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CORPORATISM

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2012, Corporatism

Corporatism is a political ideology historically associated with fascism.

Corporatism upheld strong political leadership and strict social hierarchy and attacked the democratic system as leading to inefficiency, indecisiveness and social disorganization.

Although not necessarily opposed to formal electoral democracy, the corporatism doctrine minimizes the scope of democratic action and advocates organisations representing labour and capital should be directly involved in the making of public policy.

Since corporatism has been historically associated with the suppression of free labour unions, it has generally upheld the domination of corporate owners rather than creating a genuinely participating role for workers.

Structure versus culture again: Corporatism and the 'new politics' in 16 Western European countries - Bojan Todosijevic & Zsolt Enyedi 
Abstract: Various authors have hypothesized that corporatist institutional arrangements favor the development of 'new politics': new social movements, concern for issues such as peace and ecology, postmaterialist orientation and voting for left-libertarian parties. This article analyzes the relationships between corporatism and 'new politics' using Siaroff's (1999) corporatism scores for 16 West European countries and data from Inglehart et al.'s (1998) World Value Survey. The results of the analysis show that corporatism is related to higher membership in peace movements and also to belief in the urgency of ecological problems. However, it is unrelated to postmaterialist values, votes for 'new parties', approval of the environmentalist and feminist movements, and willingness to contribute financially to environmental protection. The relationships between corporatism and 'new politics' is shown to be somewhat mediated by economic factors, while the hypothesis that postmaterialism is a principal factor behind the popularity of the new social movements is not substantiated. - European Journal of Political Research - Volume 42 Page 629 - August 2003 - blackwell-synergy.com

Working amid Corporatism and Confusion: Foreign NGOs in China - Renee Yuen-Jan Hsia, Harvard Medical School, Lynn T. White, III, Princeton University 
Foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) face impediments in the People’s Republic of China. Many such problems result from the NGOs’lack of stable connections to the government. Academic literature on China is rich with data about links between the state and indigenous "civil" organizations, but relations between the government and foreign development NGOs have received less coverage in public. This article bypasses the widely accepted view of the Chinese state as solely corporatist. It describes Chinese regulation of foreign assistants in development and then offers two case studies of recently established NGOs. It concludes that, rather than demonizing the government for its faults in other areas, foreign development workers in China should be willing to work with government structures whenever possible. Only by understanding the political climate and regulatory structure, as well as the available options, can foreign NGOs hope to establish a long-term presence in China and effect lasting change. - nvs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/3/329

Beneath consensual corporatism: traditions of governance in the Netherlands - Walter J.M. Kickert
This article begins with a historical account of the various styles of governance in The Netherlands from the post–war period to date. That overview reveals the persistence of an underlying more traditional form of governance, that is, the tradition of consensual corporatism. Although conventionally believed to be an invention of the Catholic Church and subsequent political theorists, the present twentieth and twenty–first–century historical review of this corporatist style of governance leads to the conclusion that its historical roots are, instead, the age–old Dutch state traditions of tolerance, pragmatism and consensus. It looks as though the worn–out clichés of 'images of the Dutch' are indeed the fundamentally underlying core–concepts behind the Dutch style of governance. The ruling, merchant, partrician families of the Dutch Republic, in order to defend their international trade interests, in the midst of somewhat dogmatic Protestant preachers, were pragmatically tolerant of deviant ideas and groups and thus were able to reach a feasible compromise. - Public Administration - Volume 81 Page 119 - March 2003 - blackwell-synergy.com

Corporatism in Decline? - An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Corporatism on Macroeconomic Performance and Industrial Disputes in 18 Industrialized Democracies 
MARKUS M. L. CREPAZ, University of California, San Diego
During the 1970s and early 1980s most studies on corporatism indicated that corporatist policies led to lower unemployment and inflation and higher economic growth rates. In the mid- and late 1980s, however, voices claiming that corporatism is in "decline" became more and more frequent although hardly any empirical examinations were undertaken. The purpose of this study is to estimate empirically the influence of corporatist arrangements on macroeconomic performance and industrial disputes in the 1980s as compared with the 1970s and 1960s. This pooled time-series/cross-sectional analysis provides evidence that corporatist policies have not lost their capacity to achieve the desired macroeconomic goals in the 1980s; in addition, corporatism significantly reduces the number of working days lost. However, no evidence was found that corporatism leads to increased economic growth. There is evidence that economic growth is adversely affected by government outlays. - cps.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/25/2/139

Public Sector Unions, Corporatism, and Macroeconomic Performance 
GEOFFREY GARRETT, Yale University, CHRISTOPHER WAY, Cornell University 
What accounts for the apparent breakdown of the positive relationship between powerful trade union organizations and macroeconomic performance? Is corporatism a relic of a different age, a luxury of the long postwar boom? Although the authors answer the latter question in the negative, they do contend that existing arguments about the macroeconomic consequences of corporatism should be significantly modified to take into account the impact of the growth of public sector unions on the relationship between institutional structure of labor movements and economic outcomes. The deteriorating performance commonly attributed to corporatism in the 1980s was limited to countries in which unions in the public sector and other sectors not exposed to international competition increasingly dominated national labor movements. Encompassing trade union movements can still generate wage restraint, but only where the union movement is dominated by unions in the exposed sector that are subject to the constraints posed by international market competition. - cps.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/32/4/411  

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