It has been a commonplace in Italian scholarship that Fascism enjoyed its long tenure not through terror but because of widespread popular consensus. By contrast a recent wave of research has reintroduced the notion of 'totalitarianism' to discussions of Mussolini's regime-yet often without testing the degree of active participation or opposition. So what was the relationship between Fascists and followers, party and people? Bringing together young Italian scholars-many appearing for the first time in English-engaged in new research on both elites and ordinary people, this volume offers a wide-ranging, in-depth analysis of Italian society's involvement in Fascism.