Neocorporatism and Incomes Policy in Western Europe and North America

Abstract

Pathbreaking analyses of neocorporatism in western advanced industrial societies have, paradoxically enough, been accompanied by profound skepticism regarding viability and generalizability of neocorporatist policymaking. Rather than stressing stability of phenomenon they analyze, as they have on occasion been accused of doing, leading scholars of corporatism have generally emphasized specific requisites on which neocorporatist bargains rest and strength of disintegrating forces they face.' This is not, perhaps, surprising. Neocorporatist policymaking presupposes consensus rather than conflict among major groupings in society. It is, essentially, an approach to problem-solving' that demands cooperation between state and functional interest groups, especially those representing capital and labor, in formulation and implementation of public policies. Such cooperation, particularly with regard to central issues of economic policy, is likely to rest on restrictive conditions regarding both political interrelationships and representational structure of major groups and social classes. As a goal, strategy, or ideal of government, we are likely to find much evidence of neocorporatism; as an institutionalized practice, neocorporatism is a relatively unusual phenomenon. In this vein, Gerhard Lehmbruch has noted that explicit corporatist arrangements are prone to overload and concludes his authoritative overview of liberal corporatism with remark that, since its capacity for consensus-building is limited, it would be unrealistic to consider corporatism as a realistic alternative to representative government and party system.2 In several articles, Leo Panitch has explored underlying causes and implications of the manifest instability of corporatist arrangements in liberal democracies by late sixties and early 1970s, while Philippe Schmitter has noted difficulties involved in change towards neocorporatist interest group/state relations and has stressed that established, societally ccorporatist systems are also facing new tensions which they, too, seem incapable of resolving.3 The problems of institutionalization and continuity are especially severe in core field of neocorporatist policymaking, consensual incomes policy, consisting of negotiated cooperation of government, unions, and employers to coordinate and constrain wage increases (and, in some cases, prices and profits) in context of a comprehensive macroeconomic program. In first place, this form of policymaking must surmount varying degrees of class animosity directed against any form of institutionalized wage restraint, whether bargained or not. Industrial relations combine divisive issues of authority, economic reward, and distribu

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