Austro-Corporatism: Past, Present, Future (Covenant Tradition in Politics)

Corporatism was unpopular in the Europe of the past decade. During a time of neo-conservative resurgence in both the United States and the United Kingdom, macroeconomic steering and statist centralism and regulation were in disfavor. However, Austria’s unique Sozialpartnerschaft, its famed system of tripartite informal and formal labor, business, and state cooperation, continued to prosper in spite of such powerful Anglo-American trends. Austro-Corporatism is the fourth volume in the interdisciplinary Contemporary Austrian Studies series. This effort in particular reflects the uniqueness of Austrian corporatism, and looks at its deep historical roots from a comparative continental European perspective.

The contributors include specialists on Austria from all parts of the world, making this a truly international effort. Andrei Markovits provides the larger European context for this analysis of Austrian corporatism. Emmerich Talos and Bernhard Kittel review the historical development of Austrian corporatism, going back to its nineteenth-century roots. Randall Kindley studies the institutional framework of Austrian corporatism, particularly its post-World War II reincarnation. Hans Seidel looks at the subject from a neo-Keynesian economic perspective, and Ferdinand Karlhofer at the chances of its survival in a changing international environment.

Jonathan Petropoulos presents a fascinating biographical study of Nazi art plunderer Kajetan Mühlmann, and David McIntosh compares Eisenhower’s policy vis-à-vis the small friendly countries of Lebanon, Costa Rica, and Austria. A special forum looks at the model character and appeal of tripartite Austrian cooperation among its new eastern democratic neighbors: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia. A number of reviews of Austrian politics in 1994 complete the volume. Austro-Corporatism will be of intense interest to foreign policy analysts, historians, and scholars concerned with the unique elements in Central European politics.