ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that corporatist analysis can at the moment play a limited role in African studies, partly because of limitations associated with the concept itself and partly because of the limited applicability of the model to most African countries. In Africa, patriarchy, gerontocracy, clientelism, and patrimonialism, as well, possibly, as corporatism and other forms, constitute particular structures of domination, existing in a variety of forms of articulation with each other. There are also a variety of more substantive reasons why corporatism appears seductive as a framework for the analysis of Mrican political economy. Corporatist arrangements were forged on the basis of a state structure possessing the appearance of arbitrative neutrality. Where corporatism arises from non-hegemonic foundations and in the context of a systemic crisis, considerable coercion is required to exclude system-transforming issues and ideologies. A theoretical problem in corporatism is how the structure of causation and the interaction between political and economic elements is conceived.
