Mikkel Mailand, Corporatism Since the Great Recession (Cheltenham/Northampton: E. Elgar, 2020)

Abstract

I should begin by acknowledging that I am reviewing this book, not as an expert in this field but rather as someone with casual interest in the book‘s subject matter and a passing familiarity with the relevant literature. This ambitious book reports the findings of a research project on how corporatism fared in the wake of the Great Recession. What is at stake is testing the proposition that corporatism has been weakened as states are on the same track, moving towards a neoliberal approach to policy making. To test the proposition the author focuses to three countries, i.e. Denmark, Austria and the Netherlands which the author claims are critical cases as the literature on corporatism indicates that these three countries have not gone down the neoliberal path to any significant extent. Thus, if the data show a weakening of corporatist arrangements in any of these three countries then we can be fairly certain that the same thing is happening elsewhere.