Corporate statism

Corporate statism, state corporatism, or simply corporatism is a political culture and a form of corporatism - closely related to fascism - whose adherents hold that the corporate group which forms the basis of society is the state. The state requires all members of a particular economic sector to join an officially designated interest group. Such interest groups thus attain public status, and they participate in national policymaking. As a result, the state has great control over the groups, and groups have great control over their members.[1]

As with other political cultures, societies have existed historically which exemplified corporate statism, for instance as propounded by Othmar Spann (1878-1950) in Austria and implemented by Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) in Italy (1922-1943) and by António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo in Portugal (1933-1974).[2]

Corporate statism most commonly manifests itself as a ruling party acting as a mediator between the workers, capitalists and other prominent state interests by institutionally incorporating them into the ruling mechanism. Corporatist systems were most prevalent in the mid-20th Century in Europe and later elsewhere in developing countries. According to this critique, interests, both social and economic, are so diverse that a state cannot possibly mediate between them effectively through incorporating them. Social conflicts go beyond incorporated dichotomies of labor and capital to include innumerable groups. Furthermore, globalization presents challenges, both social and economic, that a corporate state cannot sufficiently address because these problems transcend state borders and approaches. Corporate statism therefore differs from Corporate nationalism in that it is a social mode of organization rather than economic nationalism operating through private business corporations.