Corporatism and Labour Market Performance

Introduction

The present paper is concerned with labour market performance in corporatist economies. The term “corporatist” has many different meanings, but in this paper it will be used to denote capitalist economies in which there are strong, and relatively centralised, employers’ and workers’ organisations. The economies which readily fit this description, and to which the paper is primarily devoted, are Austria and the Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. In recent years, the corporatist economies have attracted increasing attention from social scientists, especially Sweden, about which there is now a voluminous literature. Amongst the reasons for such interest are the success exhibited by some of these economies in responding to external shocks during the turbulent years since 1973, and the apparently good labour market performance they have displayed over this period.

• ISSN: 0357-9603
• ISBN: 951-9282-20-3