Southern European Fascist regimes claimed to be ruled by a higher concept of ‘social justice’. While the propagandistic nature of this claim is clear, this chapter argues that behind it lies a coherent (if at times paradoxical) ideal that directed the action of states and institutions. Drawing on the cases of Italy and Portugal, this chapter charts the roots of fascist ‘social justice’ and how it reflected a core set of ideas about the relationship between the individual and the state where hierarchy and the primacy of the nation shaped a deeply anti-egalitarian idea of justice.

With the conclusion of the First World War the ages of global empires comes to an end and hitherto familiar and trusted ways of governing come to an end. Empires shatter, Kingdoms tumble. The interbellum is the age of mass mobilization of peoples in a host of new states. New political systems come to the fore (socialist, communist and fascist regimes), new concepts (universal suffrage, equal representation, corporatism, etcetera) claim their place in new liberal democracies that pop up throughout the world. New constitutions of a sixth generation - the Leviathan constitutions - enshrine the arrangements needed for these forms of mass mobilization.

Chapter 3 introduces the theoretical framework with an examination of the regime’s changing approach to labor control. It explains why the Chinese regime has moved away from overt coercion and adopted atomized incorporation and argues that the change could be understood from a political economy perspective. The empirical findings show that the central government and the local governments in developed industrial regions have a new incentive to implement pro-labor policies, even when they undermine the profitability of export-oriented sectors. The chapter contrasts the specific components of the new strategy with the strategies of authoritarian labor control observed in Latin America and East Asia.

In 1990, the United States passed groundbreaking amendments to the Clean Air Act to combat acid rain. This legislation has saved countless lives, spurred innovation, and helped lay the groundwork for more ambitious climate policy. But as one might suspect, it was a major legislative battle. And one part largely ignored in the literature on this momentous legislative achievement was a proposal from the infamous Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. He and a group of lawmakers fought for substantial funding for coal workers that would be put out of work by the acid rain law. We tell the story of this legislative battle, which highlights themes discussed in the book. We then contrast the Appalachian coal transition with Germany's coal phase-out, including how their political and social systems facilitate or frustrate transitions.

Economic nationalism became a dominant, and often destructive, discourse in the interwar period. This manifested itself in the rise of economic antisemitism in Nazi Germany, as well as in the corporatist dictatorships ruling Italy, Romania and Brazil. These autocracies were promoted in the writings of Mihail Manoilescu, who believed that dictatorship could spur growth even in autarky. In other ways, however, the interwar period saw a sharpening of existing nineteenth-century trends. Anti-imperialist movements remained powerful, especially in China, where Sun Yat-sen conceived of a powerful protector state that would manage foreign investment. Multi-ethnic contexts, as in Mandatory Palestine, encouraged isolationist approaches, this time from Zionist nation-builders. These efforts at nation-building encouraged economic segregation and ultimately inter-communal conflict. Even Britain, the erstwhile beacon of free trade, attempted to transform its Empire into a self-sufficient trading block during the Great Depression.

This chapter discusses the role of interest groups and lobbying in the EU. It starts by giving an overview of the number and types of interest groups active at the EU level and the different channels through which they try to exert influence. The system of interest representation in the EU is then analysed in terms of corporatism and pluralism, arguing that overall it is best characterized as a form of ’designed pluralism’. The strategies that interest groups use to influence policy-making are discussed in terms of inside and outside lobbying. Because of the way the EU’s political system works, inside lobbying is a much more common strategy at the EU level than outside lobbying. Although it is difficult to make an overall assessment of interest group influence, the impact that specific groups have depends crucially on the resources they command, the way the decision-making process is organized and the type of issue at stake. The chapter ends with a discussion of the relationship between lobbying and democracy, arguing that whether or not lobbying helps or is a threat to democracy depends on the balance between interest groups and the way in which lobbying takes place.

The state that evolved under the second Pahlavi monarch featured rapid economic development and persistent political underdevelopment. Especially from the 1950s onward, when the amount of oil revenues coming into the economy increased significantly compared with before, the economy began showing classic signs of the “resource curse.” As is often the case, resource curse – that is, the negative consequences of overabundance of a single commodity and the riches accrued from it to the economy – had manifold ramifications for Iran. As the economy grew, reliance on its single, biggest source of growth, oil, deepened greatly. This occurred at the expense of other sectors of the economy, especially agriculture. It also hastened rural flight, resulted in unplanned urban growth, and brought about maladjustments between economic needs on the one hand and resources, skills, and opportunities on the other. More detrimentally, it froze or significantly slowed down any transition out of rentier arrangements and strengthened existing institutions and practices where they were. The state may have fostered economic development, but it remained politically underdeveloped itself.

This chapter provides the conceptual foundations for discussing the process and impact of co-creation as a mode of governance as developed in subsequent chapters. To do this, the chapter traces the genealogy of the notion of co-creation, discussing how it has become increasingly central to social science research, and defining the concept in ways that distinguish it from similar and related concepts such as corporatism and collaborative governance. Building on this genealogical approach, the chapter also discusses how recently developed theories may contribute to our understanding of the concept of co-creation and support its practical application. Finally, yet critically, the chapter will justify our attempt to elevate the concept from its original narrow focus on service production to a concept that aspires to become a new governance paradigm supplementing and partially supplanting Classical Public Administration and New Public Management.

After Chapter 6 explained the unusual rise of fascism in Germany, Chapter 7 analyzes the reasons for the much more common imposition of conservative authoritarianism in the less developed countries of Eastern and Southern Europe and Latin America, where establishment sectors kept fascist movements under control. The chapter discusses the complex and tension-filled relations of these right-wing groupings, which cooperated in battling the radical and not-so-radical left, yet divided on what type of autocracy – conservative authoritarianism versus fascist totalitarianism – to install. The chapter explains how fascist movements emerged in many countries, but how establishment sectors subdued them to hierarchical, exclusionary forms of autocracy. Interestingly, however, these authoritarian regimes often imported elements of fascism, such as corporatism, though they used these alien institutions only as instruments for their own top-down rule, and even as weapons against domestic fascists.

Samuel Moyn has rightly argued that post–World War II notions of human rights were blended with incompatible notions of human dignity under Christian influence. However, where he sees a contamination of rights by dignity, I see the opposite. The modern Christian traditions around dignity were linked to a personalist politics that sought to refuse both liberalism and fascism and was not simply fascist-tending. The stability of the postwar settlements owed much to their influence. But that they have now broken down is somewhat to do with their over-dilution by liberalism from the outset.

The function of EU competition law is seemingly apparent: to prohibit cartels amongst firms and combat the abuse of positions of economic dominance in order to ensure effective competition and, eventually, to maximise consumer welfare. What is less apparent are the more covert socio-economic ordering effects of this externally imposed legal system on institutions within EU Member States that may historically/culturally have organised economic sectors upon the basis of social logics that do not necessarily accord with the centrality of competition and its accompanying logics as a principle of social organisation. This may apply in particular to economic sectors that have historically been organised to serve producerist objectives or interests (an orientation of the state on the supply side of a market). A (economic) consumerist orientation is, by contrast, focussed on purposive rights and interests on the demand side of the market-in particular, primarily as an interest in competitive prices and choice for consumers. This chapter discusses this potential clash of organisational logics by reviewing how the structure and application of EU competition law may tilt EU Member States from producerist towards consumerist socio-economic orientations. It shall do so upon the basis of a critical reflection of attempts by the European Commission to “liberate” the liberal professions and more recent examples in The Netherlands that demonstrate how EU competition law may install a logic of consumer welfare as a primary principle of social organisation whenever firms co-operate to achieve public interest objectives.

The law of political economy is a contentious ideological field characterised by antagonistic relations between scholarly positions which tend to be either affirmative or critical of capitalism. Going beyond this schism, two particular features appear as central to the law of political economy: the first one is the way it epistemologically seeks to handle the distinction between holism and differentiation, i.e., the extent to which it sees society as a singular whole which is larger than its parts, or, rather, as a mere collection of parts. Different types of legal and political economy scholarship have given different types of answers to this question. The second feature of the law of political economy is the way in which it conceives of the relation between hierarchical and spontaneous dimensions of society, i.e., between firms and the market, or between public institutions and public opinion. The two distinctions can, however, be overcome through a third-way, emphasising the strategic role of law in mediating between holism and differentiation and hierarchy and spontaneity. This is demonstrated through a historical re-construction of the evolution of corporatist, neo-corporatist, and governance-based institutional set-ups of political economy.

This chapter examines the Christian Democratic conception of the state through a discussion of the meaning that this ideological tradition has historically attached to the concept of subsidiarity. Broadly understood as a principle of distribution of state power through its devolution both downwards to local and regional public authorities and upwards to international organizations, this principle is at the heart of all Christian Democratic political programs and manifestoes.

This chapter explores how Pius XI’s social encyclical Quadragesimo anno – “On the Reconstruction of the Social Order”– not only reiterated Leo XIII’s condemnation of socialism and his critique of aspects of capitalism, but also outlined a program for Catholics to follow in order to address the social and economic upheavals of the time in a lasting and far-reaching manner. It also analyzes the two primary contributions of Quadragesimo anno to Catholic social doctrine. The first concerns Pius XI’s articulation of two principles of Catholic social teaching: subsidiarity and social justice. The second contribution is the encyclical’s articulation of a very substantial prescription for fundamental social change. While the developments at the level of principle introduced by Quadragesimo anno have proved lasting and become a set fixture of Catholic social doctrine, we observe how the particular proposals associated by Pius XI with these principles– most notably, the development of vocational groups and the establishment of a type of corporatist social order– had, by the time of Saint John XXIII, been considerably relativized by the magisterium.

This chapter is an analytical summary of Rerum novarum. Its goal is to illuminate the purpose of the encyclical and the main lines of Pope Leo’s reasoning, his key premises and central ethical conclusions, and in this way, to articulate as clearly as possible the teaching that comprises Rerum novarum. Rerum’s influence on Catholic teaching and practice is most manifest in the Church’s “social teaching,” which in various ways identifies the encyclical as its founding statement. This identification is made in the names and citations of some of the most important papal contributions to Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and is pervasive throughout the corpus of CST. And it is revealed in the ways in which the accepted principles of CST are present or anticipated in Rerum novarum. Although the chapter does not undertake the large and formidable task of characterizing CST, it does indicate how these principles figure in Pope Leo’s analysis. It also underlines the extent to which these principles are not the main point of Rerum novarum, but stand in the service of the moral and religious reform urged by Pope Leo.