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Corporatism and Consensus Democracy in Eighteen Countries: Conceptual and Empirical Linkages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
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This research Note has two complementary theoretical objectives. First, we shall attempt to place the form of interest representation and the involvement of interest groups in policy formation known as corporatism – or as democratic, societal, liberal or neo-corporatism – in a broader political context: is corporatism systematically linked with other democratic institutions and processes? Secondly, we shall try to fill a gap in the theory of consensus democracy. This theory holds that types of party, electoral, executive and legislative systems occur in distinct clusters, but it fails to link interest group systems to these clusters.
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14 For fourteen of these countries, we have all twelve judgements: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. For Ireland we have eleven, for Australia and Japan ten, and for New Zealand six judgements.
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