Salazar's Portugal, Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany were roughly contemporaneous departures from what had come to seem the progressive democratic mainstream. Seeking greater authority and effectiveness, each revolved around a strong leader and a single party. So there was unquestionably a family resemblance among them, and comparison surely illuminates each. Moreover, it is useful to pinpoint the variables that account for the differences among them. By doing so, in fact, we can devise a comparative array, a scale of radicalisation, understood in the neutral sense as the extent of departure from the norm and/or the prior situation.