Análisis de varianza de la tenacidad

It is necessary to discuss corporatism for two reasons. First, there should be a position for a corporatist state in Hart’s triangular model given that this model is conceived similarly to corporatism by its nature. Although there is no match of nations presented as corporatist arrangements in his analysis, there is a question about the position of corporatist states, such as Austria and Sweden. The policies of a corporatist state are seen as the result of tripartite arrangements, then they will be at the central point of his model. Or, they will be in the state comer position as the undeniable corporatist characteristic o f a high degree of centralisation in the process of collective bargaining. Besides, changes in competitiveness are not explained by the analysis in the literature of corporatism (Hart, 1992:33) and ‘in no time period did corporatism have a significant impact on economic growth’ (Crepaz, 1992:161).

The intention is neither to give a concrete answer to the position of a corporatist state in Hart’s model, nor to assess the international competitiveness of corporatist states, rather to examine interest intermediation in Taiwan.

The second reason concerning the description of Taiwan is based on the experience before 1990 as a corporatist state, by some writers. Wade’s authoritarian corporatism in Taiwan argued that ‘only those economic interest groups sanctioned by the state get access to the state’, but ‘the government has only weakly developed a policy network linking the central economic bureaus with the private sector, relying more on public enterprises and other public agencies’ (1990:294-6). It implied that interest groups were lacking a framework for bargaining with the state on strategic issues (even though not totally impossible). Haggard & Cheng (1987:101) pointed out that the nature of corporatism is

state-controlled rather than societal in Taiwan, and that the channels for corporatist arrangements do exist in Taiwan. According to Winckler (1992:41-2), incorporation is the state strategy which draws corporatist associations under state control ‘to prevent anyone from organising social forces to challenge Nationalist rules' under hard authoritarian regimes. However, the functions of corporatism might change from corporatist control towards corporatist consultation which could tackle difficult social issues under ‘democratic corporatism’ (ibid.:42-3). Taiwan’s political system is essentially corporatist in which ‘group autonomy is held suspect as the party-state seeks to utilize civil groups for political mobilization and as auxiliary instruments for policy implementation’ (Tien, 1992:7).

The term corporatism has been used loosely and not been precisely defined in the area o f theoretical applications when the historical case of Taiwan is referred to, let alone the different concerns between the above arguments. However, most corporatist explanations of Taiwan’s political economy highlights the ‘macro’ corporatist means of state control over sanctioned organisations which is a feature of state corporatism. A distinction between state and societal corporatism was made by Schmitter (1979:20-2, 67) in which state corporatism is characterised as authoritarian and anti-liberal, and the interest groups were created by the state. According to the description of Schmitter,

‘State corporatism tends to be associated with political system s in w hich territorial subunits are tightly subordinated to central bureaucratic power, elections are nonexistent or plebiscitary, party system s are dominated or m onopolized by a w eak single party; executive authorities are ideologically exclusive and more narrowly recruited and are such that political subcultures based on class, ethnicity, language, or regionalism are repressed (1 9 7 9 :2 2 ).’

This is very similar to the concept of statist political structure where civil society is brought under the leadership and guidance of the political structure. Even though Taiwan could be described as state corporatist in the past (but writers on this issue did not specify), it is highly questionable whether the theoretical application of state corporatism in Taiwan after 1990 is appropriate because démocratisation might break state-corporatist arrangements. The discussion of corporatism thereafter is connected to the modem usage rather than state/authoritarian corporatism to reflect the environmental transition in Taiwan.

This will help us to understand the relationship between the Taiwanese state and societal interests and the degree of civil participation in relation to intermediary organisations.

Corporatism is one of the conventional analyses of government-industrial relations. The modem usage of corporatism stresses the role of interest organisations which are at intermediary position between the state and the society. The particular value of corporatism is in explaining a form of economic management in relation to the economy and issues of production. The definition of corporatism in this thesis follows that of Cawson,

‘Corporatism is a specific socio-political process in which organisations representing monopolistic functional interests engage in political exchange with state agencies over public policy outputs which involves those organisations in a role which combines interest representation and policy implementation through delegated self-enforcement (Cawson, 1986:38) ’

In his concept, the state is at the heart of corporatism, because ‘the state is the arena in which the process of corporatist politics takes place’; and ‘policy becomes a series of bargains between state agencies and organised interests’ (ibid.:36 & 67). Accordingly, reciprocity of the relationship between the state and interest association in terms of the fusion of intervention, interest representation and policy implementation, can be found within a relatively closed corporatist bargaining process.

Even though corporatism is arguably in decline (Gobeyn, 1995:431), in particular, in explaining macro-political forms of bargaining, it provides some valuable insights to interpret how corporatist countries lowered inflation and solved political and economic crises in conjunction with the demands of labour in the 1970s and 1980s (Crepaz, 1992:161) and macro-political bargaining arrangements do manage, in periods of economic crisis, to restructure the productive side of the economy (Taylor, 1995). However, corporatism is a set of concepts originally developed to interpret reciprocal relationships between the state and interest organisations from the division of labour in society in the post-war European countries. According to Grant (1985:25), ‘it offers the possibility of transforming the process of economic management into a non-zero-sum game, so that everyone is better off than they would be in the absence of corporatist arrangements’. In this sense corporatism might be a useful analytical tool to examine the situation in Taiwan where the polity is

being transformed from an authoritarian towards a more democratic one. If the situation matches Cawson's definition, it can be said that corporatist arrangements do open more opportunities for societal participation in policy and show the willingness of the state to share its power with monopolistic functional interests; if not, then, w hat would it be?

Corporatist arrangements may be seen as an intermediate mechanism by which state intervention has become involved in the process of bargaining. The attributes of corporatism vary with the degree of state intervention18. The degree of state intervention in a state corporatist country is higher than that in a societal corporatist country; the degree of societal partnership in a state corporatist country is lower than that in a societal corporatist country. For an authoritarian regime transforming towards full democracy, which is simply defined as representing opinion through voluntary pressure groups and open election, it is presumed that the degree of state intervention in interest intermediation is decreased. In Taiwan’s case, given that it is almost impossible for the state to change its nature over night, then corporatism is an appropriate mechanism by which to reduce the degree of authoritarian intervention and to promote social partnership. That is to say, statist control over intermediary organisations, to ensure the compliance of the private sector and policy implementation should move towards societal corporatist agreement to incorporate social participation in the policy process.

4.3.1. Weak labour in Taiwan

One of the reasons leading to Taiwan not having been referred to as a strong example of a societal corporatist country is the weak bargaining nature of Taiwanese labour to represent its own interests through the corporatist system. Although bipartite corporatism is possible, in particular at meso level, this should exclude the bargaining agreement between union and business associations (Cawson, 1986:76,82).

18 This idea is derived from the work o f C awson (1985:223) in which he attempted to couple corporatism and state