Corporatism

Forms of Corporatism

Corporatism has a long history. The modern territorial state superseded a political and economic order that consisted of numerous corporate communities endowed with traditional rights and obligations, such as churches, estates, cities, or guilds. In this context, organized collectivities regulated cooperation and competition among themselves and their members without or with limited influence of the state.

However, these corporations ultimately proved unable to prevent the victory of the state form of political organization. For political and economic liberalism, corporations are furthermore illegitimate to mediate between the individual and the state. Nevertheless, collective organizations continued to exist, so they could be included in the political order of the state. The political solution for this problem can particularly be found in nineteenth-century Germany, where, based on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Philosophy of Right, corporate associations were considered necessary to participate alongside the Parliament in political negotiations. Corporatist thinking deplored social conflict brought about by party competition and market economy. In the same vein, the Catholic social doctrine favored political representation on the basis of professional groups. This political structuration was considered limiting of class divisions. Modernity should be reached by compulsory organization of society along lines of industrial sectors and producer groups. Fascist regimes, such as Benito Mussolini's (Italy), Francisco Franco's (Spain), and António de Oliveira Salazar's (Portugal) fascist regimes, were examples where the political structure of the state was considered to be the reflection of the organic structure of the society. This so-called state corporatism attempted to use corporatist organizations as an instrument of state rule. The particular structure was favored as it helped to avoid uncontrollable parliamentary democracy. However, antiparliamentarist state corporatism was only one of two forms of corporatism—societal corporatism was [Page 170]developed after 1945 through democratic state building and collective bargaining and theorized under the term of neocorporatism.

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