H. David Baer

The project seeks to identify and trace the influence of the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg regime as a political model for American Christian conservatives, especially among Catholic integralists. The Dollfuss-Schuschnigg regime purported to be a corporate state informed by Roman Catholic political principles. The ideal of corporatism, in turn, is both implicitly and explicitly invoked by a number of contemporary Catholic conservatives. In developing his theory of “common good constitutionalism,” for example, Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule appeals to Johannes Messner, an important apologist for the Dollfuss regime. Gladden Pappin, an American conservative who currently works for Viktor Orbán as president of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, has argued that the US senate should be restructured along corporatist lines. Other, less prominent conservative elites also evince signs of the influence of twentieth century fascist philosophies. By identifying those influences more explicitly, this project hopes both to document and call attention to the underbelly of certain strains in contemporary American conservatism.