ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the basic ideas in two important streams of thought–the pluralist industrial model of society and neo-corporatism–both of which offer interpretations and explanations of the development of advanced industrial societies. During the postwar period numerous contributions centring around the concepts of ‘pluralist industrial society’ and ‘modernization’ have dominated in attempts to explain the development of contemporary societies. The granting of ‘social citizenship’ in the welfare state tends to be viewed as a more or less natural response to the requirements of industrial society. Social democratic parties ‘prevent or weaken the development of autonomous forms of working class mobilization that threaten to unify economic and political struggles against the rule of capital’. In comparison with the pluralist industrial model, the neo-corporatist view offers a more fruitful and realistic interpretation of the development of capitalist democracies in some important respects.
