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Mussolini Personal Dictatorship

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HOW SUCCESSFUL WAS MUSSOLINI IN CREATING A DICTATORSHIP IN ITALY BETWEEN 1922-40.

When Mussolini became prime minister, in October 1922, he was not faced with a trouble-free position because he had to tackle the same problems that confronted the liberal Italian state throughout its existence. In terms of his domestic policies, it could be argued that Mussolini was more successful than his predecessors including Giolitti. However, historians cannot argue that even with his direct and ruthless political methods, he put an end to the divisions in Italian society that had if anything stunted Italy’s prosperity as a country and in this period Mussolini seemed to be the answer to all their problems.

Mussolini’s route to creating his personal dictatorship was all based on his ability for the acquisition and advertisement of power. The most important factors which stood in Mussolini’s way; such as parliament, opposition parties and the monarchy itself were effectively eliminated as real forces in Italian politics.

A key reason for Mussolini’s dictatorship was the introduction of the Acerbo Law in 1923 which main principle was which ever electoral bloc received the majority of votes would gain 2/3 of the seats in the chamber and the remaining 1/3 would be allocated to the other opposition parties. Mussolini used this law to his advantage as he knew fascist could not have carried through Acerbo’s policy but for electoral purposes the fascists formed an electoral bloc with leading liberals, former Nationalists and a few Popolari members. This right-wing electoral bloc under the fascist name was not by any means made up of fascist supporters but in reality Mussolini only gave the people the choice of a Socialist party or anti-socialist party i.e. Mussolini’s electoral bloc thus this was a key move made by Mussolini which in doubt kick-started his successful creation of

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