ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a basic, utilitarian definition of corporatism despite its varied usage and interpretation. It presents the foundations of corporatism as both an ideology and political platform. The chapter discusses the emergence of corporatism in practice in the twentieth century. It examines the rise, adoption, and contribution of the corporatist approach to comparative politics. The chapter also examines the future of the corporatist approach in both practice and theory while it faces assaults from the international forces of globalization, regional forces of integration, and state-level forces of socioeconomic transition. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the failure to either solve or adequately explain the continuing dilemmas of economic and political underdevelopment in the developing world led scholars of comparative politics to seek alternatives to that of the earlier developmentalist approach. Corporatism was attractive to many in comparative politics precisely because it offered an alternative to many of the historic, economic, and political assumptions of the pluralist model.
