Corporatism, tripartism and social partnership

Gilton Klerck

Chapter 18 in Theories and Concepts in Work and Employment Relations, 2025, pp 157-166 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The chapter commences with a definition of corporatism, tripartism and social partnership. Corporatism refers to a socio-economic and political ideology that underpins a system of interest representation in which the social partners – that is, organised business, organised labour and the government – engage in processes of political exchange aimed at co-determining social and economic policies. Tripartism refers to a system of employee relations in which the labour market and employment relationships are governed through cooperation between the three social partners. In general, social partnership refers to the ways in which the social partners coordinate their interests to foster cooperative employee relations built on trust, reciprocity, cooperation and mutual gains. Next, three distinct phases in the historical evolution of the literature on corporatism, tripartism and social partnership are outlined: an authoritarian corporatism in Europe during the inter-war years; a liberal form of societal corporatism in Portugal, Spain and Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s; and the tripartite social pacts introduced since the mid-1990s by several governments across the globe as a bulwark against the worst excesses of neo-liberal globalisation and as a mechanism to support the transition to parliamentary democracy. To illustrate the use of tripartism, corporatism and social partnership in research on employee relations, case studies of social pacts in Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa and South Korea are discussed. The chapter concludes with a brief outline of critiques levelled against corporatism, tripartism and social partnership, and provides some suggestions for future research on these topics.

Keywords: Corporatism; Tripartism; Social partnership; Political exchange; Employee relations; Neo-liberalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035316199
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