ABSTRACT
Two forms of global crisis appear to affect the intensity of domestic social movements most profoundly; war and economic depression. The fascism of the interwar years derived from both: the shocks of wartime continued to ripple through the societies of Europe long after the fighting stopped, and the economic shocks of the war and then the depression of skillful fascist organization. The policy debate around the current crisis challenges a set of political and policy arrangements whose historical origins lie in the earlier crisis—which was, in turn, a challenge to arrangements that had been derived from the economic dislocation of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The striking innovation in economic policy during the 1930s was demand-stimulus policy, known in the post-war period as Keynesianism. Foreign economic policy issues drove elements of German industry into conflict with one another. The alliance pattern of Swedish economic actors bears strong parallels with that of other countries.
