Illusory Corporatism in the Czech Republic.
Illusory Corporatism in the Czech Republic.

Case Study

Summary/Abstract: Corporatism is a system of policy decision-making, in which representatives of trade unions and employers' organisations are included in the process of the government's economic policy formation. The system is based on political transactions. There functioned two versions of this phenomenon (classic and lean one) in the Western democratic countries in the 20th and 21st century. It seems that a new type of corporatism (illusory corporatism) has appeared in some East-Central European countries. The goal of the article is to prove that illusory corporatism has prevailed in the Czech Republic since 1993. There was investigated if the facade political exchange, which is the core of illusory corporatism, dominated the relations among the government, trade unions and employers' organisations in the Czech Republic presented in the article. The findings show that all elements of the facade political exchange (i.e., legitimisation of the government's political decisions by trade unions and employers' organizations, achievement of the benefits from these decisions by the employers due to their liberal character, trade unions' marginalisation in the workplace) repeatedly occurred in the Czech Republic. It turned out that illusory corporatism is a very convenient system of policy decision-making for the government. It enables the government to share the responsibility for its political decisions with trade unions and employers' organizations, although it makes them autonomously. This is why majority of the Czech governments supported illusory corporatism.

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