Corporatism

This article analysis Governments and interest group’s intermediation of employment interest under neo-corporatism to understand young third-country immigrants’ transition to work in  Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Existing research pointed to neo-corporatism that  emphasize large interest group organization cooperates with each other and with public
authorities in interest intermediation to reconcile competing group’s interest with the public,  but the governance leads to inequality. Although neo-corporatism involves regulatory  weakness, there is still little research in Central Eastern European (CEE) countries explaining  Government and interests’ group intermediation of employment interest under neo-corporatism to understand young third-country immigrants’ transition to work. Based on a  qualitative cross-national case-oriented research approach with fewer-country comparison,  documents, published and unpublished scholastic texts are collected and analysed by a  document and content analysis technique to fill in this gap. The findings show that exchange  interaction, industrial restructuring, and compliance monitoring instruments are a major  perceived influence in neo-corporatism governance with a lack of public value accountability  that may impair the reconciliation of social dispute when looking at issues such as young third-country immigrants and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups in interest  intermediation setting. The study demonstrates certain decentralised multilevel corporatist  governance similarities but dissimilarities from the country’s institutional context. The  outcome points to regulatory administrative devices to manage interest group’s crisis and  young vulnerable people’s employment opportunities. This is relevant to bureaucratic  accountability and deliberate democracy, but the risks to democratic deficit, competitiveness,  political inequality, and inefficiency in the complex policy implementation process may  impair ethnic minority people’s belongings, jeopardize public the trust, and hampered open democratic values.

Merely “surreal” might describe the interview given by Aqua America’s CEO, Nick DeBenedictis, to Crissa Shoemaker DeBree did the fact that he is lying not portend such devastating consequences for so many people. The security of the nation’s water supply is an important, but often silent, priority for water companies, said the head of Aqua America. The worldview evinced in DeBenedictis’ brief interview with DeBree is not, in fact, surreal; it’s not even “merely” self-deluded. Rather, it epitomizes the “up is down,” “true is false,” “the sky is pink” (thanks Josh Fox) propaganda promoted by the hydraulic fracturing corporations and their associates in order to justify the construction of 200,000 fracked wells, their attendant compressor stations, water withdrawal depots, freshwater impoundments, and “produced water” deep injection disposal wells. For DeBenedictis, the sky is pink—and water is the green of a big fat dollar bill.

The instability of liberal democracies both in Europe and in the Americans partly brought about by the COVID-19 Pandemic has shown the limits of this construct in terms of protecting the core values of liberalism itself, such as freedom of speech and the protection of private property. Riots in the United States, vandalism in several European countries, and the attempts by the media and big technology corporations to suppress free speech can be contrasted to the relative stability and calm of Asian countries with corporatist systems and with different varieties of benevolent authoritarianism. The present paper argues that an emerging Asian model combining aspects of corporatism, increasing professional engagement throughout society, and benevolent authoritarianism has shown greater resilience and greater success in protecting the core values that liberal democracies are supposed to be based on, than the open systems favored by the West.

This article engages with the most recent literature on the global circulation of corporatist projects, discussing three reform schemes elaborated in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century-G.D.H. Cole's guild socialism, Dudley Docker's technocratic business parliament and Harold Macmillan's conservative industrial self-government. Overcoming the often too rigid equivalences between corporatism and fascism, this article seeks to ascertain to what extent and with what nuances corporatist ideas circulated among non-fascist political circles in Britain. It is argued that the schemes analysed shared a similar corporatist matrix, which nonetheless served as the core idea of different political strategies. In the conclusions, it is claimed that these dissimilarities are consequential to the degree of adherence to the principles of capitalism, i.e. the profit-earning motive and the private ownership of the means of production, as well as to the democratic level of the institutions proposed.

Is social justice possible within capitalist societies? Or should progressives and egalitarians be looking for viable alternatives to free-market capitalism? John Rawls, one of the most influential political philosophers of the last century, advanced the view that social justice is indeed impossible within the constraints of the capitalist welfare state. Rawls believed that familiar capitalist societies in which a small minority holds a massively disproportionate share of wealth could not possibly be just. Instead, he argued that justice requires a different form of socioeconomic organization, one in which human and nonhuman capital is dispersed widely. He called it a "property-owning democracy".

Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond presents the first extended treatment of Rawls' important ideas about the practical implementation of his theory of justice. Contributors to this volume approach Rawls' idea from a number of perspectives: its philosophical foundations, institutional implications, and possible connections to the future of left-of-center politics. Readings shed new light on a variety of topics, including the inequality of current wealth distribution in advanced capitalist societies; ways of funding a system of universal asset holdings; novel democratic forms of ownership; the link between asset ownership and human capital; and many others. Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond offers thought-provoking insights into the concept of social justice in the 21st-century world.

Este livro revisita o estudo das alternativas autoritárias à democracia
liberal na América Latina na década de 1930 a partir da perspetiva da difusão do corporativismo no mundo das ditaduras do entreguerras e entre as elites autoritárias. Que impulsionou a difusão do corporativismo na América Latina? Que processos de difusão transnacional foram postos em marcha e de onde, para onde? Como é que o corporativismo social e político se tornou num conjunto de instituições criadas pelas ditaduras dos anos 30? Em que tipo de conjunturas críticas foram elas perfilhadas? O livro aborda estas questões adotando um modelo transnacional e comparativo. Daremos uso aos conceitos de corporativismo social e corporativismo político e à sua aplicação específica ao estudo dos regimes autoritários do entreguerras.

O artigo parte de uma discussão conceitual sobre “corporativismo” e “pluralismo”, procurando mostrar que a redução de ambos a princípios polares e opostos de organização social – freqüente na literatura – traz consigo simplificações graves que prejudicam uma adequada compreensão dos problemas envolvidos na construção de instituições políticas destinadas a processar publicamente a intermediação de interesses privados conflitantes. Numa segunda parte, o artigo tece considerações sobre o caso brasileiro, detendo-se um pouco sobre o problema da inflação acelerada e suas relações com uma precária institucionalização das disputas distributivas no país. O artigo inclina-se pela conclusão de que o processo de institucionalização da democracia no Brasil inclui a tarefa de se construir um “adequado” corporativismo entre nós, ao invés de simplesmente se extinguirem as precárias instituições corporativas existentes.

Pluralism, in its many  ramifications,  represents  a  particularly broad  line  of  political  and  social  thought  as well as an approach to empirical analysis. The intellectual roots of the concept can be traced back over centuries. In modern political science,  the  term  has  been  mostly  associated with  analyses  of  the  influence  of  interest groups  over  executive  political  decision- making. As a paradigmatic theory and method, the approach was not fully elaborated until the mid  20th  century.  It  then  quickly  developed into a classic, often dominant approach to the study  of  politics  in  the  Western  world. The article approaches the concept and theory of pluralism from a historico-developmental perspective.

Update: If you'd like to watch an accurate, funny, and brief take on Eco-Nihilism, please go to #wisecrack on Youtube: Did South Park Turn Anti-Capitalist, where the central argument from Eco-Nihilism is quoted at several junctures:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_MglOKUFRg.

I may not have made South Park directly--but Wisecrack--close enough!!

Wendy Lynne Lee

This is the preface for Eco-Nihilism: The Philosophical Geopolitics of the Climate Change Apocalypse.

Lexington Books (Rowman and Littlefield), February 2017.

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739176887/Eco-Nihilism-The-Philosophical-Geopolitics-of-the-Climate-Change-Apocalypse.

Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel, The Road,  tells the story of a dying father’s heroic effort to protect his child from starvation, violence, and disease as they struggle to cross the devastated landscape of a post-apocalyptic America. We don’t know what’s happened to bring about so tragic and terrorizing a circumstance, but we’re nonetheless drawn to the stark images McCarthy evokes and, though we work feverishly to deny that such a tragedy could befall us, we can imagine it.

Indeed, for Syrian refugees, Niger Delta villagers, Northwest Kenyan pastoralists, Chukchi Sea coastal fishermen, Ecuadorian rainforest dwellers, Mexican fishermen, Pennsylvania farmers, indigenous Sengwer, the citizens of Kiribati Island’s thirty-two atolls, and many more, fables like The Road reek of a reality already poisoned nearly beyond repair and foreshadow future crises—environmental, economic, geopolitical, social, and moral—for which the prospect of recovery seems little more than fiction.

Such crises are as predictable as are the implications of an economic system, namely, neoliberal or conquest capitalism, whose objectives and governing logic are, I’ll argue, inherently incompatible not only with the just, the good, or the beautiful—but with life itself. Conquest capital devours and digests values, ethical, civic, and aesthetic, reducing each to that single value without which it can neither replicate itself nor grow: exchange. In so doing it generates a state of affairs that can only rightly be described as pathologically nihilistic: capitalism destroys its own existential conditions through the wholesale commodification of the finite ecosystems upon which it depends. It cannot do otherwise and be capitalism. Hence, to continue down this road guarantees a future disfigured by the violence consequent on abject desperation and subjugation not only to domination by multinational corporations, but ultimately to more prosaic though terrorizing prospects—like thirst.

La ponencia analiza la relación entre el Estado y el movimiento obrero paraguayo durante el corte temporal 1936-1948, haciendo foco en el desarrollo institucional y normativo que promovió el establecimiento de mecánicas corporativistas (Schmitter, 1974). El periodo en cuestión se inicia con la Revolución de Febrero (1936-1937), durante la cual será creada la primera institución estatal centrada en la regulación de las relaciones laborales en el Paraguay (el Departamento Nacional del Trabajo). Tras los gobiernos inmediatamen- te sucesivos a la revolución, los de Félix Paiva (1937-1939) y José Félix Estigarribia (1939-1940), esta institución continuará con sus funciones, logrando su consolidación. Tras la muerte de Estigarribia y el ascenso al poder de Higinio Morínigo (1940-1948), se llevarán a cabo grandes reformas en la administración pública, buscando un mayor protagonismo por parte del Estado. En este marco, se desarrollarán también cambios en el ámbito de la política laboral; específicamente, el marco normativo regulador de las relaciones laborales tendrá una importante ampliación, al mismo tiempo que la actividad sindical será prohibida por un largo periodo.

English abstract, Essay in Dutch.

The Dutch (neo-)corporatist, socioeconomic and tripartistic consensus model known as the ‘poldermodel’ quickly gained international renown in the 1990’s as it seemed to effectively revitalise the Dutch economy as well as to cure the so called ‘Dutch disease’. Therefore, quite large amounts of historical research have been put into the subject. However, most of the literature focuses on the ‘roots’ of the ‘poldermodel’, who according to some go back to the Late Medieval Ages (and according to a few even further back). Consequently, little light has been shed on the question when the consensus model that we would recognise as strikingly modern first manifested itself. The modern form of the ‘poldermodel’ is considered to be the legally institutionalised deliberation between labour unions, the employer organisations and the government, in which they collectively steer the socioeconomic policy in the Netherlands (by advising the government and defusing labour issues). The current polder model is said to have begun with the famous Wassenaar Accords of 1982. Although the term ‘poldermodel’ is relatively young and therefore seems to acknowledge this general consensus, this essay doubts this dating of the first manifestation of the modern Dutch ‘poldermodel’. According to the research presented in this paper, the High Council of Labour of 1920 can be seen as the first manifestation of the modern Dutch ‘poldermodel’, and with that builds onward on earlier research that has stressed the continuity of the Dutch consensus model since the 1950’s (in the form of the SER, or Social Economic Council [Sociaal-Economische Raad in Dutch]). Out of this follows that the ‘poldermodel’ is much older and therefore has had a larger influence on Dutch society and economy than has generally been thought up to now.

This paper presents a survey of major economic systems, both contemporary and history, evaluated in light of Catholic Social Thought. The conclusion offers a suggestion as to which system best correlates with the official teaching of the Catholic Church. Submitted in as senior undergraduate thesis in the Division of Theology and Philosophy at Quincy University.

O objectivo deste estudo é o de observar e analisar as inter­ pretações do «Estado Novo» e, genericamente, do «problema» do fascismo em Portugal, propostas pelas ciências sociais. Dada a opção de apenas introduzir as interpretações das ciências sociais, ele incide particularmente no período que decorre entre o início dos anos 60 e o final da década de 80. A justificação cronológica prende-se com o próprio percurso da historio­grafia internacional sobre o fascismo e esta desenvolve-se como campo, estruturado no início dos anos 60. Muito embora as traves-mestras interpretativas sejam contemporâneas do fenómeno político e social em análise, jjoi na década de 60 que nasceu uma investigação histórica sobre o tema que não só rea­valiou as teses surgidas no combate político como provocou o aparecimento de novas. Poderá até afirmar-se, sem dar margem a grande contestação, que foi neste período que se criou o «mercado interpretativo» ainda hoje utilizado.

This thesis critically investigated the role that Tripartite Negotiating Forum (TNF) social dialogue has played in influencing socio-economic development in Zimbabwe since its establishment in 1998. The thesis studied the outturn of the TNF across arguably the most defining epochs in post-independent Zimbabwe, that is, the “lost decade” (1999-2009), the inclusive government era (2009-2013) and the post-inclusive government era (2013-2017) in which socio-economic crises have taken root and evolved dramatically.  In line with the case study research design, the thesis’ findings and arguments are anchored on extensive interactions held with TNF members drawn from government, business and labour who shared their knowledge and experiences, as well as their emotions and aspirations for the TNF.  This thesis is therefore a gateway into the TNF platform for the outsider, drawing insights on how the corporatist endeavour has consistently fallen flat and failed to establish itself as a veritable policy making entity.  The thesis demonstrated that the TNF is at odds with all assumptions of the corporatist school of thought; both in terms of its associational properties and concertative character, as it lacks the collectivism and process factors that are implicit to corporatism.  The TNF was found to be severely blighted by polarisation as the consolidation of political power by the ZANU (PF) party had inevitably led to a hard-line stance by the government most overtly against organised labour, which at the turn of the millennium had formed the MDC political party and actively colluded with business in the quest for political transformation. The resultant power struggles had a telling effect on the industrial relations and social dialogue landscape as the government assumed hegemonic standing in the face of subdued business and labour fronts. The thesis further revealed that the TNF’s governance and institutional set-up served to further the government’s hold on the forum at the expense of co-ownership and mutual obligation among the partners.  At the same time, the corporative worth and strength of both business and labour had been seriously undermined by massive de-industrialisation and high unemployment within the formal economy as a result of the persisting economic crisis.  It is apparent that the government has been careful not to accord the TNF a truly concertative socio-economic policy making status by focusing its agenda on rather narrow issues, most notably on labour law reforms, while at the same time the social partners have grown unenthusiastic and disenfranchised by the forum’s working methods.  The thesis, in keeping with the views of the forum’s key informants, proposes quantum changes to the TNF’s governance and modus operandi in an effort to devolve authority as well as to equalise the power and stake of the parties in the dialogue process. This reform agenda is mainly dependent upon the government’s commitment to embrace the de-escalation of industrial relations tension by according social partners full entitlement to the rights to freedom of association and the right to organise, among other similar legislative and practical measures that are in line with international best practice.  As a turnaround strategy, the thesis proposes a tripartite-plus social dialogue model that recognises that the TNF does not exist in a vacuum but must derive its mandate from the general public and drive its processes through integrated and synergised relationships with other stakeholders that include civil society organisations and the academia.  A perpetuation of TNF social dialogue under the status quo, as the thesis argues, would amount to attempting the impossible – of proportions reminiscent of the ancient Greek endeavour to geometrically square the circle.

The topics explored in this book relate to empirical research and theoretical reflections on fascism I have been conducting for some time. In recent years social science literature has returned to the matter of the factors leading to the survival or downfall of the dictatorships and dictators: the construction of legitimacy, the regimes’ capacity to distribute resources, divisions within the power coalitions, the political institutions of the dicta- torships, their capacity for survival, and the cost-benefit analysis of rebellion.6 On the other hand, the survival (and appearance) of several dictatorships after the end of the Cold War, and particularly the increasing complexity of their institutions, has led to a new field of study into the hybrid nature of many contemporary political regimes that were already present in the po- litical landscape of the era of fascism’ The essays in this book point in that direction, reassessing such dimensions as decision-making and institutions, legislatures, and parties, which are most typically integral to a dictatorial regime.

Gino Arias (1879-1940), storico ed economista fiorentino di origini israelite, fu, nella sua maturità, tra i massimi teorici del corporativismo fascista, cui approdò al termine di un itinerario intellettuale ancora largamente inedito. Ricomposta la sua biografia, il volume indaga gli esordi di Arias come storico del diritto, il suo transito verso l'economia politica e la successiva adesione al nazionalismo, premessa del suo coinvolgimento in quel regime fascista di cui sarebbe stato, paradossalmente, uno dei più accreditati teorici ed una delle vittime più illustri, a causa dell'esilio cui lo avrebbero costretto le leggi raziali. Il volume, in appendice, propone una ricca documentazione inedita, comprendente l'inventario del suo archivio, la trascrizione di 130 lettere ad Achille Loria e la sua bibliografia.

Der für ein Lehrmittel für die Sekundarstufe II verfasste Text behandelt die verschiedenen Dimensionen der Weltwirtschaftskrise der 1930er-Jahre  von der Agrarkrise über den Börsencrash bis zu den Bankenzusammenbrüchen, die resultierende Arbeitslosigkeit in verschiedenen Ländern und staatliche Antikrisenprogramme, insbesondere den New Deal in den USA und die Massnahmen in der Schweiz.

Erschienen in: Interkantonale Lehrmittelzentrale (Hg.), Geschichte der Neuzeit: recherchieren, analysieren, beurteilen. Zürich: Lehrmittelverlag des Kantons Zürichs 2009, S. 180-195.

A Corporação da Lavoura, criada em 1957, foi a concretização do regime corporativo em Portugal, mais de vinte anos após o seu início. O objetivo deste artigo é explorar os efeitos desse novo organismo nas políticas agrárias, sem esquecer, a sua elite dirigente e a sua influência no cenário político. Os resultados preliminares indicam que a Corporação foi mais um órgão de consulta e ratificação das decisões governamentais. Observando a um nível setorial, houve uma maior atenção a setores mais dinâmicos e vinculados às mudanças no consumo alimentar, mas também com maior procura pelo sector industrial em expansão.

Il corporativismo rappresentò l’elemento fondamentale dell’ideologia dell’Estado Novo portoghese. Asse portante della Costituzione del 1933, questo fu una potente arma di propaganda nelle mani del governo di António Oliveira Salazar, il quale ne fu il principale interprete. Concepito nella teoria come sintesi del pensiero sociale cattolico e di quello liberale, in realtà il corporativismo lusitano del primo dopoguerra venne modellato sull’esempio di quello dell’Italia di Benito Mussolini, che aveva, in Portogallo, diversi estimatori. Il volume si propone di analizzare l’evoluzione del corporativismo portoghese dalla fine del XIX secolo al 1943, cercando di dimostrare come, meglio che in altri paesi, il pensiero sociale cattolico venne armonizzato con quello di stampo fascista, garantendo a Salazar un’alleanza con le gerarchie ecclesiastiche, le quali, almeno in un primo momento, lo sostennero con convinzione. Il libro permette di conoscere una dittatura ancora poco studiata dalla storiografia mondiale, ma che sta stimolando, sempre di più, l’interesse degli studiosi.

O objetivo desta investigação é a análise da relação entre o enquadramento institucional e desenvolvimento económico, procurando a significância histórica deste postulado, através da compreensão de alguns preceitos como o modelo de intervenção estatal e a rede de organismos e instituições criadas para o cumprimento deste objetivo assim como a regulação do mercado e o comportamento dos agentes económicos e da iniciativa privada. Este tema é analisado no contexto português, a partir da perspetiva do sector agrícola, através do estudo da ação de um organismo corporativo de coordenação económica, a Junta Nacional das Frutas (JNF), responsável pela regulação do sector frutohortícola. É nossa intenção refletir sobre inserção desta instituição na economia portuguesa entre as décadas de 1930 e 1970. Além disso, o que se pretende é também a análise do investimento que a JNF fez em ciência, inovação e know-how de modo a enfatizar as suas consequências no processo de industrialização e da modernização agrícola em Portugal. Em suma, a nossa pesquisa baseia-se na apresentação das linhas-chave da atuação da JNF, a sua inserção no contexto do Estado Novo e quais as suas consequências, interpretando o caminho dos objetivos económicos que permite conhecer, não apenas os desenvolvimentos e os sucessos, mas também, as limitações e os fracassos do regime.

Les Pays-Bas et la Suisse sont souvent décrits comme ayant des relations entre travail et capital similaires, marquées par des négociations et le compromis. La conviction est courante dans les deux pays qu'il y a une tendance constante au consensus et au compromis dans l'histoire nationale. Cette thèse livre une comparaison historique du développement des relations de classe dans la 1ers moitié du 20eme siècle. Une attention particulière est donnée aux confrontations sévères et partiellement violentes entre les classes qui ont eu lieu pendant et juste après la Première Guerre Mondiale. Dans la crise des années trente, les deux pays ont longtemps maintenu l'attachement à une politique de déflation, ce qui a mené à une nouvelle accentuation des tensions sociales. Dans ce contexte, loin d'être prêts à faire des concessions au mouvement ouvrier, d'importantes composantes du patronat néerlandais et suisse sympathisaient avec un corporatisme autoritaire comme il était prôné par les mouvements et régimes fascistes. Des alliances entre le mouvement ouvrier socialiste et des fractions importantes des classes moyennes étaient capables d'arrêter cette dérive autoritaire, sans avoir assez de force pour imposer leurs propres alternatives. C'est seulement après l'affaiblissement de la droite dure entre la deuxième moitié des années trente et l'immédiat après-guerre que des premiers fondements pour un compromis de classe stable ont été établis. Généralement, l'approche comparée de la thèse permet de mieux saisir les histoires nationales dans leur contexte européen et global et permet donc de dépasser une vue de l'histoire nationale comme «cas spécial».

Die Beziehungen zwischen Arbeit und Kapital in Niederlande und die Schweiz werden oft als ähnlich und stark von Verhandlungen und von Kompromissen geprägt beschrieben. In beiden Ländern ist die Auffassung weitverbreitet, dass es in der nationalen Geschichte eine konstante Tendenz zum Konsens und zum Kompromiss gebe. Diese Dissertation bietet einen historischen Vergleich der Entwicklung der Klassenbeziehungen in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Thematisiert werden insbesondere die ernsthaften und teilweise gewalttätigen Zusammenstösse zwischen den Klassen, die sich während und unmittelbar nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg ereigneten. In der Krise der Dreissigerjahre hielten beide Staaten lange an der Deflationspolitik fest, was erneut zu einer Verschärfung der sozialen Spannungen führte. Vor diesem Hintergrund lehnten weite Teile der schweizerischen und niederländischen Grossunternehmer Konzessionen gegenüber der Arbeiterbewegung ab. Vielmehr sympathisierten sie mit einem autoritären Korporatismus, wie er von den faschistischen Bewegungen und Regimes vertreten wurde. Allianzen zwischen der sozialistischen Arbeiterbewegung und Teilen der Mittelschichten gelang es zwar, diese autoritären Tendenzen aufzuhalten, nicht aber ihre eigenen Alternativkonzepte durchzusetzen. Erst nach der Schwächung der radikalen Rechten in der Zeit zwischen der zweiten Hälfte der 1930er Jahre und der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg fand sich eine Grundlage für einen stabilen Klassenkompromiss. Generell ermöglicht es der vergleichende Ansatz der Dissertation, die nationale Geschichte in ihrem europäischen und globalen Kontext zu sehen und so eine Sicht auf die Geschichte eines einzelnen Landes als ,,Sonderfall" zu überwinden

Este trabajo presenta un análisis de los primeros pasos de instauración de un modelo corporativo de relacionamiento entre el Estado y el movimiento sindical en Paraguay. El argumento central planteado es que, aunque este país no atravesó por un proceso de industrialización por sustitución de importaciones que expandió a su clase obrera, su movimiento sindical tuvo una activa participación político-gremial. Debido a esto, en las décadas de los 30 y 40, el mismo atravesó por un proceso de contención, proscripción y, posteriormente, incorporación estatal, a través del desarrollo de instituciones especializadas para la regulación de los conflictos entre capital y trabajo.

French republican universalism – expressed most strongly in the principle and practice of laïcité – and multiculturalism have constituted opposite poles on questions of citizenship and integration. The report of the Stasi Commission on laïcité on 11 December 2003 and the following legislation on the donning of religious symbols in French public schools have once again, spurred debates over the meanings and practices of laïcité.The report and the law have been interpreted in different ways. Some have presented them as a reaffirmation of a historically constituted laïcité under new circumstances, others as a divergence from the real problems of racism, unemployment and gender inequality. In this article, I offer an alternative reading by supplementing a critical reading of the report with an analysis of its historical and immediate institutional context. I evaluate the Stasi
Report in its immediate context of institutional change, and in the historical context of selected developments concerning laïcité since the 1905 law separating churches and State. I argue that the Stasi Report marks a fundamental break with French republican universalism, and I show that this break occurred contemporaneously with key gestures of multiculturalism: the establishment of the French Muslim Council and the creation of Muslim high schools under contract with the French state. This double movement to narrow the boundaries of laïcité, and for the state to expand the boundaries of identity-specific, Muslim public institutions and private schooling constitutes a reorganization of the public sphere in France which qualifies as a move towards multiculturalism.

Ph.D. thesis Economic History, Uppsala University

In 1971, the Swedish parliament approved a government bill that introduced extensive state regulation of marketing. Because of this, the business community’s self-regulation of advertising, which until then had dominated regulation, became obsolete. While self-regulation initially was a minor operation, by the time it was overtaken by state policies in 1971, it included several interlocking systems. This has been the point of departure for the analysis of this thesis – how can these profound regime transitions in this private form of marketing regulation of postwar Swedish advertising be understood? To uncover the agency behind the changes, analytical focus has been on the business interest organizations that controlled self-regulation and their regulatory strategies. Results show that organizations of advertisers, and to lesser degree media carriers, due to higher levels of exposure to regulation and public badwill, successfully supported stronger market regulation, while those representing the less exposed ad agencies, as well as a peak industry organization for marketing, long opposed such measures, preferring a more lenient regulation. However, due to increased exposure in the 1960s and growing negative views on advertising in public and politics, the ad agencies abandoned their opposition and, shortly before the coming of the state regime, spearheaded regulatory innovation through their introduction of an extensive publishing clearance program for advertising. This program inspired similar efforts among advertisers and media carriers, contributing greatly to business avoiding a complete state takeover of marketing regulation, and instead laying the foundation for the co-regulatory structure that followed.

This paper argues that unless a less exclusive governance strategy is envisaged, Luxembourg will unlikely be able to continue excelling in the future.
I will break down the argument into four parts. Before defining in more detail the ‘Luxembourg Social Model’ I will first elucidate and identify obstacles of a lagging mind-set to change inherent in Luxembourg having reached a status of wealth unprecedented in history and based on the principle of converting sovereignty into money. Next I will shed light on the influence of neo-corporatist heritage on Luxembourg’s governance and will question whether the encompassing character of corporatist governance has lost ground. I will then trace its inferences on democracy and in particular on the culture of transparency, questioning whether inclusion strategies are not excessively linked to an ‘old school’-model of interest mediation. The last line of reasoning will dwell on Luxembourg’s small state characteristics arguing that the fast and sustained development of social interactions is increasingly unable to cope with Luxembourg’s organisational behaviour of society as a very small state. At the end confront Luxembourg’s governance model with more inclusive models of associative democracy reorienting the ‘ideology of social partnership’ around post-materialist values.

Since the 2007–8 financial crisis and subsequent difficulties in the eurozone, Germany's recent economic history has been much studied. However, less attention has been paid to neoliberalisation in eastern Germany in the early 1990s, when the region became a laboratory for political economic experiments. The results were later spread across the (western) German economy, then into the European Union's (EU's) ideological core. As such, a focus on the western 'German model' and the EU can miss the way neoliberalism crept into German social and economic life through German re-unification in the 1990s. Re-unification provided conditions in the former East for a 'natural experiment' with different modes of economic and social governance – a space of exception from the West German model, whose corporatist features were already fraying in the 1980s. In short, re-unification was a turning point in a drift towards neoliberalism, intensifying moves already quietly under way in West Germany in the 1980s. The contentious nature of this shift has largely been forgotten and sidelined.

was a peerless captain, and has provided cricket tragics, whether readers, viewers or, now, listeners, with searingly honest analysis of the game for many decades. Perhaps his most perceptive insight was his claim that a cricket coach should only ever be thought of as the bus that takes the players from the airport to the hotel. Such was, and remains, his strong and correct view about the utility of cricket coaches for adult cricketers. (Admittedly, at least some of Chappelli's dismissal of cricket coaches flowed from his well-known animus towards his first test captain, Bob Simpson. He probably gets on so well with another great Aussie captain, Mark Taylor, because Tubby famously put the coach Simpson in his place back in the 90s). Taylor once opined that the main job of the cricket coach was "to make the drills interesting". But if you have to have a coach, perhaps we should try a little harder to make best use of them. And treat them professionally, since cricket and all corporate sport is meant to be "professional" now. Where professional, alas, means getting paid exorbitant salaries rather than the more traditional use of the term, that is, treating people well and in a proper, businesslike fashion.

This chapter deals with the diffusion of corporatism as an ideology and especially as a set of authoritarian institutions that spread across the interwar period in Latin America. Powerful transatlantic processes of institutional transfers and ideological and political diffusion were a hallmark of interwar dictatorships and corporatism, we argue, was at the forefront of this process of cross-national diffusion of authoritarian institutions.It is from this perspective we analyse the processes of the institutional crafting of social and political corporatism in Latin America, exploring two axes: transnational diffusion of corporatism and experiences of institutionalization. The chapter has the following sequence: first we deal with the main transnational agents of diffusion of corporatism in Latin America, giving particularly salience to the Catholic Church, and the main intellectual-politi- cians that introduced corporatist models.6 In the second part we analyse the processes of institutionalization of some Latin American authoritarian regimes in the 1930s, as a ‘window of opportunity’ for the introduction of corporatist institutions.