The Validity of “Neo-Corporatism” ?

On Its Applicability to Industrial Relations in Japan

Abstract

In the past decade or so several researchers on industrial relations in Japan have tried to define industrial relations system in Japan as a “neo-corporatist” type in some sense, while this type of system has been on the decline in other advanced capitalist societies. These researchers also have questioned why a “neo-corporatist” type of industrial relations has been formalized in Japan while otherwise in other societies. This article attempts to explain why the extent to which “neo-corporatism” is institutionalized is different in national societies and to examine whether industrial relations system in Japan can be regarded as “neo-corporatist” or not. First of all, various concepts of “neo-corporatism” are specified on the basis of their “range”, “level”, “type” and “object”, and a concept of “neo-corporatism” is newly defined as an institution of class compromise, more or less, mediated by the state in capitalist society. Secondly differences between national societies in the formation of “neo-corporatism” are theoretically explicated in terms of three types in capitalist development, which “historical sociology of industrial relations” has molded. As a consequence, thirdly, it is clarified that Japan is an “exception” or a “variance” in the formation of “neo-corporatism”, and the fact that industrial relations system in Japan should not be defined as “class compromise” but “class integration” and not termed “neo-corporatist” is suggested.