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Corporatism is an ideology and political system of interest representation and policymaking whereby corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, business, scientific, or guild associations, come together and negotiate contracts or policy (collective bargaining) on the basis of their common interests. The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "body".
Corporatism does not refer to a political system dominated by large business interests, even though the latter are commonly referred to as "corporations" in modern American vernacular and legal parlance. Instead, the correct term for that theoretical system would be corporatocracy. The terms "corporatocracy" and "corporatism" are often confused due to their similar names and to the use of corporations as organs of the state.
Corporatism developed during the 1850s in response to the rise of classical liberalism and Marxism, and advocated cooperation between the classes instead of class conflict. Adherents of diverse ideologies, including economic liberalism, fascism, and social democracy have advocated for corporatist models. Corporatism became one of the main tenets of Italian fascism, and Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy advocated the total integration of divergent interests into the state for the common good. However, the more democratic neo-corporatism often embraced tripartism.
Corporatist ideas have been expressed since ancient Greek and Roman societies, and have been integrated into Catholic social teaching and Christian democratic political parties. They have been paired by various advocates and implemented in various societies with a wide variety of political systems, including authoritarianism, absolutism, fascism, liberalism, and social democracy.
In Politics, Aristotle described society as being divided between natural classes and functional purposes: those of priests, rulers, slaves and warriors. Ancient Rome adopted Greek concepts of corporatism into its own version of corporatism, adding the concept of political representation on the basis of function that divided representatives into military, professional and religious groups and set up institutions for each group known as collegia.
After the 5th-century fall of Rome and the beginning of the Early Middle Ages, corporatist organizations in western Europe became largely limited to and to the idea of Agape—especially within the context of economic transactions. From the High Middle Ages onward, corporatist organizations became increasingly common in Europe, including such groups as religious orders, monasteries, Confraternity, military orders such as the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Order, educational organizations such as the emerging European universities and learned societies, the chartered towns and cities, and most notably the Guild which dominated the economies of population centers in Europe. The military orders notably gained prominence during the period of the Crusades. These corporatist systems co-existed with the governing medieval estates system, and members of the first estate (the clergy), the second estate (the aristocracy), and third estate (the common people) could also participate in various corporatist bodies. The development of the guild system involved the guilds gaining the power to regulate trade and prices, and guild members included artisans, tradesmen, and other professionals. This diffusion of power is an important aspect of corporatist economic models of economic management and class collaboration. However, from the 16th century onward, absolute monarchies began to conflict with the diffuse, decentralized powers of the medieval corporatist bodies. Absolute monarchies during the Renaissance and Enlightenment gradually subordinated corporatist systems and corporate groups to the authority of centralized and absolutist governments, removing any checks on royal power these corporatist bodies had previously utilized.
After the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789), the existing absolutist corporatist system in France was abolished due to its endorsement of social hierarchy and special "corporate privilege". The new French government considered corporatism's emphasis on group rights as inconsistent with the government's Individualism. Subsequently, corporatist systems and corporate privilege throughout Europe were abolished in response to the French Revolution. From 1789 to the 1850s, most supporters of corporatism were Reactionary. A number of reactionary corporatists favoured corporatism in order to end liberal capitalism and to restore the feudalism. Countering the reactionaries were the ideas of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760- 1825), whose proposed "industrial class" would have had the representatives of various economic groups sit in the political chambers, in contrast to the popular representation of liberal democracy.
In his 1887 work Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft ("Community and Society"), Ferdinand Tönnies began a major revival of corporatist philosophy associated with the development of neo-medievalism, increasing promotion of guild socialism and causing major changes to theoretical sociology. Tönnies claims that Organicism communities based upon clans, communes, families and professional groups are disrupted by the mechanical society of economic classes imposed by capitalism.Peter F. Klarén, Thomas J. Bossert. Promise of development: theories of change in Latin America. Boulder, Colorado, USA: Westview Press, 1986. P. 221. The German Nazi Party used Tönnies' theory to promote their notion of Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community").Francis Ludwig Carsten, Hermann Graml. The German resistance to Hitler. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA: University of California Press. P. 93 However, Tönnies opposed Nazism: he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1932 to oppose fascism in Germany and was deprived of his honorary professorship by Adolf Hitler in 1933.Ferdinand Tönnies, José Harris. Community and civil society. Cambridge University Press, 2001 (first edition in 1887 as Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft). Pp. xxxii-xxxiii.
Corporatism's popularity increased in the late 19th century and a corporatist internationale was formed in 1890, followed by the 1891 publishing of Rerum novarum by the Catholic Church that for the first time declared the Church's blessing to trade unions and recommended that politicians recognize organized labour. Many corporatist unions in Europe were endorsed by the Catholic Church to challenge the Anarchism, Marxism and other radical unions, with the corporatist unions being fairly conservative in comparison to their radical rivals. Some Catholic corporatist states include Austria under the 1932–1934 leadership of Federal Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss and Ecuador under the leadership of García Moreno (1861–1865 and 1869–1875). The economic vision outlined in Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno (1931) also influenced the régime (1946–1955 and 1973–1974) of Juan Perón and Justicialism in Argentina and influenced the drafting of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland. In response to the Catholic Church corporatism of the 1890s, Protestantism corporatism developed, especially in Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. However, Protestantism corporatism has been much less successful in obtaining assistance from governments than its Catholic Church counterpart.
Durkheim posited that solidarism would alter the division of labour by evolving it from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity. He believed that the existing industrial Capitalism division of labour caused "juridical and moral anomie", which had no norms or agreed procedures to resolve conflicts and resulted in chronic confrontation between employers and trade unions. Durkheim believed that this anomie caused social dislocation and felt that by this "it is the law of the strongest which rules, and there is inevitably a chronic state of war, latent or acute". As a result, Durkheim believed it is a moral obligation of the members of society to end this situation by creating a moral organic solidarity based upon as organized into a single public institution.Antony Black, pp. 226, 228.
Corporate solidarism is a form of corporatism that advocates creating solidarity instead of collectivism in society through functional representation, believing that it is up to the people to end the chronic confrontation between employers and labor unions by creating a single public institution. Solidarism rejects a "materialistic" approach to social, economic, and political problems, while also rejecting class conflict. Just like corporatism, it embraces tripartism as its economic system.
This liberal corporatist ethic is similar to Taylorism but endorses democratization of capitalist companies. Liberal corporatists believe that inclusion of all members in the election of management in effect reconciles "ethics and efficiency, freedom and order, liberty and rationality".
Liberal corporatism began to gain disciples in the United States during the late 19th century. Economic liberal corporatism involving capital-labour cooperation was influential in Fordism. Liberal corporatism has also been an influential component of the liberalism in the United States that has been referred to as "interest group liberalism".
In Italy, from 1922 until 1943, corporatism became influential amongst Italian nationalists led by Benito Mussolini. The 1920 Charter of Carnaro gained much popularity as the prototype of a "corporative state", having displayed much within its tenets as a Gremialismo combining the concepts of autonomy and authority in a special synthesis. Alfredo Rocco spoke of a corporative state and declared corporatist ideology in detail. Rocco would later become a member of the Italian fascist régime. Subsequently, the Labour Charter of 1927 was implemented, thus establishing a collective agreement system between employers and employees, becoming the main form of class collaboration in the fascist government.
Italian Fascism involved a corporatist political system in which the economy was Tripartism by employers, workers and state officials by formal mechanisms at the national level. (2025). 9780415214940, Routledge (UK). ISBN 9780415214940 Its supporters claimed that corporatism could better recognize or "incorporate" every divergent interest into the state organically, unlike majority-rules democracy, which (they said) could marginalize specific interests. This total consideration was the inspiration for their use of the term Totalitarianism, described without coercion (which is connoted in the modern meaning) in the 1932 Doctrine of Fascism as thus:
A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" ("everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state").
Within the corporative model of Italian fascism each corporate interest was supposed to be resolved and incorporated under the state. Much of the corporatist influence upon Italian fascism was partly due to the Fascists' attempts to gain endorsement by the Roman Catholic Church that itself sponsored corporatism. However, the Roman Catholic Church's corporatism favored a bottom-up corporatism, whereby groups such as families and professional groups would voluntarily work together, whereas fascist corporatism was a top-down model of state control managed primarily by government officials.
The fascist state corporatism of Roman Catholic Italy influenced the governments and economies — not only of other Roman Catholic-majority countries, such as the governments of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria, António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal, Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina and Getúlio Vargas in Brazil — but also of Konstantin Päts and Kārlis Ulmanis in non-Catholic Estonia and Latvia.
Fascists in non-Catholic countries also supported Italian Fascist corporatism, including Oswald Mosley of the British Union of Fascists, who commended corporatism and said that "it means a nation organized as the human body, with each organ performing its individual function but working in harmony with the whole". Mosley also regarded corporatism as an attack on laissez-faire economics and "international finance".
The corporatist state of Portugal had similarities to Benito Mussolini's Italian fascist corporatism, but also differences in its moral approach to governing. Although Salazar admired Mussolini and was influenced by his Labour Charter of 1927, he distanced himself from fascist dictatorship, which he considered a pagan Caesarism political system that recognised neither legal nor moral limits. Salazar also had a strong dislike of Marxism and liberalism.
In 1933, Salazar stated:
Our Dictatorship clearly resembles a fascist dictatorship in the reinforcement of authority, in the war declared against certain principles of democracy, in its accentuated nationalist character, in its preoccupation of social order. However, it differs from it in its process of renovation. The fascist dictatorship tends towards a pagan Caesarism, towards a state that knows no limits of a legal or moral order, which marches towards its goal without meeting complications or obstacles. The Portuguese New State, on the contrary, cannot avoid, not think of avoiding, certain limits of a moral order which it may consider indispensable to maintain in its favour of its reforming action. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review Vol. 92, No. 368, Winter, 2003
The Patriotic People's Movement (IKL) in Finland envisioned a system with elements of direct democracy and professional parliament. The president would be elected with direct vote, who would then appoint the government from among professionals in their respective fields. All parties would be banned, and members of parliament would be elected by vote from corporate groups representing different sectors; Agriculture, Industry and Public servants, free trades, etc. Every law passed in the parliament would be either ratified or overturned by a referendum.Jussi Niinistö, Paavo Susitaival. Kolme sotaa, kaksi kapinaa, neljä linnareissua.Mikko Uola: Sinimusta veljeskunta – Isänmaallinen kansanliike 1932–1944. Otava, 1982. ISBN 951-1-06982-9 Jussi Maijala : Kansankokonaisuuden puolesta : IKL – ei luokkia tai yksilöitä vaan kansankokonaisuus, teoksessa Petri Juuti (toim) : Sinistä, punaista, mustaa - Näkökulmia Suomen 1930–40-lukujen poliittiseen historiaan. Tampereen yliopistopaino, Tampere 2005 ss. 68–69
Neo-corporatism is a democratic form of corporatism which favors economic tripartism, which involves strong , employers' associations and governments that cooperate as "social partners" to negotiate and manage a national economy. Social corporatist systems instituted in Europe after World War II include the Ordoliberalism system of the social market economy in Germany, the social partnership in Ireland, the polder model in the Netherlands (although arguably the polder model already was present at the end of World War I, it was not until after World War II that a social-service system gained foothold there), the concertation system in Italy, the Rhine model in Switzerland and the Benelux countries and the Nordic model in the Nordic countries.
Attempts in the United States to create neo-corporatist capital-labor arrangements were unsuccessfully advocated by Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis in the 1980s. As secretary of labor during the Clinton administration, Robert Reich promoted neo-corporatist reforms.Waring, Stephen P. Taylorism Transformed: Scientific Management Theory Since 1945. University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Pp. 194.
Also, the Onganía regime during the Argentine Revolution had a corporatist ideology, experimenting in particular in Córdoba under the governance of Carlos Caballero. Although in practice, it represented a type of exclusive corporatism, where only private interests were represented through organizations. They were given representation in the State in exchange for accepting certain controls. In reality, this led to many functions and structures of the State passing into private hands, but in an unbalanced way. Business and religious groups ended up taking control of important areas of the government. As a result, the state's ability to act independently and efficiently was greatly reduced, which also explains why resistance to these measures arose.
For instance, some Catholic fundamentalists were in the Ministry of Social Welfare (although with a short stay), such as Minister Roberto Petracca and the Secretary of Promotion and Community Assistance (SEPAC), Roberto Gorostiaga. Both were Catholic militants, members of Ciudad Católica, of the Verbo Magazine and followers of Jacques de Mahieu. Together with these, in 1967, there were also other types of Catholic groups in the Ministry of Social Welfare, with social Christian principles and modernizing for the time. In this spectrum were the minister, Julio Álvarez, the secretary of SEPAC, Raúl Puigbó, the undersecretary of SEPAC, Antonio Critto, and the undersecretary of Security.
Thus, the integration of the ministries offers a clear example of the corporatist element of this period. Especially, as it opened institutional areas to the representation of some interests of civil society. However, this opening occurred selectively, including mainly groups that already supported the government. The private actors that were incorporated had a limited role, as they could only provide information and technical advice, since this was considered to be the best form of participation.
At the national level the state recognizes one and only one organization (say, a national labour union, a business association, a farmers' association) as the sole representative of the sectoral interests of the individuals, enterprises or institutions that comprise that organization's assigned constituency. The state determines which organizations will be recognized as legitimate and forms an unequal partnership of sorts with such organizations. The associations sometimes even get channelled into the policy-making processes and often help implement state policy on the government's behalf.
By establishing itself as the arbiter of legitimacy and assigning responsibility for a particular constituency with one sole organization, the state limits the number of players with which it must negotiate its policies and co-opts their leadership into policing their own members. This arrangement is not limited to economic organizations such as business groups and social organizations.
The political scientist Jean C. Oi coined the term "local state corporatism" to describe China's distinctive type of state-led growth, in which a communist party-state with Leninist roots commits itself to policies which are friendly to the market and to growth.
The use of corporatism as a framework to understand the central state's behaviour in China has been criticized by authors such as Bruce Gilley and William Hurst.William Hurst (2007) "The City as the Focus: The Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Urban Politics’, China Information 20(30).
The Constitution of Ireland of 1937 was influenced by Roman Catholic Corporatism as expressed in the papal encyclical, Quadragesimo anno (1931).
The Nordic countries have the most comprehensive form of collective bargaining, where trade unions are represented at the national level by official organizations alongside employers' associations. Together with the welfare state policies of these countries, this forms what is termed the Nordic model. Less extensive models exist in Austria and Germany which are components of Rhine capitalism.
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