ABSTRACT
A common, and durable, theory that has focused on the structural relationships between organised interests and the state, has been corporatism. In 1997, Schmitter and Grote made an evaluation of what they called the persistent corporatist features of European politics. Bipartite and tripartite negotiations between organised interests and governments were still common in countries like Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland.! As noted in the introduction, in Austria, another study of corporatist arrangements even regarded them in terms of an institutional dinosaur, unable to adapt to new environments? In Finland, two consecutive broad-based incomes policy settlements were concluded in 1995 and 1997. This also indicated that some form of corporatism was still a relevant political concept, explaining the relationship between the state and organised interests. The first aim of this chapter is consequently to evaluate corporatism as a theory explaining the structural relationship between states and organised interests.
