he dominant economic and social position of agriculture," the landed elite. Governing coalitions were shaped by the distribution of favors and corrupt influence-peddling to various groups and regions known as trasformismo. Italy remained a predominantly an agricultural society, with deep poverty in most of central Italy, including the Romagna where Mussolini grew up and in the south, the Mezzogiorno, where peasant uprisings in the 1890s were repressed by the government. Industrialization in the north led to the development of a burgeoning middle class and an urban proletariat, whose first attempts at unionization were also blocked by the government. According to Cassels, "as a means of reconciling the masses to the united state of Italy, the parliamentary regime was proving an almost total failure."
The legitimacy of the liberal parliamentary regime was also undermined by its ineffectiveness in foreign affairs. Italy's late unification meant that it fell behind the more dynamic economic and industrial growth of the more advance
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