¹ Strictly speaking, systems of interest intermediation have not been conceived as structures of power relations. Nevertheless, Schmitter has explicitly referred to corporatism as a means of class domination in ‘Still in the Century of Corporatism?’, in Pike, F. B. and Stritch, T., eds, The New Corporatism (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), pp. 107–8Google Scholar. In his more recent work, Schmitter has also mentioned power flows in order to make distinctions between his subtypes of corporatism. See Schmitter, Philippe C., ‘Modes of Interest Intermediation and Models of Social Change in Western Europe’, in Schmitter, P. C. and Lehmbruch, G., eds, Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979), p. 66Google Scholar. The implicit suggestion of power relations in the definition of corporatism is so strong that Marxist authors have frequently used it to describe corporatism as an instrument of class domination. See Panitch, Leo, ‘Recent Theorizations of Corporatism’, British Journal of Sociology, XXXI (1980), 159–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Much of the confusion surrounding the concepts of pluralism and corporatism is due to this implicit and, as we shall argue, faulty interpretation of these institutional structures as implying corresponding structures of power. This Note illustrates some of the benefits of keeping institutional descriptions of systems of interest intermediation analytically separate from questions of power. Although this is done through a critique of Schmitter's definitions, other conceptions of systems of interest intermediation would greatly benefit from this analytical separation.

² Schmitter, , ‘Still the Century of Corporatism?’, p. 13.Google Scholar

³ Schmitter, , ‘Still the Century of Corporatism?’, p. 13.Google Scholar

⁴ Schmitter, , ‘Still the Century of Corporatism?’, p. 15.Google Scholar

⁵ Schmitter, , ‘Modes of Interest Intermediation’, pp. 66–8.Google Scholar

⁶ For some examples of this see Schmitter, P. C., Interest Conflict and Political Change In Brazil (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1971), Chapters 8 and 13Google Scholar, and Sarti, Roland, Fascism and the Industrial Leadership in Italy 1919–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).Google Scholar

⁷ Schmitter, , ‘Still the Century of Corporatism?’, p. 19.Google Scholar

⁸ Schmitter, , ‘Modes of Interest Intermediation’, p. 66.Google Scholar

⁹ Of course, the kind of research suggested in this Note will have to deal with many of the difficult conceptual and measurement problems with the notions of power and power structures. For comprehensive reviews of such problems, as well as for some solutions, see Frey, Frederick W., ‘The Concept of Power’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, St. Louis, Missouri 1977Google Scholar; ‘The Analysis of Social Structure’, paper presented at the World Congress of Sociology, Uppsala, Sweden, 1978Google Scholar; ‘The Distribution of Power in Political Systems’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Political Science Association, Paris, 1985Google Scholar; Goldmann, Kjell and Sjoskedt, Gunnar, Power, Capabilities, Interdependence (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979)Google Scholar; Nagel, Jack H., The Descriptive Analysis of Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; and Lukes, Steven, Power: A Radical View (London: Macmillan, 1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar