The term “corporatism” was popular all over Europe since the outbreak of the Great Depression at the end of the 1920s. Politicians, employers, trade unionists, intellectuals, political scientists and economists called for employers’ and employees’ associations to be increasingly involved in the state legislative process.

In doing so, some of them drew back on an old “corporatist” social order from the Middle Ages. However, not all corporatists sought to abolish the “weak” parliamentarianism of their time, but rather to combine democracy with the political influence of business associations. This demand forms an important, though often neglected, part of the emerging social market economy after 1945, which resulted from a complex negotiation process between Social Democratic and neoliberal circles as well as representatives of Catholic social doctrine.

There are, at least, two faces of corporatism. Yet as scholarship has focused mainly on the authoritarian – in Austria, Italy, Portugal and other dictatorial states – and has largely ignored the democratic corporatism, we are still struggling to understand the mid-20th century transformation of western Europe towards liberal democracy and liberal capitalism. This is where my postdoctoral project sets in: it traces the corporatist concepts of the postwar time back to practitioners, politicians and theorists who promoted elements of a democratic corporatism in the interwar period or even earlier, albeit accompanied by ambivalent connotations ranging from anti-liberalism to democratic skepticism.

My postdoctoral project is a cross-national history of democratic corporatism. As associations and other economic societies continue to represent a cornerstone of today’s organized capitalism, the project provides insight into the basic structures of a common economic policy and its nature between freedom and order. My project aims to uncover the continuities and adaptations of corporatist practices since the 19th century.

Where was democratic corporatism supported? How was corporatism “democratized” and reconciled with liberalism? Along with Italy, Austria and Germany, special consideration is given to France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. I also outline how corporatist elements in the constitutions of several countries had an impact on public opinion: the perception of being exposed to the anonymous power of business associations. Calls against corporatism and for a return to “genuine democracy” became widespread since the 1950s.

My thesis addresses western European thinkers, politicians and practitioners who have advocated a corporatist and democratic economic order since the 1920s. These “democratic corporatists” of liberal, Catholic conservative and Social Democratic denomination were calling for an economic order within a democratic framework that would relieve the state of tasks, while at the same time strengthening the influence of business associations on politics. A study that examines the rise of democratic corporatism, describes the transfer of ideas and practices between countries and, in particular, bridges the gap between the theories of the interwar period and the social market economy after 1945 is still pending.

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.