section_path: History/Fascist Italy
section_name: Fascist Italy
paragraph_text: Fascist Italy
  
  Historian Stanley G. Payne says:
  
  primarily political dictatorship.... The Fascist Party itself had become almost completely bureaucratized and subservient to, not dominant over, the state itself. Big business, industry, and finance retained extensive autonomy, particularly in the early years. The armed forces also enjoyed considerable autonomy.... The Fascist militia was placed under military control.... The judicial system was left largely intact and relatively autonomous as well. The police continued to be directed by state officials and were not taken over by party leaders... nor was a major new police elite created.... There was never any question of bringing the Church under overall subservience.... Sizable sectors of Italian cultural life retained extensive autonomy, and no major state propaganda-and-culture ministry existed.... The Mussolini regime was neither especially sanguinary nor particularly repressive.