on the employment of disabled people, higher incentives (including subsidies for labour costs) must be introduced for employers, especially to enable the adaptation and adjustment of the workplace. With these inducements, firms would be encouraged to recruit disabled people and avoid penalties. In addition, disability management policies (still rarely implemented in the Italian workplace) and comprehensive training programmes can play a crucial role in overcoming discriminatory constraints regarding skills and physical ability, so as to increase the employability of disabled people in the labour market.

At the dawn of the Second World War, the successes of the Axis seemed to herald the realisation of a new anti-Bolshevik and anti-democratic European order dominated by Nazi-fascist powers. Italian Fascists and Spanish Falangists enthusiastically welcomed plans for the ‘new civilisation’ in which they were determined to participate as protagonists. This article sheds light on the roles projected for the respective countries in the New European Order in the postwar period, according to the black and the blue shirts. It also investigates the ideological and cultural foundations of the Fascist and Falangist projects related to the new continental configuration, identifying similarities and differences between them. Considering the scarcity of comparative writings about fascist movements in the Mediterranean area, the present research fills a historiographic gap.

In this article, I examine patterns of collective action in the South of Italy, a region where commons scholarship presents several challenges, mainly due to its feudal heritage. In analysing the history of Southern Italian commons, Elinor Ostrom's theories on polycentric governance are adopted. I propose a case study on the mountains of Sila, where collective action was institutionalised through a municipal organisation known as universitas casalium, consisting of the city of Cosenza and its hamlets. This institution collaborated with the royal government, creating a polycentric governance system where institutional functions contentiously intermingled, generating conflicting relations, but also unique governmental arrangements. Yet how did previous historical interpretations miss this point? Documentary evidence provides a clear answer: while the institutional recognition of the universitas casalium can be traced back as far as the twelfth century, a series of institutional reforms initiated in the mid-fifteenth century led to the progressive decline of the local institution and accordingly of the commons economy related to it. This loss of legitimacy derived from the emergence of feudal barons and later of landowners from the middle class, leading to the progressive dissolution of collective action in Sila as Italy moved towards Italian unification in 1861.