The Corporatist Ideal-Type and Political Exchange

Abstract

The fundamental reason for corporatism's persistence in political science debates is its failure to respond to the demands of political theory and present a convincing ideal-type to capture the relationship between interest groups and the state. Corporatist writers have misused ideal-types and the most refined example to date of the corporatist ideal-type (Cawson's) is structurally flawed. There are more profound problems than this, however, in the construction of a corporatist ideal-type because of the nature of the dynamics at the heart of the corporatist process: political exchange. Every change of paradigm begins with a new exaggeration.1