Keywords

• This article examines the organisation of the Italian state after political unification
• amid peasant revolts and Hegelian intellectuals. It also examines the differences and the interdependence between the country's north and south. In Italy
• during the liberal period
• statebuilding and nation-building went together with the centralization of the state and the rejection of political parties. After World War I
• the crisis of the liberal state did not lead to a transition to a democracy based on organized parties
• but rather produced the system of «national blocs» formed by Liberals
• Conservatives and Fascists. The Fascist regime then achieved total identification of the state and the nation with the Fascist Party (PNF). Once this identification between nation and Fascism had occurred
• the country's unity was broken
• because all of Fascism's enemies were excluded from the country. This was stated by a nationalist like Federzoni and by a liberal like Croce. After World War II
• the new constitution of 1948 established a democracy based on mass parties and a state of social rights. After the defeat in the War
• over a fifteen-year period
• Italy was to become a developed country and a welfare state