ABSTRACT
The European integration process has highlighted that a European social model of capitalism is inherent in all member-states. Europeanisation and globalisation are transforming national patterns of interest intermediation and industrial relations. ‘Corporatism’ was part of the economic philosophy of social Catholicism developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that advocated a harmonious cooperation between interest groups and was against the socialist/communist ‘class struggle’ between employers and workers, and was also against the ‘pluralist’, ‘non-regulated’ approach of pure capitalism. The Dutch neo-corporatist system of interest intermediation contributed to political and economic stability throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Pluralism in a democratic setting refers to ‘free competition between a plurality of organised interests and supportive relations between groups and government’. Europe is certainly the most developed region in terms of industrial relations, and apart from its legacy, it is also an essential part of the European social model of capitalism propagated by the European Union.
