ABSTRACT
Benito Mussolini’s dismissal and arrest on 25 July 1943 took place quickly and without violence. The reason for this was that by that date the country’s elites were looking for a way to extract Italy from the war, and they had the population on their side. Farmers could not afford not to be a member of the organization and voted the way they were told to because of the preference vote. The American political scientist, Joseph LaPalombara, explained it thus: Peasant farmers in each district are told what combination of preference-vote numbers to cast. Clientelism had roots which went back to the failure of the 1861 unification to produce an effective nationally integrating ideology, and therefore to the difficulties of the state in asserting its authority against unofficial power centres and local elites, which sought to manipulate public institutions to their own advantage.
