ABSTRACT
In inter-war Europe and Latin America, there were few societies that did not undergo, simultaneously, a political-economic and a legal-political transformation, which led to the emergence of states with pronounced corporatist features. Central to corporatism was the principle that labour law could be utilized to translate economic interests, however divergent, into a collective corpus of public law, drawing heightened public authority from the resolution of deep societal conflicts. In Latin America, the historical foundations of corporatist experiments had some differences from those in Europe. Corporatism became a prominent legal and political form in an era in which most members of most societies were increasingly obliged to select whether they construed their social affiliations in relation to their class or in relation to their nation. Focus on the relation between nation and class undoubtedly generates a vital sociological perspective for interpreting the growth of corporatism.
