Augmented Regimes: Italian Political Environments between Liberalism and Fascism (1860s-1930s)

Abstract

This article combines environmentaland political history approaches, and explores therelationship between the environment and thepolitical with regard to regime-building processes. Indoing so, it proposes a procedural and process-oriented approach to the analysis of Italian liberal andfascist regimes (1860s-1930s) from the perspective ofenvironmental politics and management. Based on theempirical case of the Pontine Marshes, the articleaddresses the question of whether distinctive liberaland fascist features existed in relation to theenvironment and proposes three areas worthy offurther investigation that bridge the distance betweenenvironmental and political history. The first of theseareas being the decision-making process over theenvironment; the second, the systems ofenvironmental knowledge production that a regimeaccepts and deploys in environmental management;the third, the principles behind environmentalintervention or non-intervention.