ABSTRACT
Some years ago, we opened an earlier version of this chapter (Schmitter and Grote 1997) with the following remarks:
The (re)discovery of corporatism in the mid-1970s was ironic. At the very moment that academics started using the concept to analyze trends in advanced capitalist societies, the practice had already peaked and it continued to decline during the 1980s. Then, just as many observers had announced its demise, corporatism has risen again and now seems to be carrying its twin burdens of interest associability and policy-making to new heights during the 1990s. Are students of European politics and society forever going to be condemned like Sisyphus to dragging this concept-cum-practice into their work, only to see it come crashing down later?
