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Pluralism, Corporatism and the Role of the State1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Alan Cawson
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Extract

THERE HAS RECENTLY BEEN A SPATE OF WRITING ON THE CONCEPT OF corporatism as part of the interpretation of contemporary British politics, and a series of articles by J. T. Winkler has provided a comprehensive and detailed frameword for the analysis of certain features of political practice. One of the purposes of this writing is to rescue the term ‘corporatism’ from its Italian and fascist connotations to permit a dispassionate examination of the central features of corporatist thought and practice.

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Article
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Government and Opposition , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1978 , pp. 178 - 198
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Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1978

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References

1 My thanks are due to Robert Bencwick for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. He is in no way responsible for its deficiencies.

2 For example Pahl, R. E. and Winkler, J. T., ‘The Coming Corporatism’, Challenge, March/April 1975, pp. 28–35,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Corporatism in Britain’, The Times, 26 March 1976. There have also been sceptical and critical views, e. g. Brittan, Samuel, ‘Towards a Corporate State?’, Encounter , 44, 1975, pp. 58–63;Google Scholar Sir Joseph, Keith, ‘Corporatism and Liberty do not go together’, The Times , 17 05 1976;Google Scholar and Drucker, J. M., ‘Devolution and Corporatism’, Government and Opposition , 12, 1977, pp. 178–193.Google Scholar

3 Winkler, J. T., ‘Law, Society and Economy: The Industry Act 1975 in Context’, British Journal of Law and Society , 2 1975, pp. 103–128;Google Scholar ‘Corporatism’, Archives Européenns de sociologie, 17, 1976, pp. 100–136; and ‘The Corporate Economy: Theory and Administration’, in Scase, R., ed., Industrial Society: Class, Cleavage and Control , London, Allen & Unwin, 1977, pp. 43–58.Google Scholar

4 Andrew Shonfield’s interpretation of the British experience of indicative planning in the 1960s uses the concept of corporatism; Modern Capitalism, London, Oxford University Press, 1965.

5 The form of regulation through negotiation between government and the ‘peak’ associations of industry and organized labour ‐ tripartism ‐ is taken to be an important, though problematic, feature of corporatist administration. See Marsh, D. and Grant, W., ‘Tripartism: Reality or Myth?’, Government and Opposition , 12, 1977, pp. 194–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 On this point see especially Harris, Nigel, Competition and the Corporate Society , London, Methuen, 1972,Google Scholar and Panitch, Leon, Social Democracy and Industrial Militancy , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Beer, Samuel H., Modern British Politics , 2nd ed., London, Faber, 1969, p. 406 Google Scholar.

8 Abraham, Neville, Big Business and Government , London, Macmillan, 1974, p. 7.Google Scholar

9 This is the theme of Ionescu’s, G. Centripetal Politics , London, Hart‐Davis, MacGibbon, 1975,Google Scholar where the main corporate forces are identified as trade unions, industry and the regions.

10 See especially ‘The Corporate Economy’, p. 49.

11 In the sense that corporatism is an ideal type of economic administration towards which Britain is developing. Winkler argues that ‘a corporatist economic system… is likely to be instituted in Britain during the life of the present government and its successor (whatever its political complexion), that is, over the next five to ten years’. ‘Corporatism’, p. 114. It is not clear whether this means that all the features identified in his definition will be present in British government by that time, or whether economic administration will be carried out exclusively according to corporatist principles. If the latter, then the inference must be that a new type of political‐system has evolved in parallel. My argument is that there will continue to coexist a corporate sector of the economy and polity together with a pluralist sector, and that the trend towards corporatism is an enlargement of the size and significance of the former at the expense of the latter.

12 For preliminary statements of this view in the British context, see Benington, John, Local Government Becomes Big Business , 2nd ed., London, National Community Development Project, 1976,Google Scholar and Cockburn, Cynthia, The Local State , London, Pluto Press, 1977.Google Scholar

13 In spite of a summary of the theoretical problems of the conceptualization of the state and the extent of its autonomy in an appendix to ‘Corporatism,’ pp. 134–136.

14 By this I mean the ‘revisionist’ thesis of socialism as public control without nationalization through the instrument of a quasi‐autonomous corporation, as advocated by Stuart Holland in The Socialist Challenge, London, Quartet, 1975, and adopted with some modifications (or ‘watering down’) in the Industry Act of 1975.

15 See Dearlove’s, John excellent summary in Part One of The Politics of Policy in Local Government , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973.Google Scholar

16 Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy , 2nd ed., London, Allen & Unwin, 1947, p. 269 Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., pp. 256–264.

18 Galbraith, J. K., The New Industrial State , 2nd ed., Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1974,Google Scholar and Economics and the Public Purpose, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1975; Baran, P. A. and Sweezy, P. M., Monopoly Capital , Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1968;Google Scholar Miliband, R., The State in Capitalist Society , London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969;Google Scholar Pateman, Carole, Participation and Democratic Theory , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973.Google Scholar

19 Miliband, op. cit., Poulantzas, Nicos, Political Power and Social Classes , London New Left Books, 1975.Google Scholar

20 The arch‐exponents of this view were Arthur F. Bentley, The Process of Government, ed. P. Odegard, Harvard, Mass, Belknap Press, 1967, [first published 1908]; David Truman, B., The Governmental Process , New York, Knopf, 1951;Google Scholar and Latham, Earl, The Group Basis of Politics , (Ithaca, N. Y, Cornell University Press, 1952.Google Scholar

21 This terminology is Allen Potter’s in Organised Groups in British National Politics, London, Faber, 1961, but a similar kind of vertical categorization is made by Birch, A. H., Representative and Responsible Government , London, Allen & Unwin, 1964;Google Scholar Finer, S. E., Anonymous Empire , 2nd ed., London, Pall Mall Press, 1966;Google Scholar Stewart, J. D., British Pressure Groups , London, Oxford University Press, 1958;Google Scholar and Moodie, G. and Studdert‐Kennedy, G., Opinions, Publics and Pressure Groups , London, Allen & Unwin, 1970. Richard Kimber and J. J. Richardson argue that the classification of groups according to their subjective concerns ‘has little analytic value’ and that the sectional/promotional distinction is ‘only a guide to classification.’ Unfortunately they do not say why it is useful to continue to classify groups according to a theory without much analytic value; perhaps it saves time in producing readers! Kimber and Richardson, eds., Pressure Groups in Britain: A Reader, London, Dent, 1974, p. 3.Google Scholar

22 Lowi, Theodore, The End of Liberalism , New York, N. Y., Norton, 1969.Google Scholar This important work is curiously omitted from Kimber and Richardson’s otherwise excellent bibliography, op. cit.

23 Op. cit.

24 Benewick, Robert, ‘Politics without ideology: The perimeters of pluralism’, in Benewick, R., Berki, R. N. and Parekh, B., eds., Knowledge and Belief in Politics , London, Allen & Unwin, 1973,Google Scholar pp. 130–150; and ‘British Pressure Group Politics: The National Council for Civil Liberties,’Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 413 (1974), pp. 145–157.

25 Birch, op. cit., p. 65.

26 Schmitter, Phillippe C., ‘Still the Century of Corporatism?’, Review of Politics , 36, 1974, pp. 93–4.Google Scholar

27 For example, in Britain the Confederation of British Industry was established in 1965 with government encouragement to facilitate tripartite negotiations on Labour’s National Plan. See Marsh, D. and Grant, W. P., The Confederation of British Industry , London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1977, p. 25.Google Scholar

28 Op. cit., pp. 427–8.

29 The Greening of America, London, Allen Lane, 1971, p. 65.

30 Schmitter, op. cit., p. 105 following Mihail Manoilesco’s distinction between corporatisme pur and corporatisme subordonné in Le Siècle du Corporatisme, Paris, 1934. See also Nigel Harris, op. cit.

31 G. Lehmbruch, ‘Liberal Corporatism and Party Government’, paper read to the meeting of the International Political Studies Association, Edinburgh, 1976.

32 Winkler, ‘The Corporate Economy’, p. 49.

33 Ionescu, op. cit., develops an alternative view of corporatism to that presented here, arguing that it is society that is corporate and not the state. ‘Indeed, the more society tends to be corporate the less authoritative and powerful is the state’, p. 20. My own view is that this statement is true of the government but not of the state; the process of corporatization, unlike most usages of the term ‘incorporation’, involves a relationship of reciprocal dependence between the state and societal corporations which is neither a ‘weak state’ nor an ‘all‐powerful state’ thesis.

34 Schmitter, op. cit., pp. 123–4.

35 See Dearlove, John, ‘The Control of Change and the Regulation of Community Action’, in Jones, D. and Mayo, M., eds., Community Work One , London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, pp. 22–43.Google Scholar

36 Op. cit., pp. 427–8.

37 ‘Is the Corporate Economy a Corporate State?’, American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 62, 1972, pp. 103–115.

38 ‘The Corporate Economy,’ p. 50. Others have noted the increasing use of ‘quagos’ (quasi‐governmental organizations) and ‘quangos’ (quasi‐non‐governmental organizations) to regulate the private sector. See Hood, C., ‘The Rise and Rise of the British Quango’, New Society , 16 08 1973,Google Scholar and Hague, D. C., Mackenzie, W. J. M. and Barker, A., eds., Public Policy and Private Interests: The Institutions of Compromise , London, Macmillan, 1975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 ‘The Corporate Economy’, p. 50. See also ‘Law, State and Economy’ for a fuller exposition.

40 ‘Corporatism’, p. 133. The Labour government’s Industrial Reorganization Corporation (IRC) depended for its effectiveness largely on the trust which it built up by having nine businessmen (and no civil servants) on its eleven‐member board. See IRC Reports and Accounts 1968–1969, London, HMSO, 1969. Its one academic member described it as ‘active, initiatory, discretionary or discriminatory, non‐bureaucratic, commercially‐oriented, change‐promoting, almost if you like, free‐wheeling, wheeler‐dealing and buccaneering. The best of British merchant‐venturing was for once harnessed to the public interest above all else.’ McLelland, W. G., ‘The IRC 1966/71: An Experimental Prod’, Three Banks Review , 06 1972, p. 41.Google Scholar As such the IRC was the first authentically corporatist institution in Britain, and although dissolved by the Conservatives in 1971, re‐emerged in modified (and more fully corporatist) form as the National Enterprise Board in 1975. See Winkler, ‘Law, State and Economy’ for a preliminary assessment of the NEB.

41 Op. cit., pp. 407–8.

42 This debate is too well‐known to require citation here; a useful bibliography especially of American sources may be found in Bonjean, C. M., Clark, T. N. and Lineberry, R. L., eds., Community Politics: A Behavioural Approach (New York, N. Y: Free Press and London: Collier‐Macmillan, 1971), pp. 373–383.Google Scholar

43 See especially Bachrach, P. and Baratz, M. S., ‘The Two Faces of Power’, American Political Science Review 56 (1962), pp. 947–952 Google Scholar, and ‘Decisions and Nondecisions: An Analytical Framework’, APSR 57 (1963), pp. 641–651; Bachrach, Peter, The Theory of Democratic Elitism (London: University of London Press, 1969);Google Scholar and Lukes, Steven, Power: A Radical View (London: Macmillan, 1973).Google Scholar

44 Parry, G. and Morriss, P., ‘When is a Decision not a Decision?’, in Crewe, I., ed., British Political Sociology Yearbook, Volume One: Elites in Western Democracy (London: Croom Helm, 1974), pp. 317–336;Google Scholar Dearlove, John, The Politics of Policy in Local Government; Saunders, P., ‘They Make the Rules’, Policy and Politics 4 (1975). pp. 31–58.Google Scholar

45 See. Urry, J. and Wakeford, J., eds., Power in Britain (London: Heinemann, 1973),Google Scholar Part One, for contributions on this theme.

46 Hindess, Barry, ‘On Three‐Dimensional Power’, Political Studies 24 (1976), p. 331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 Most empirical studies of the relationship between class and politics employ a descriptive concept of class derived from occupational and status characteristics, presumably because these are the easiest to observe using sample survey techniques ‐ the most frequent research method. Anthony Giddens’ comprehensive review of major sociological approaches to the study of class results in a synthesis of Marxist (ownership of the means of production) and Weberian (market capacity) approaches, comprising a basic three ‐ upper, middle and lower or working ‐ class model which is almost identical to that already in use as a descriptive label by many sociologists. The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (London: Hutchinson, 1973), p. 107.

48 This argument owes a great deal to Schmitter’s ‘preliminary and speculative’ proposition; op. cit., pp. 106–115.

49 ‘Corporatism’, p. 117.

50 For a concise statement of the connections between the evolution of the capitalist market economy and that of liberal democracy, see C. B. Macpherson, The Real World of Democracy, London, Oxford University Press, 1965.

51 Miliband, R., Parliamentary Socialism , London, Merlin, 1973,Google Scholar and Panitch, op. cit.

52 Saville, J., ‘The Ideology of Labourism’, in Benewick, R. et al, eds., Knowledge and Belief in Politics ; pp. 213–226.Google Scholar Nairn, T., ‘The Nature of the Labour Party’, in Anderson, P. and Blackburn, R., Towards Socialism , London, Fontana, 1965, pp. 159–217.Google Scholar

53 Fraser, D., The Evolution of the British Welfare State , London, Macmillan, 1973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Gilbert, B. B., British Social Policy 1914–1939 , London, Batsford, 1970.Google Scholar

55 Shonfield, op. cit.

56 Notably with the Local Government Act of 1929 which abolished the Poor Law Guardians and gave most of their functions to the local authorities. Fraser, op. cit., p. 174.

57 Culminating in the various reports commissioned by the coalition government during the second world war on education, coal, population, a National Health Service, full employment, industrial injuries, family allowances and of course the most famous of them all, that of the Beveridge Committee on social insurance. The social programme of the coalition government proposed ‘to maintain the state sector at something like its war‐time level, but to shift the bulk of spending from arms to welfare’. Andrew Gamble, The Conservative Nation, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, pp. 29–30.

58 With respect to industrial representation, for example, the precursors of the CBI were the Federation of British Industry (1916) and the National Union of Manufacturers (1916) which developed out of the divergence of interests between bigger industrialists and the smaller manufacturers, traders and professionals represented by the Association of British Chambers of Commerce. Grant and Marsh, The CBI, pp. 18–21.

59 Channon, D. F., The Strategy and Structure of British Enterprises , London, Macmillan, 1973, p. 27.Google Scholar

60 Schmitter, op. cit., p. 111.

61 Robert Benewick’s study of pressure group politics has concentrated on nonproducer interests where he finds that ‘the pluralist case for group competition and opposition may be exaggerated, but not for the civil liberties lobby’. ‘The Civil Liberties Lobby: A Comparative Analysis’, Government and Opposition, 10, 1975, p. 421. Regulation of such interests by the state may become necessary, and thus interest representation more nearly approach the ideal type of corporatism, if non‐legitimate political activity (direct action) begins to threaten the stability of the state. So far this has not been necessary in Britain.

62 In the sense that ‘peak’ associations have been encouraged by governments to attempt to monopolize interest representation, and help to ‘police’ prices and incomes policy. The attempts have not, however, been a complete success, and a more cautious attitude than Winkler’s (see footnote 11 above) in predicting future corporatist development is wise, as in Grant and Marsh, ‘Tripartism: Reality or Myth?’. There seems little doubt that the successful regulation of prices and incomes is an essential precondition of a fully corporatist system.

63 Peter Dickens, ‘Social Change, Housing and the State’, Centre for Environmental Studies Conference Paper, 1977.

64 Clarke, S. and Ginsburg, N., ‘The Political Economy of Housing’, in Political Economy and the Housing Question , Papers presented at the Housing Workshop of the Conference of Socialist Economists, (London: CSE, 1975), p. 14.Google Scholar

65 Eckstein, Harry, Pressure Group Politics: The Case of the British Medical Association’ London, Allen & Unwin, 1960;Google Scholar Foot, Micheal, Aneurin Bevan Volume Two: 1945–1960 , Frogmore, Paladin, 1975.Google Scholar

66 Mann, Michael, Consciousness and Action Among the Western Working Class , London, Macmillan, 1973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 Such as the proposals in the Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy, Cmnd 6706, London, HMSO, 1977, [the Bullock Report]. The formula devised by Bullock has few friends in management and the trade unions, but it is unlikely that this will be the last attempt.

68 Which appears so far to be impossible to hold for more than two years, so that in the long term the pressures mounting to devise a structural change which would avoid a severe crisis every third year would seem to be irresistible.

69 Op. cit., p. 108.

70 A point recognized by Grant and Marsh in their analysis of The CBI, and yet their conclusion that their data fit the pluralist model (p. 214) and that the CBI is ‘only one of many centres of power’ (p. 217) does not allow them to reject Poulantzas’s theory of the capitalist state (p. 216) since they infer from their case study ‘a reaffirmation of the autonomy of the political sphere from the economic sphere’. (p. 187). The problem is that a single subjective case study is unable to confirm or refute either a pluralist or an elitist theory of power and the state; had they started from a position of posing the question ‘what are the interests of different sections of the capitalist class?’ and examined the CBI as but one aspect of their expression, Grant and Marsh might have been able to do more than simply set down the general theoretical question.

71 This point is related to pressure group theorists’ attempts to explain public policy in terms of a bias of inputs. As John Dearlove observes, group activity can be an indicator of weak interests, since strong interests are frequently well represented in political parties or well served by existing public policies. The Politics of Policy in Local Government, pp. 57–8.

72 Note the similarity to Galbraith’s division of the economic system under advanced capitalism into the ‘planning system’ and the ‘market system’; The New Industrial State, chapter I. As far as the political representation of economic interests is concerned there would be a close relationship between the two. For non‐economic interests the analysis is more tentative, but in general locally organized groups and those national groups operating in spheres relatively untouched by state intervention would comprise the pluralist sector.

73 Nettl, Peter, ‘Consensus or Elite Domination: The Case of Business’, Political Studies , 13 1965, pp. 22–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 For an analysis of land‐use planning in the context of corporatist development, see Cawson, ‘Environmental Planning and the Politics of Corporatism’, Working Papers in Urban and Regional Studies, No. 7, University of Sussex, 1977.

75 For land‐use planning see the Report of the Committee on Public Participation in Planning (Skeffington Committee), People and Planning (London: HMSO, 1969). Critics of the actual practice of public participation in planning have recognized that for ‘public’ should be read ‘approved middle class interest group’. See, for example, Hague, C. and Mc Court, A., ‘Comprehensive Planning, Public Participation and the Public Interest’, Urban Studies , 11, 1974, pp. 143–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 Indicative of this might be the relative success of recent efforts to organize the self‐employed through the National Federation for the Self‐Employed. If the CBI or Retail Consortium model is followed one could predict an ultimate state‐encouraged merger between the NFSE and other groups representing small business interests, and perhaps in future ‘quadripartism’. See Grant, W. and Marsh, D., ‘The Representation of Retail Interests in Britain’, Political Studies 22, 1974, pp. 168–177.Google Scholar

77 For an elaboration of this point, see Cawson, op. cit.