Corporatism, Labour, and Public Policy
Gerhard Lehmbruch
(Universität Tübingen)
Submitted for Symposium No. 11;
Social Policies in Comparative Perspective
9th World Congress of Sociology
Uppsala -19 August, 1978
Not for citation without consent of the author
The paper which I have been asked to prepare for this symposium reports some preliminary
reflections and speculative hypotheses developed in the context of ongoing research. It does not
pretend to give an definitive answers to the problems that are raised and should be read as a
rather sketchy contribution to the discussion. The short time-span available did not permit more
thorough elaboration of the hypotheses.
1. Neo-Corporatism: Approaches and paradigms
The concept of (neo-)corporatism is becoming increasingly employed to designate recent trends
in some advanced capitalist societies, in particular in Western and Northern Europe. Interestingly
it has been adopted by different authors independently of each other and in different countries.
This has for consequence a somewhat heterogeneous and occasionally rather vague usage.
However, few approaches only have so far gained larger acceptance and apparently are of
particular relevance for our problem. I shall briefly discuss the conceptualization of corporatism,
first as a "mode of interest intermediation", second, as a mode of policy formation. These two
approaches are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary to each other.
Schmitter's well-known definition of "corporatism" as contrasted to "pluralism" and
"syndicalism", and his distinction of "state" and "societal corporatism" (Schmitter 1974, 1977)
emphasize the structural dimensions of the phenomenon, in particular the network of interest
associations (limited number, singular, noncompetitive, functionally differentiated), their internal
organizational structure (compulsory, hierarchically ordered) and their structural relation to the
state apparatus (recognition by the State, representational monopoly). Among its advantages are
that it should allow workable operationalizations in cross-national as well as longitudinal
perspective 1 and might serve as the basis of a developmental model of interest intermediation.
This is not least due to the comprehensive character of this typology in which the concept of
"corporatism" covers a broader range of phenomena than in the other approach.
1
A supplementary condition would of course be the establishment of a sufficient data base. Existing operational
definitions (in particular: Wilensky 1975) are not very satisfactory because of too crude measures.
Indeed, conceptualizing corporatism as a "mode of policy formation" amounts to a more
restrictive definition, namely, "participation of large organized social groups in public, especially
economic policy-making” (Lehmbruch 1974; cf. also the definition by Ruin 1974,172). This too
implies a distinction of corporatism from pluralism: In the pluralist mode of policy-formation,
interests are organized so as to exert influence or 'pressure" upon the political decision-makers,
and policies may be understood – in the tradition of Bentley's "group approach" – as the result of
the vector sum of conflicting interests. Or, to put it into the framework of the Eastonian flow
model: Interest associations, by articulating particular interests, are producing "inputs" into the
conversion process. In the corporatist mode of policy formation, however, they participate in the
"authoritative allocation of values" or in the production of "outputs". For, at the difference to the
pluralist mode, organized interest here tend to become integrated into the political steering
mechanism. Hence, the analytical distinction implied in the pluralist "pressure politics" or "vector
sum" model becomes quite inadequate. True, in the pluralist model too a strong interpenetration
of state bureaucracies and organized interests may take place, but then it would mean the
"colonization" of the state by the interest groups. Corporatism, however, tends to develop into a
strongly integrated system of "societal guidance" (Lehmbruch 1977, 94).
An interesting argument, utilizing the terminology of German constitutional-legal theory has
been put forward by Ernst Wolfgang Böckenförde (1977, 244 ff.): Some interest groups are
limited to participation in the "formation of the political will" (politische Willensbildung), which
approximately corresponds to Easton's "demands" and "supports"), while others participate in
the "power of political decision-making" (politische Entscheidungsgewalt, i.e., "the authoritative
allocation of values"). The latter is given, Böckenförde argues, if interest groups "hold as a right
decision functions that form an indispensible element of fulfilling the tasks that are incumbent on
the political system (the state) as necessities". Participation in the formation of the political will
give them only the chance to influence the holders of decision powers, while the outcomes and
success are remaining uncertain. But participation in the decision power as such gives to interest
groups the chance to make themselves certain decisions that are an indispensable element for the
fulfillment of necessary tasks of the state, with the consequence that these decisions cannot be
circumvented and hence are binding for other political decision-making authorities. The most
important interest-groups of this latter type, according to Böckenförde, are the holders of the
"Tarifautonomie" (autonomous power for making binding agreements in collective bargaining),
that is, labour unions and employers' organisations, and the "holders of the liberty to invest" (in
particular the "big investors") since their decisions constitute "data that cannot be circumvented"
("unumgehbare Daten") for macro-economic policies of the state authorities. Different from this,
even a very influential interest organization such as the German Farmers' Association is confined
to influence and pressure politics and hence belongs to the first type. "Participation in the power
of political decision-making", as the author puts it, does not necessarily mean their integration, or
co-optation, into the political steering mechanism. Rather, he concludes with the policy
recommendation that such integration should take place. Böckenförde avoids to label this
"corporatism". But his typology has some affinity to our distinction of the corporatist from the
pluralist mode of policy formation.
Our approach is compatible with, and complementary to, Schmitter's conceptualization in so far
as the corporatist "mode of policy formation" tends to presuppose a mode of interest
intermediation" that is precisely characterized by the organization of the constituent interests
"into a limited number of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive, hierarchically ordered, and
functionally differentiated categories, recognized or licensed by the state and granted a deliberate
representational monopoly within their respective categories". (The Netherlands, with an
ideological segmentation of labour unions and other interest associations, constitute a deviant
case.) But interest associations that conform to Schmitter's definition of
"corporatism" may not necessarily be integrated in the mechanisms of making and implementing
political decisions. For example, the German social historian Heinrich August Winkler has
argued that the emergence of singular, compulsory, and noncompetitive interest associations in
Imperial Germany, such as the chambers of handicrafts (Handwerkskammern) and of agriculture,
"constituted cases of organizational protectionism. Two professional groups that were supposed
to be of particular importance for the state (staatspolitisch wertvoll) received a preferential
treatment as against other groups in looking after their interests: They received assistance from
the state for an articulation of their demands which they were unable to do by their own efforts'
(Winkler 1972, 18). Winkler's opposition of such “organizational protectionism” to “pluralism”
points to the need to establish more complex typologies when moving from the structural
dimension of interest intermediation to the functional dimension of organizational participation in
policy formation. This is, however, not the subject of the present paper. As for the confrontation
of the structural and the functional approach to corporatism (as we may briefly designate them), it
appears that corporatism in the functional sense ("mode of policy formation") is a rather recent
historical phenomenon the emergency of which is fostered by the existence of corporatist patterns
of "interest intermediation" but should be measured independently.2
The discussion about these two conceptual approaches has so far largely been held on the basis of
the "political system" paradigm. But it is doubtful whether this – in particular in versions such as
the Eastonian flow model mentioned above – is analytically adequate. We should mention two
other paradigms that have recently been employed. On the one hand, in an interorganizational
perspective it has been argued that "corporatist formations are deemed appropriate because they
match higher levels of organizational interdependence" (Metcalfe 1978). Quite different from this
rather abstract formulation is an explanation of corporatism on the basis of the paradigm of the
"capitalist state" that has been proposed by several authors (in particular, Panitch 1977, B.Jessop
1978). Aspects of both are relevant for our problem.
Finally, the terminological distinctions of "societal" vs. "state corporatism" (Schmitter 1974,
1977) and of "liberal" vs. "authoritarian corporatism" (Lehmbruch 1974,1977) are largely
identical in meaning. Schmitter's terminology highlights the differences in the development of the
particular pattern. I prefer the term "liberal corporatism" since it may be argued that this type is
precisely characterized by the blurring of the distinction between "state" and "society" and the
interpenetration of the two spheres.
2
Quite different is J.T. Winkler's definition of "corporatism" as an "economic system in which the state directs and
controls - predominantly privately - owned business". This definition is quite similar to, e.g. Lenin's concept of "state
capitalism " which, according to its author, is compatible as well with "junker-bourgeois imperialism" as with the
"dictatorship of the proletariat"(Lenin, 1921). Corporatism as defined above may be one element of the syndrom
described by Winkler ("cooptation of the union movement into corporatist institutions; J.T. Winkler, 1976, 134), but
logically this seems not to be necessary. Clearly, Winkler uses the term to designate quite another - though not
completely unrelated - phenomenon than Schmitter and this author do.
2. Economic policy and the "incorporation” of labour unions
Liberal corporatism as a specific mode of policy formation emerges where conflicts over income
distribution threaten to affect the directive capacity of the political system. It has developed as a
consequence of post-keynesian economic policy, but has retained its importance even more after
that policy has largely failed. One of its most conspicuous aspects is the "incorporation", or cooptation of labour unions into the mechanisms of macro-economic policy-making.
To this hypothesis one might object that we have much older examples of an "incorporation" of
interest groups, for example, of business interests in the form of “chambers of commerce" (or
"commerce and industry") as an instrument of an active policy of economic development in l9th
century Germany and Austria. (At the difference of the "protectionist" formation of chambers of
handicrafts and agriculture mentioned before it might be argued that the early chambers of
commerce served central policy-making functions). And, indeed, it should not be denied that the
history of corporatism is older than keynesianism.
The particular importance of liberal corporatism, however, stems from the fact that it has come to
be employed as an instrument for the regulating of distribution conflicts - in particular the
distribution conflict of labour and capital. The latter is not the only distribution conflict that may
be handled by corporatist devices. An example for corporatist regulation of "secondary"
distribution conflicts is the "Konzertierte Aktion im Gesundheitswesen" (concerted action in the
public health sector) established in West Germany in 1977: In order to check the "explosion of
costs" in public health the associations of the parties concerned (in particular of doctors and of
health insurance schemes) meet to fix a ceiling for global increases of health expenses. This,
however, is patterned after the model which in West Germany until recently represented the most
important type of liberal corporatism: The "Konzertierte Aktion" for incomes policy (from which
the labour unions have withdrawn in 1978, for reasons to discuss below).
The emergence of liberal corporatism as an instrument for regulating the class conflict of labour
and capital is the object of our inquiry. Corporatism in this sense may be considered as a new
stage of social-democratic reformism supplementing the older, étatist reformism. It is true that
liberal and conservative governments too have repeatedly sought to employ corporatist devices as
means of political integration. But effective "incorporation" of the labour unions in general has
only been possible with social democratic governments (or with social democrats participating in
coalition governments). This is a fact to which we shall have to come back in the course of our
reflections.
Keynesian and post-keynesian policies have often displayed a strong centralizing bias. Fiscal
policy, in particular, has given the impulse to tendencies towards coordination and centralization
of institutional actors. For example, the financial autonomy of local government and of the states
within a federation has been considered an obstacle to effective budgetary and fiscal demand
management. The co-optation of interest groups is another instance in this centralizing process,
but has become all the more important as the classical techniques of keynesian policy appeared to
be insufficient in the face of phenomena such as inflation under conditions of underemployment.
Incomes policy now became important as a sort of "flank protection" for fiscal and monetary
policy. New inflation theories attached increasing importance to the behaviour of suppliers on the
commodity and. factor markers, among others unions and employers, and this led to the
conclusion that influencing such behaviour could be crucial for economic policy - all the more
since collective bargaining appears to constitute a lever more easy to manipulate than the pricing
of commodities. In particular the theory of the "struggle-for-income-inflation" (e.g. Zawadski
1965) suggested such a strategy. In practice usually this amounts to a policy of wage restraints in
order to avoid a "cost-push" that might be prejudicial to profits and hence to the entrepreneurial
propensity to invest which, in turn, is considered as essential for maintaining steady rates of
growth and full employment.
Wage restraint, however, requires the compliance of the organized interests concerned, in
particular of labour unions, and in general it has been difficult to obtain such compliance by an
"imperative" incomes policy (wage and price controls) or even an "indicative" policy ( "moral
suasion", "guidelines " ) which is unilaterally pursued by the government. Rather, the active
cooperation of unions and employer’s representatives appeared to be necessary for obtaining such
compliance. This, however, presupposed some sort of participation on their part in the
elaboration of policy and hence, their co-optation into the decision-making process. This has
taken a variety of forms ("social contract", “Sozialpartnerschaft”, "Konzertierte Aktion" etc.),
with lower or higher degrees of institutionalization, with a more active role of the government
authorities or on the basis of a largely autonomous cooperation between unions and employers as
"social partners”. (For details in a comparative perspective, see Lehmbruch 1977;
Ulman/Flanagan 1971; Rall 1975.) The record of cooperative incomes policies is controversial:
':While in some countries (such as Austria) it has been smoothly working for many years (Lang
1978), there are also examples of failure that, eventually, have led to stronger governmental
interventions. However, the political appeal of "cooperative” corporatist incomes policy seems to
stem not merely from its alleged economic efficiency but to a large degree from the connotations
of harmony and 'social peace" it comports and which may serve a symbolic function relieving
governments from pressure.
Now the emergence and the working of corporatist incomes policies raises the following puzzle:
Since the emphasis is on wage restraint labour unions are exposed to strong internal stress which
results from the perceived asymmetry of policies. European labour has in general experienced
society as “class society", characterized by inequality, and the redistributive impetus of its
demands has since long been an important element of its cultural tradition. Labour parties and,
still more, unions have continued to adhere to redistributive objectives and to a redistributive
rhetoric in spite of all accommodation that has taken place in practice. Now normally a
cooperative incomes policy means that labour has to put its redistributive objectives last (see, in
particular, Pfromm 1975; also Ulman/Flanagan 1971, 224 ff.) Incomes policies may comport
some sort of "horizontal" redistribution among different categories of workers, in particular in the
form of a “solidary wage policy". But it is an essential element of most incomes policies that the
“vertical" distribution of factor incomes between capital and labour cannot be challenged in
favour of the latter (except in the sense of restoring a long-term distribution ratio during certain
phases of the business cycle).
The resulting puzzle then is how to explain the compliance of labour organizations and their
readiness to cooperate. The leftist slogan of "traitors to the working class" has few empirical
plausibility, even if it is underpinned by arguments concerning the oligarchic structure of union
leadership and the apathy of members. We have to assume rational behaviour on the part of union
leaders, and since, in the case of European unions, corruption of individual leaders in general is
out of the question, we have to ask for the organizational quid-pro-quo that may make rational
their cooperation.
Such a quid pro quo may, to begin with, result from the very logic of post-keynesian macroeconomics. Its central notion of the interdependence of macro-economic aggregates leads to a
number of interrelated reflections: On the one hand (as the West German "Council of Economic
Advisers", the "Sachverständigenrat", has argued) the "struggle for income" is "functionless" for
the different actors dispose of levers to restore the original ratio of incomes distribution (for
example by inflationary passing wage costs to burden prices). On the other hand, the level of
employment depends on the propensity to invest and the latter in turn depends on the expectation
of reasonable profits. Hence, wage restraint should simultaneously guarantee monetary stability,
full employment, and a long-term stable and fair income share for labour. "Distributional
neutrality" is supposed to be one of the conditions of success of this policy. The attempt to
translate this logic into political action has been characteristic of the West German version of
cooperative incomes policy. The "Konzertierte Aktion", initiated in 1967 by the social democratic
minister of economy, Karl Schiller, was conceived as a "discussion round" with an educative
function; intended to provide the organized interests with an understanding of macro-economic
interdependencies. On the basis of "guidance data" provided by the government the actors should
be able to calculate the consequences of their activities and thus be induced to accordingly
change their behavior in the sense of conformity with "economic reason". In particular it was
expected that the unions would thus be prevailed upon to manifest the wage restraint supposedly
necessary to reduce the trade-off that, according to the Phillips theorem, exists between inflation
and unemployment.
It was made clear that the "Konzertierte Aktion" itself had no decision-making power of its own.
The "Tarifautonomie"(autonomous power of collective bargaining) of unions and employers
should remain intact, without formal intervention of the state. This differs clearly from the
practice of such long established corporatist bodies as the Austrian "Paritary commission for
wages and prices" or the Dutch "Foundation of Labour" whose opinions on wage negotiations are
either binding or at least carry great weight for the decisions of other authorities. Exchange of
ideas in the "Konzertierte Aktion" did not even end up with a formal agreement or concrete
recommendations. Rather it was expected that information as such should be translated
autonomously into action by the groups concerned Such a policy has of course certain structural
conditions. One is a rather high degree of associational centralization, another a strong
receptiveness for somewhat sophisticated economic reasoning. Both conditions were largely met
within the German labour movement. It is true that the Trade Union Confederation (DGB) itself
is rather powerless and has no effective control over the policy of unions. But since not only
these are organized industry-wide and quite strongly centralized, but furthermore some of them
(especially the Metal Workers Union) exert a strong "wage leadership" role, it was largely
sufficient to include the leaders of the most important unions into the "Konzertierte Aktion".
Receptiveness to economic reasoning was favoured by the increasing importance of economic
expertise within union staffs, due to the employment of trained economists and to the adoption of
keynesian thinking.
However, in West Germany these conditions proved not strong enough to secure lasting
compliance. The "Konzertierte Aktion" was effective only under two further restrictive
conditions. Only in a situation of economic crisis (as in the recession of 1967-68) were the union
leaders in a position to make their rank and file accept a policy of wage restraint. The wildcat
strikes of 1969, caused by the perceived lag of prices behind rising profits, in a situation of
economic recovery, and the wildcat strikes of 1973 made it clear that compliance of the
membership could not be expected under conditions of boom.
Furthermore, the reasoning linking jobs to profits was convincing only so long as it could be
made sufficiently evident to the membership. This was not longer the case when, in the crisis of
the seventies business increasingly resorted to rationalization by labour-saving investments.
It may be asked why, under such conditions, labour unions have for so many years participated in
the "Konzertierte Aktion". On the one hand, it certainly limited their latitude of action and
subjected them to stronger pressure from public opinion, and it caused occasional unrest within
the rank and file On the other hand already in the early 60's, union leadership itself was quite
strongly oriented towards consideration of the "gesamtwirtschaftliche" effects (effects on the
whole national economy) of its policy. In 1972, a study published by the labour unions research
institute argued that the "Konzertierte Aktion" was a failure, that Karl Schiller's belief in the
feasability of mobilizing the "collective reason" in form of an elite consensus overarching
conflict had been "naive", and that neither employers nor unions were really interested in
continuing an organized activity that effectively served only the publicity of the government.
According to the author, both groups continued their participation simply because they worried
that public opinion might accuse them of being in the way of economic stability and were afraid
of leaving the field to the other side (H. Adam 1972, 92 ff.).
Finally, in 1977 the German Trade Union Confederation, and the industrial Unions affiliate to it,
ceased to participate in the "Konzertierte Aktion". The reason was that the law on codetermination in large business firms, which parliament had passed after laborious compromises,
had been attacked by the employers organizations by a plaint of unconstitutionality. The
employers intention apparently was not to bring down the law itself (which is rather improbable)
but to obtain an opinion by which the Constitutional Court would set narrow limits to an eventual
future extension of the law towards a stronger influence of labour representatives on the boards of
firms. This, however, is a central long-term objective of the unions. And their walkout seems to
indicate that co-determination was the payoff expected as a quid-pro-quo for their cooperation in
incomes policy.
3. A neo-corporatist logic of exchange?
The failure of the 'Konzertierte Aktion' raises the question whether liberal corporatism, as some
authors argue, is inherently unstable, or whether under certain conditions it may acquire stability
and durability. For the time being, discussion of this question will be of a somewhat speculative
character. We shall have to ask which trends towards a broader and more stable establishment of
neo-corporatism may eventually be discerned.
It has been suggested that one reason for the temporary failure of corporatist incomes policies in
West Germany was the fact that payoffs expected by the unions have not materialized. The error
in design probably lay in the isolation of the problem of wage restraint. This observation may be
generalized into the following first hypothesis: Liberal corporatism in its dominant form, the core
element of which is a cooperative incomes policy, requires from labour the renunciation of
traditional! redistributive objectives, and in a long-term perspective this will probably not take
place without labour obtaining certain quid-pro-quos or trade-offs outside of wage policy. The
interesting question now would be in which policy areas such trade-off might be looked for.
Before discussing this in more detail a general comment concerning the structural context is
appropriate. It has been observed that liberal corporatism seems to be highly correlated with
social-democratic participation in government.3 This is not surprising and can in a quite plausible
manner be explained by the fact that with such a constellation labour may expect the greatest
chances to obtain such trade-offs. In turn, for just this reason, unions may have an interest to
support a social democratic government by cooperating in its economic policy.
This apparent correlation, then, would not simply be due to ideological solidarity but to the fact
that liberal corporatism rests upon a characteristic logic of exchange. If we proceed from the
assumption of rational behaviour of union leaders such a hypothesis is most likely to explain the
eventual "incorporation" of labour. If we now go one step further and ask which policy areas may
be eligible for such trade-offs it is, first, evident that quite probably these will equally concern the
conflict of labour and capital, and, second, that with high probability they will be interdependent
with wage policies. This leads to the following (admittedly somewhat speculative) hypothesis:
More durable and stable forms of liberal corporatism will probably be characterized by the
simultaneous treatment of interdependent problems arising in the context of the conflict of labour
and capital.
A particularly obvious example is taxing policy the nexus of which to incomes policy is
undeniable. Contrary to the doctrine of the "built-in stabilizers" function of progressive taxes, the
tax progression may result in an intensification of the "struggle for income" as soon as under
inflationary conditions it hits more and more wage-earners. In Austria, which has a cooperative
incomes policy since the '50s, it has not at all been uncommon for the minister of finance to
discuss tax reforms with the labour unions. On the other hand, taxation of business earnings is
likewise relevant for an income po2icy.
A significant pattern which recently has appeared in several countries is the extension of incomes
policy to include income taxes, social security taxes, prices, farmer's incomes and food subsidies.
"Combined packages" or "simultaneous solutions" of this sort have been tried, in particular, in
different Scandinavian countries (e.g. Denmark 1963, Finland since 1968, Norway 1976). Yet
this sort of broadening of incomes policy seems largely to be of an ad hoc character and thus does
not result in an institutional stabilization of corporatism.
A higher probability of this taking place is given in labour market policy, since it has been
characterized by the development of quite strong institutional-bureaucratic structures. However,
there are considerable cross-national differences in the institutional framework, in particular
concerning the participation of the organizations of labour market parties. To the degree that
labour unions have an active stake in employment policy this may, in their perspective, yield
certain trade-offs for wage restraint or for compliance in a normal incomes policy. There may
even be instances where an 'active labour market policy' with strong union participation has been
conceived as an alternative to incomes policy as in Sweden (Ulman/Flanagan 111 ff). Since
labour market policy in turn may be supported among others by regional and/or sectoral
investment planning in this area too corporative patterns of organizational participation will
eventually become important.
3
I have not yet made a statistical test since this would presuppose a satisfactory operational definition of corporatism
more complex than those proposed until now. This problem is currently under investigation.
The West German developments discussed above point to another area important in our context,
namely, co-determination in industry. This matter is somewhat ambiguous since in the rhetoric of
labour unions it is often assimilated to "economic" or "industrial democracy". But one has of
course to distinguish the quasi-syndicalist concepts of "industrial democracy" and those of
"workers control" from the corporatist concept of "co- determination" which, in its German
version, is based on the principle of "parity of capital and labour" with the implication that labour
is sharing the responsibilities of private enterprise. There seems to be a striking coincidence of
the recent diffusion of co-determination schemes in other European countries with the growing
importance of liberal corporatism which deserves further investigation. An aspect of particular
importance would be to what degree co-determination on the firm or plant level results in a sort
of "firm egoism" of labour representatives, or to what degree it is oriented towards taking into
account larger economic considerations - be it by the co-optation of union representatives from
outside the firm or by the establishment of regional or national" economic councils".(Both are
part of the platform of the West German labour unions.) Co-determination of the latter type
would clearly fit into our definition of liberal corporatist policy formation.
Finally the possible repercussions of income policies on the distribution of income and wealth
might be neutralized by a "policy of formation of wealth"(Vermögensbildungspolitik). The
original problem is, of course, that an aggressive union strategy of wage increases cannot change
the distribution of wealth in favour of labour because of worker's high propensity to consume. On
the other hand many schemes of workers' participation in reinvested profits simply result in
reinforcing the financial assets of firms without challenging the control by the original owners
and management. (The problem is somewhat similar with pension funds on the firm level as long
as labour has no decisive share in their control). The corporatist strategy would be one of
"collective capital formation" where workers' shares would be placed in funds under the
organizational control of labour. Propositions of this sort have not yet been realized on a larger
scale, and in countries such as West Germany until now they have never had an appreciable
chance of materializing. However, in Sweden the discussion has led to concrete projects
(Meidner plan) the future realization of which cannot be excluded in the case of a reversal of the
actual parliamentary majority. Hence it may make sense to include concepts of "collective capital
formation" into research on corporatist policies.
To sum up I would predict that liberal corporatist co-optation of labour will remain unstable as
long as it is largely restricted to an incomes policy the essential element of which is wage
restraint. If political decision-makers continue to favour corporatist devices for economic policy
this will, because of the perceived asymmetry of incomes policy, result in trends towards
reinforcing compensatory corporatist patterns in related policy areas which give labour unions a
larger influence in public policy. From this would probably result an institutional stabilization of
corporatism the eventual consequences of which remain to be investigated.
4. Problems and alternatives
The problem of neo-corporatism has often been discussed under the aspect of constitutional
democracy: Does the emergence of corporatist structures of interest intermediation constitute a
threat to responsible government based on parliamentary representation by elections? I have
argued elsewhere that the trend is rather towards a structural differentiation of the political
system in which a corporatist subsystem is specialized on – and restricted to – conflict regulation
and consensus formation in certain areas of economic policy (Lehmbruch 1977). Now the
prediction of an eventual expansion of corporatist policy-making and its possible institutional
stabilization raises the question whether this might not in the long run lead to a sort of "functional
primacy "of the corporatist subsystem in relation to the subsystem of parliamentary
representation mediated by political parties. For the time being, empirical evidence for the
existence of such trends seems to be poor. One might, however, point to certain trends towards
corporatist control of public opinion and even social science research that have been recorded
from Austria (Matzner 1974, 442 ff.).
Another – and related – problem is that of the consequences of corporatist policy formation for
the internal power structure and legitimation of interest organizations, in particular of labour
unions. While on the one hand it presupposes a centralized organizational structure on the other
hand centralizing tendencies seem to be still further reinforced. This, according to the judgment
of observers in different countries, is accompanied by the increasing influence of experts (in
particular of trained economists) within the organization.
Trends like these are quite often related to the theorem of organizational goal displacement
current since Robert Michels. Trends in liberal corporatism as sketched out above would then be
attributed to the "autonomous associational interest" of labour unions (Goetz Briefs). Indeed it
cannot be a priori excluded that advantages which labour may eventually obtain from corporatist
policies largely accrue to its top and medium ranking leadership in form of status and influence.
The crucial empirical question remains, however, whether tangible advantages accrue to the
membership.
Critical discussion of these aspects might eventually lead to the problem of alternatives to liberal
corporatism. Two opposite strategies seem to be of importance. One would be the eventual
transformation of corporatism towards something like syndicalism by an increasing participation
of the rank and file in the articulation of demands. This, however, would probably tend to
increase the intensity of conflict and thus would run counter to the corporatist objective of
coordinating organized interest in a society characterized by antagonistic interests.
The other strategy would be the restoration of a competitive market structure by reducing the
power of economic actors, in particular by regulating labour unions. To achieve consistency and
“symmetry” it would, however, be imperative to include the curtailing of oligopolies and other
concentrations of economic power in such a strategy. It is significant that in the last years
concrete projects of regulating labour unions – such as the abortive British Industrial Relations
Act – have rather been of a hybrid and inconsistent type, combining elements of an
"incorporation" of unions with others aiming at reducing their control. Thus it may seem doubtful
whether any clear alternatives to corporatism have a serious chance of being realized.
References
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