Does Administrative Corporatism Promote Trust and Deliberation?

How corporatist arrangements actually work has not been empirically demonstrated, despite the theoretical focus on interest intermediation. This article investigates whether corporatism affects trust and deliberation in state activities, using Swedish public administration as a case study. First, it is doubtful that corporatism directly promotes trust among citizens, but it very likely promotes trust within and between the represented organizations. Second, interest–group representation cannot be understood as a process of strict delivering of positions adopted in advance. Preferences are often transformed in discussions where other interests are involved. Furthermore, the case investigated here shows that the decision–making process within a corporatist arrangement resembles deliberation, rather than negotiations between "contesting interests."     

Scandinavian Corporatism in a Trans-Atlantic Comparative Perspective

Although the concept of 'neo-corporatism' has been around for 30 years, it has many different meanings. Nonetheless, evaluations of the level of corporatism in different countries turn out to be remarkably similar despite differences in the theoretical meaning of 'corporatism'. That the Scandinavian countries are among the most corporatist countries and the United States the least is thus shared conventional wisdom among different corporatist schools. The conventional wisdom and its underlying conceptual pragmatism are challenged in this research. Empirically, it is demonstrated that the level of corporatism in the United States comes close to the level in Denmark if the Scandinavian 'boards and commissions' variant of the concept of 'corporatism' is applied. It can even be argued that the pattern of interest groups' participation in boards and commissions in the United States is more in line with the corporatist idea that interest group involvement varies with the saliency of issues of the boards and commissions to interest group than it is the case in Denmark. The empirical findings of the study conflict with deeply rooted perceptions of the presence of corporatism in the United States and Scandinavia. How to make sense of similar levels of 'Scandinavian' corporatism in the United States and Denmark is discussed in the conclusion of the article.     

Protests against Welfare Retrenchment: Healthcare Restructuring in Sweden

The ‘new politics’ perspective in welfare state research holds that class‐based parties and unions have lost some of their influence and that they have been replaced by client organizations that are capable of resisting retrenchment pressures. However, scholars within the ‘power resource tradition’ contend that class is still fundamental and that client interests are weak in corporatist countries with a strong labour movement. It is argued in this article that scholars within the power resource approach have focused too much on social insurance programmes and traditional forms of political participation, and that this has made them blind to client protests. An empirical study of political efforts to close down nighttime emergency surgery in Swedish hospitals is presented. The Swedish counties planned to close down emergency surgery in 17 hospitals in the period 2003–04. The political proposals to close down emergency departments were met with strong protests from client groups, and politicians often withdrew their proposals of closures. In this case study, politicians claim that it was client protests that made them withdraw a decision to close the emergency surgery. This result suggests that client protests are politically important and diverges from the expectations deduced from the power‐resource approach but lends credibility to the theory of the new politics of the welfare state.     

Explaining the Decline of Macro-corporatist Political Bargaining Structures in Advanced Capitalist Societies

A growing consensus among many observers of Western European politics has developed in recent years that, in certain countries, national level, consensus-based political bargaining arrangements involving representatives of organized capital, trade unions, and the state are giving way to more sectorally-based, conflictual forms of relations. These developments suggest an overall decline in the efficacy of national-level corporatist institutional structures in the liberal democracies of Western Europe. This article contends that neither of the two general theoretical approaches to the study of corporatism - the liberal model of the "neocorporatist state" (which fails to acknowledge the potential for serious system-threatening instability within corporatism) nor the Marxist model of corporatist "political structures" (which incorrectly predicts labor-generated corporatist instability due to inevitable rank-and-file discontent with the policy outputs of corporatist forms) - can account for this current wave of macro-corporatist instability and decline. In response to this theoretical impasse, this article develops a capitalist-centered explanation for the declining significance of corporatist forms. Business interests, it is maintained, may no longer be viewing corporatist arrangements as beneficial due to certain domestic structural economic changes and to transformations in the global capitalist system.     

Does the Government Selection Process Promote or Hinder Pluralism? Exploring the Characteristics of Voluntary Organizations Invited to Public Consultations

To what extent does the government selection process practised in public consultations promote or hinder pluralism in the policy-making process? This article addresses this question by exploring and analysing the characteristics of voluntary organizations invited to public consultations. Evidence is drawn from the formerly corporatist Scandinavian country of Sweden and the policy-making process referred to as the ‘remiss procedure’. The article shows that the government selection process encourages a multitude of organizations to participate. Consistent with recent studies on Scandinavian corporatism, this study provides weak support of corporatist practices in the Swedish policy process. However, and without challenging the seemingly pluralistic nature of the remiss procedure, voluntary organizations with ‘insider status’ in the policy process are more frequently invited to formal decision-making arenas such as the remiss procedure. It is argued that the policy network literature and the theory of political opportunity structures may further the understanding of the government selection process practised in public consultations.     

Corporatism, Public Policy and the Labour Movement: A Comparative Study

This article identifies two dimensions which distinguish corporatism, especially as defined by Philippe Schmitter, from pluralism. Noting that most discussions of corporatism have emphasized one dimension and neglected the second, the article seeks to determine, empirically, whether the two dimensions are as closely associated as the concept suggests. The finding, for the cases studied, is that they are inversely rather than positively correlated. The search for an explanation of why this might be the case leads to two conclusions. First, that the management of labour-capital conflict in advanced capitalist countries has relied less on inter-group and group-state interaction than corporatist theory would suggest. Second, that Schmitter's conceptualization of corporatism is seriously flawed and that other corporatist writers avoid these flaws only at the cost of drastically reducing the concept's distinctiveness from pluralism.     

Policy reform and the decline of corporatism in Sweden

This article describes the development of corporatism in Sweden from the 1970s onwards. We demonstrate that the Swedish case differs a great deal from other small European countries, such as the Netherlands and Sweden's neighbour Denmark, where corporatism is alive and well and often credited with providing for economic success in recent years. We study corporatism indirectly rather than directly, in the sense that we start from public policy changes in labour market policy, pensions, and immigrant policy, and follow the policy-making chain backwards in order to identify the norms, institutions, and actors that have mattered for policy choices, and how they mattered. Our conclusion is that Sweden has not only experienced decorporatisation in terms of formal institutional changes, but also in terms of a decline in the norms regarding social partnership that previously guided policy making and the interaction of interest organisations.     

Corporatism in Crisis: Stability and Change of Social Partnership in Austria

While recent developments in Western Europe provide numerous examples of the instability and decay of corporatist arrangements in the face of economic crisis, Austrian social partnership still exhibits remarkable stability. The article tries to explain this stability of corporatist politics in Austria. The Austrian case is also used to demonstrate some limitations of the academic literature on the breakdown of corporatism. However, stability in the Austrian case does not mean that nothing has changed. Changes have occurred within the existing institutional framework. Two main factors in the transformation of Austrian social partnership are pointed out, namely socio-cultural and political changes. Finally, some future perspectives of Austrian corporatism are outlined.     

State and Capital in Sweden: The Importance of Corporatist Arrangements

In what way does corporatist representation change the behaviour of participating organizations? The classical question is whether the interest organizations' representatives are captured or not. Sweden is one of the countries in which the class-based interest organizations are heavily represented in the central public administration. The importance of corporatist arrangement in this area in Sweden is due to the fact that the task of implementing government policy is largely given to semi-independent directorates. Since the early 1970s, the major business organization in Sweden has been strongly demanding cuts in public spending. As it is represented in some of the most important, and expanding, public agencies of the Swedish welfare state, it could be expected that their representatives would demand a decrease in the agencies' yearly budget proposals. During a ten-year period (1974–1983), there is no sign of such behaviour of the business organization's representatives in these corporatist institutions. On the contrary, business in Sweden can be said to have been more generous with the taxpayers' money than both Social Democratic and bourgeois governments have found possible. Assuming that both its general demand for cuts in public spending and its specific action in the corporatist institutions are rational, it is discussed how this seemingly contradictory behaviour of Swedish business can be explained. The starting point for the debate about corporatism is the organizations' increasing influence on the state. The Confederation's standpoint is that this influence has now reached such a level that there is need for a change On various occasions. representatives of other interest organizations have also emphasized the importance of keeping a clear-cut distinction between the area of political responsibility and the area of the organizations' responsibility. In political issues it is the politicians' duty to weigh up the different judgments and standpoints and to come to a common public interest. The interest organizations' task is to pursue their special interests. These interest organizations should not take part in decisions in the political sector. I f this were to happen the special interests would have too much influence on the political decisions.     

Die Metamorphosen des Korporatismus: Vom klassischen zum schlanken Muster

Given notable fluctuations in the relevance of corporatist practices over time, the question is whether profound transformations in the profile of corporatism have accompanied these fluctuations. Based on data from 20 OECD countries, this paper examines whether and how corporatist wage regulation changed its profile in structures and performance from 1970 to 1996. The empirical evidence obtained from this analysis runs counter to the orthodox view of superior persistence and performance of classical (i.e. encompassing and centralized) structures of corporatism: nonclassical (“lean”) structures have gained in importance and have performed no worse than their classical counterpart. The paper concludes by discussing the implications these findings have for corporatist theory.     

Swedish Corporatism in Social Welfare Policy, 1986–1994: An Empirical Examination

Recent literature suggests that Swedish politics is decorporatizing. This article reports on the results of a survey of Swedish interest groups active in social welfare policy, administered in 1986 and 1994. The results cast considerable doubt on the decorporatization thesis. Little change is discernible between the two surveys on indicators of key corporatist behaviours on the part of interest groups and government. The immediate goal of the article is to provide evidence that the Swedish system is not, in fact, decorporatizing to the extent cited in recent literature. A larger aim, however, is to push the study of corporatism in a more empirical direction. The value of the theory will be enhanced if researchers are more precise about what it means and what behaviours should follow from it.     

Swiss corporatism in comparative perspective

Compared with the trajectories of corporatism in other Western European countries, Swiss social partnership is remarkably stable. How can this be explained? In this article Swiss corporatism is hypothesised to share many of the important facilitating and sustaining circumstances, institutions and traditions of European corporatism. On the other hand, it is different with regard to the major challenges facing corporatist interest intermediation. These challenges are still missing, to a large extent, in Switzerland.     

Corporatism in 24 industrial democracies: Meaning and measurement

The ongoing use of the concept of 'corporatism' in industrial democracies has been stretched to include overlapping but still distinctive realities, which in turn often produce different 'lists'of corporatist economies. Consequently, this analysis sets out to disentangle the concept of corporatism and to suggest a replacement. It includes a comparative classification of 24 long–term industrial democracies in terms of the corporatism scores given by 23 different scholarly analyses. The divisions in scoring certain important but problematic cases (such as Japan) can be explained by noting differing emphases in the term. I then propose an alternative, more focused summary measure of economic integration which is clearly linear and which has no 'problem cases'. Precise scores on economic integration are given for four time periods from the late 1960s through the mid–1990s. It will be seen that the industrial democracies have always been dichotomised between integrated and non–integrated (or 'pluralist') economies.     

Corporatism in 24 industrial democracies: Meaning and measurement

Abstract The ongoing use of the concept of 'corporatism' in industrial democracies has been stretched to include overlapping but still distinctive realities, which in turn often produce different 'lists'of corporatist economies. Consequently, this analysis sets out to disentangle the concept of corporatism and to suggest a replacement. It includes a comparative classification of 24 long–term industrial democracies in terms of the corporatism scores given by 23 different scholarly analyses. The divisions in scoring certain important but problematic cases (such as Japan) can be explained by noting differing emphases in the term. I then propose an alternative, more focused summary measure of economic integration which is clearly linear and which has no 'problem cases'. Precise scores on economic integration are given for four time periods from the late 1960s through the mid–1990s. It will be seen that the industrial democracies have always been dichotomised between integrated and non–integrated (or 'pluralist') economies.     

Think Tanks in Iceland

This article maps the landscape of think tanks in Iceland. It shows that think tanks are very few and insignificant in Icelandic policymaking. In the literature, the growth of think tanks in European countries with corporatist pasts has been linked to a change to a more pluralist system of interest representation. The case of Iceland lends support to this claim. In contrast to Scandinavia, corporatism remains entrenched in Iceland. But although there is a very limited market for local think tanks in Iceland, it is nevertheless recognized by political actors that touting policy advice offered by prestigious (international) think tanks can bring political benefits. This is also demonstrated in the article, showing that the influence of think tanks transcends at times national borders.     

Economic change and labour market policy: Corporatist and dualist tendencies in britain and Sweden

This article explicates John Goldthorpe's recent analytical distinction between ‘corporatist’ and ‘dualist’ tendencies in Western political economies. By linking these categories to macro‐economic strategies, the role of trade unions and the circumstances under which state policy is initiated, this dichotomy can be of value in the analysis of these polities. The article examines the major characteristics of British and Swedish labour market policy in the areas of wage policy, trade unions and training and education as they relate to the respective macro‐economic policies adopted by British and Swedish governments. These provide examples of the presence and development of corporatist and dualist tendencies in these two countries.     

Corporatism and the ‘privileged position’ of business

This article examines the contradictions between Lindblom's thesis of the ‘privileged position of business’ and the corporatist views of writers such as Schmitter and Lehmbruch. The implications of the two theories are analysed in the context of the exchanges between the capital and labour in corporatist systems. The analysis focuses on the kinds of exchange business may enter into, with special attention to the question of capital mobility, for that gives important insights into the stability of corporatist systems. Case studies of Sweden and Norway show that the kinds of bargain struck under corporatism may have serious consequences for corporatism, both as an analytical device and as a working system.     

An institutional dinosaur: Austrian corporatism in the post‐industrial age

While the Austrian party system, based on a competitive electoral logic, is able to absorb the wide‐ranging changes created by modernisation in the last 25 years, the corporatist system, based on a ‘protective’ logic insulates itself from societal change. Corporatist organisations are designed to create societal stability. As societies experience dynamic change, the corporatist institutional structure not only becomes obsolete but also hinders evolutionary institutional adaptation to a changing society. Corporatist institutions are increasingly ‘out of touch’ with popular demands. The sources for this maladaptation reside within the central institutional features of corporatism themselves: organisation of interests in peak associations, compulsory membership to three of the four ‘strategic actors’, and the decision rule of unanimity.