A concept of economic and social order – and its transitions from the interwar period to the 1950s

My postdoctoral project focuses on the origins of democratic corporatism in western Europe between the 1930s and 1950s. After 1945, Christian Democracy and Social Democracy shaped state building and market economies in major parts of western Europe. In Christian Social circles especially, politicians, employers, trade unionists, political scientists and economists called for employers’ and employees’ associations (“corporations”) to be increasingly involved in the state legislative process. In this manner, the class struggle should be addressed in a peaceful way. This integration process through democratic corporatism should not lead to coercive associations as in authoritarian states.

There are two faces of corporatism – one authoritarian and one democratic. Yet as scholarship has focused almost exclusively on the former and has largely ignored the latter, we are still struggling to understand the mid-20th century transformation of Catholic Europe towards liberal democracy. Who “democratized” corporatism? In which countries was democratic corporatism promoted as particularly worthy of support? This is where my project sets in: In the interwar period, political publicists advanced the concept of corporatism, which had already been developed in the 19th century.

For further information, see also my website at the Oxford Center for European History and my article on the “Rerum Novarum” terrace restaurant at the 1935 World’s Fair in Brussels.