Corporate Statism

Corporate statism or state corporatism is a political culture and a form of corporatism whose adherents hold that the corporate group is the basis of society and the state. The corporate group is typically comprised by political-economic power elites, for example those represented by the United States Chamber of Commerce or the American Enterprise Institute. In other countries, the corporate group may be a specific national or ethnic group.

As with other political cultures, societies have existed historically which exemplified corporate statism, for instance as developed by Othmar Spann and Benito Mussolini.

Corporate statism most commonly manifests itself as a ruling party acting as a mediator between the workers, capitalists and other prominent state interests by institutionally incorporating them into the ruling mechanism. Corporatist systems were most prevalent in the mid-20th Century in Europe and later elsewhere in developing countries. According to this critique, interests, both social and economic, are so diverse that a state cannot possibly mediate between them effectively through incorporating them. Social conflicts go beyond incorporated dichotomies of labour and capital to include innumerable groups. Furthermore, globalisation presents challenges, both social and economic, that a corporate state cannot sufficiently address because these problems transcend state borders and approaches. It therefore differs from Corporate nationalism in that it is a social mode of organization rather than an economic nationalism through private business corporations.