Looking for a third way: Salazar’s dictatorship and the diffusion of authoritarian models in the era of fascism

How and why did Salazar’s New State inspire some of the new political institutions proposed by radical right-wing elites or created by many dictatorships of the era of fascism? This chapter tackles this issue by adopting a transnational and comparative research approach, paying particular attention to the primary mediators of its diffusion and analyzing institutional reform processes in selected transitions to authoritarianism in Europe and Latin America. Salazarism was one of the main protagonists in the diffusion of an authoritarian third way, primarily associated with the spread of corporatism as an alternative to liberal democracy in terms of political and social representation, and it was in this process that it emerged as a model. The Catholic route was the most structured element of the spread of Salazarism across borders. This association between the Catholic corporatist models and the Portuguese New State was decisive, almost always distinguished from fascist “totalitarianism.” In some cases, the New State even served as a precocious model of “organic democracy, " further from fascism. Simultaneously, in other contexts, particularly in the collaborationist regimes in Axis-controlled Europe, it is presented as being compatible with it.