ABSTRACT

Most dictionaries and encyclopedias still ignore the word; its meaning has varied from one country to another and from one language to another; and usage has not yet definitively chosen between “corporatism” and “corporativism.” Even in the period of the Fascist corporate state there were many Catholic thinkers who upheld what they called Christian corporativism. As a result of its historical association with Fascism and other authoritarian regimes, however, the term appears to have lost favor and to have taken on a pejorative meaning, at least in parliamentary democracies and particularly in the countries of the English-speaking world. Contemporary Zairian political culture observably is an amalgam of orientations. Some derive from the pre-colonial era, but many others are of colonial origin. Callaghy is right that there is an organicist aspect to structures and that the “Big Man” model survives in post-colonial politics; indeed, Mobutu is referred to as Mokonzi, Lingala for “Big Man.”