ICS Working Papers Nº2/2016

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ICS WORKING PAPERS 2016
social corporatist system. In 1941, the Ustasha regime established the General League of
Estate and Other Fasces (Glavni savez staliških i drugih postrojbi). Although established in the
framework of the Ustasha movement, membership of one of the 16 – later 18 fasces – soon
became compulsory, as the aim of the system was to include and to steer all of the Croatian
economy and society. In May 1941, the Ustasha leadership established special communities
(zajednice), membership of which was also compulsory and which were intended as collective
organizations for the entire economic process. The Ustasha reconvened the Croatian
parliament, the Sabor, with a reference to the medieval kingdom. Members of parliament
were selected by the Ustasha government from among five categories, and meetings were
convened just a few times after the initial session. In 1942, a consultative assembly, the state
council, was created in preparation for a corporatist parliament.
In military occupied Serbia, the German authorities established a domestic government with
very limited powers. General Milan Nedić, a radical conservative nationalist, was put at its
head. Ironically, in order to fashion the institutions and government policy, Nedić turned to
Dimitrije Ljotić, the former Minister of Justice in the Royal Dictatorship of King Alexander,
who had resigned after the rejection of his corporatist constitution. After his short time in
government, Ljotić became leader of Zbor, a radical-right party based on small fascist groups.
During the Nazi occupation, he was able to reorganize Zbor and its militia, which became of
central importance within the collaborationist Serbian administration The result was a
conception of the state as a blood community, religious Christian-Orthodox mysticism and
corporatist principles As with the NDH in neighbouring Croatia, several social corporatist
organizations were established, although – as in other cases where they overlapped with the
need to prepare labour to be mobilized for the Nazi war effort. Included in the plans to
improve the status of Serbia that were presented to (and rejected by) the Nazi authorities,
the project to build a new ‘organic’ political structure for the creation of a Serbian state also
included a representational structure that would be articulated through a number of
‘people’s chambers’ at the village, municipality and state level, and which would demonstrate
the ‘resurgent, persistent and flexible nature of corporatist theories in the Serbian
context’
Quisling’s brief and limited rule in Nazi-occupied Norway is another interesting case because
it represents the takeover of (limited) power by a small fascist party, National Unity (NS –
, which was influenced by both National Socialism and Italian Fascism in
both its ideology and political programme, but which was closer to Nazi Germany in its
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