The Unsovereign Citizen: The Reconfiguration of Rights and Belonging in Fascist Italy

Modern political thought tends to associate citizenship with democracy, equality, and political participation. This article demonstrates that citizenship can be profoundly important also for authoritarian rule. In Fascist Italy, citizenship remained central to political life, not as a vehicle of democratic participation, to be sure, but as a category through which the regime redefined belonging, hierarchy, and sovereignty. Drawing on citizenship legislation, imperial ordinances, racial laws, police reports, and ministerial commentary between 1912 and 1943, this article shows how the dictatorship hollowed out liberal citizenship within the peninsula, stratified it across imperial territories, consolidated it across diasporic populations, and ultimately anchored differentiation in racial classification. The result was that the number of people designated as Italian citizens grew, but the rights traditionally associated with citizenship status were ever more depleted. By following this transformation from the liberal reforms of 1912 through dictatorship and empire, the article shows how authoritarian regimes can decouple belonging from political agency without relinquishing the language of citizenship. Indeed, Fascist Italy reveals that the expansion of formal inclusion can coincide with the contraction of rights. In that tension between membership and empowerment lies the enduring vulnerability of modern citizenship itself.