'Illusory Corporatism' Ten Years Later

Ten years after the publication of 'Illusory Corporatism in Eastern Europe', the author re-examines his claim that tripartite arrangements introduced in the region after 1989 served chiefly as a façade for introducing neoliberal policies undermining labour interests. He finds that tripartism still produces meagre results, and that most of what labour has gained has come from better organisation, smarter use of resources, and increased militancy, not from tripartism. While 'illusory corporatism' is sustained in Eastern Europe, it is advancing elsewhere in the world. He looks at Latin America and Asia, which resemble 1990s Eastern Europe, as governments introduce tripartism at crisis moments in order to win labour commitments to cutbacks. As for Western Europe, where many scholars have seen an advancement of corporatism because of the signing of pacts in countries where the traditional preconditions were lacking, the author argues that this corporatism is 'illusory' because pacts are made to secure labour's acceptance to the corrosion of union power and a decline in labour conditions. Standards of corporatism have been systematically ratcheted down. Many scholars see 'corporatism' wherever agreements are signed, whereas an outcome-based approach, proposed by the author in his original article, leads to a characterization of 'illusory corporatism'.