Clara Mattei: Why is austerity so persistent in spite of its incapacity to achieve economic growth and balanced budgets?

In this interview with RevDem assistant editor Giancarlo Grignaschi, Clara Mattei – Assistant Professor in the Economics Department of The New School for Social Research – talks about her new book “The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism” (University of Chicago Press, 2022). The manuscript explores the historical origins of austerity and its intellectual underpinnings in interwar Britain and Italy. During this interview, the author presents the main arguments of the book, the comparison between the two countries, the role of politics and the decline in electoral participation, the relationship between austerity and populism, and the recent problem of rising inflation.

Dictionary of Received Ideas (About Fascism)

Engaging with the difficult task of deconstructing firmly rooted myths, Corner’s main goal is to answer two questions: (1) How far does the affirmation of “many good things” done by Fascism corresponds to the historical reality?; and (2) Why do so many people today share a “permissive memory” of Fascism?

Book review: Giuseppe Martinico, Filtering Populist Claims to Fight Populism: The Italian Case in Comparative Perspective (CUP 2021)

Julian Scholtes, a lecturer in EU and Public Law at Newcastle University, reviews “Filtering Populist Claims to Fight Populism: The Italian Case in Comparative Perspective” by Giuseppe Martinico, “a wonderfully written in-depth analysis of the constitutional dimensions of populism in Italy.”

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