Social corporatism, occasionally referred to associal democratic corporatism orliberal corporatism,[1] is a form of economictripartitecorporatism based upon a social partnership between the interests ofcapital andlabour, involvingcollective bargaining between representatives of employers and of labour mediated by the government at the national level. Social corporatism is present to a lesser degree in the Western Europeansocial market economies.[2] It is considered a compromise to regulate the conflict between capital and labour by mandating them to engage in mutual consultations that are mediated by the government.[3]
Generally supported bynationalist[4] and/orsocial-democratic political parties, social corporatism developed in the post-World War II period, influenced byChristian democrats and social democrats in Western European countries such as Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.[5] Social corporatism has also been adopted in different configurations and to varying degrees in various Western European countries.[2]
The Nordic countries have the most comprehensive form of collective bargaining, wheretrade unions are represented at the national level by official organizations alongsideemployers' associations. Together with thewelfare state policies of these countries, this forms what is termed the Nordic model. Less extensive models exist in Austria and Germany which are components ofRhine capitalism.[2]
Some controversy has existed in thepolitical left over social corporatism, where it has been criticized for abandoning the concept ofclass struggle in favour ofclass collaboration and compromise, legitimizingprivately owned enterprise and for lending credence to a form of regulatedcapitalism.[6] Others on the left counter these criticisms by claiming that social corporatism has beenprogressive in providing institutional legitimacy to the labour movement that recognizes the existence of ongoing class conflict between thebourgeoisie and theproletariat, but they seek to provide peaceful resolutions to disputes arising from the conflict based on moderation rather thanrevolution.[7] Proponents of social corporatism consider it a class compromise within the context of existingclass conflict.[8]
In the 1930s, social democracy was labeledsocial fascism by theCommunist International which maintained that social democracy was a variant offascism because in addition to their shared corporatist economic model they stood in the way of transitioning tocommunism andsocialism.[9] The development of social corporatism began in Norway and Sweden in the 1930s and was consolidated in the 1960s and 1970s.[10] The system was based upon the dual compromise of capital and the labour as one component and the market and the state as the other component.[10]
Social corporatism developed in Austria under the post-World War II coalition government of theSocial Democratic Party of Austria and theAustrian People's Party.[11] Social corporatism in Austria protects private property in exchange for allowing the labour movement to have political recognition and influence in the economy—to avoid the sharp class conflict that plagued Austria in the 1930s.[12]
Social corporatism later expanded to many otherWestern European andLatin American countries with the spread of thewelfare state, social democracy, andindustrial unionism, in addition to local movements such asPeronism.J. Barkley Rosser Jr. and Marina V. Rosser wrote on the prevalence of social corporatism in Europe by the late 20th century:
Liberal corporatism[a] is largely self-organized between labor and management, with only a supporting role for government. Leading examples of such systems are found in small, ethnically homogeneous countries with strong traditions of social democratic or labor party rule, such as Sweden's Nordic neighbors. Using a scale of 0.0 to 2.0 and subjectively assigning values based on six previous studies, Frederic Pryor in 1988 found Norway and Sweden the most corporatist at 2.0 each, followed by Austria at 1.8, the Netherlands at 1.5, Finland, Denmark, and Belgium at 1.3 each, and Switzerland and West Germany at 1.0 each.[2]
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