The Evolution of Intermediary Institutions in Europe

From Corporatism to Governance

Poul F Kjaer, Eva Hartmann, Poul F Kjaer, Eva Hartmann

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137484512
• eBook ISBN: 9781137484529
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book investigates the consecutive shifts between three types of intermediary institutions in the European context: Corporatist, Neo-corporatist and Governance institutions. It does so by combining insights from European Political Economy; European Integration and governance studies; and, socio-legal studies in the European context.

Part I

The Big Picture: From Corporatism to Governance

1

From Corporatism to Governance: Dimensions of a Theory of Intermediary Institutions

Poul F. Kjaer1

1.

Introduction

Intermediary institutions are difficult to grasp because they are always ‘in-between’ something else. It is therefore hardly surprising that they are typically regarded as mere reflections of structures or interests located outside the institutions themselves. The objective of this chapter is, however, to advance an understanding of intermediary institutions as autonomous social phenomena that produce their own sources of social meaning, and thus, their own forms of power and norms, thereby enabling an understanding of them as independent objects of study. This, of course, does not mean that the wider context within which intermediary institutions operate is of no relevance. As we will see and subsequently explore, the contrary is, in fact, the case, as ‘context construction’ is one of the central contributions of intermediary institutions to society as such. This again gives intermediary institutions a strategic location in society, as they are one of the central sites where the integration of society unfolds. The reason for this is the intermediate function that they fulfil as channels of transfer between different societal spheres, and the kind of context construction which is both the result of and the condition for successful transfers.

In the following pages, five central dimensions of intermediary institutions are outlined under the headings: Context, Function, Evolution, Order and Compatibility. To be sure, this is not an exhaustive list but merely a starting-point in the endeavour to establish a theoretical framework capable of grasping the phenomenon of intermediary institutions.

2.

Context: modernity not capitalism

In The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi ([1944]2001) presents us with a historical reconstruction of the increased differentiation and detachment of the processes of economic production from the rest of society and the institutionalisation of a specific economic logic which increasingly defies attempts to introduce non-economic concerns into economic production processes. More specifically, he dates the emergence of a modern form of economic production to the liberalisation of the British labour market in the 1830s (Polanyi, ([1944]2001, 84ff). A decade before this development, in his Philosophy of Rights, Hegel ([1821]1970) had, among many other things, analysed the consequences of the unfolding differentiation of the economy from the state in particular, and the rest of society in general. This diagnosis of the emerging modern society was the core reason for Hegel’s subsequent attempt to elevate the modern rational state into the central integrative structure of society upon the basis of the (at that time) novel distinction between the state and society. Hegel’s attempt to understand the state as the central integrative force of modern society was, however, based upon a theoretically unsatisfactory paradox since the status of the state in the Hegelian construction remains essentially undetermined. This is the case because in the Hegelian construction the state continues to oscillate between being a distinct and limited social structure and being a structure that encompasses society as a whole. A paradox that was never resolved by Hegel or his immediate followers.

The unsatisfactory status of the Hegelian attempt to put the state on the central pedestal of modernity provided the basis for Marx’s attempt to turn Hegel upside down in order for him to ‘stand on his feet’, through his insistence on seeing the forces of economic production – rather than the state – as the primary driver of societal change; a perspective which subsequently led Marxist-inspired scholarship into numerous attempts to explain the contradiction between economic determinism and the autonomous rationality of the state (for example, Poulantzas, [1978] 2000). Thus, Marxist-inspired scholarship turned Hegel upside down, but the fundamental theoretical paradox did not disappear. In both cases, the attempt to reduce a single social sphere – be it the political system in the state form or the economy – to the central driving force of modern society undermined the simultaneous attempt to understand the sphere in question as being differentiated from the rest of society.

It follows from the above that, as also expressed in the term ‘political economy’, we can distinguish between two outlooks: on the one hand, the effort by both Polanyi and Marx to understand the core transformations of society in modernity as linked to alterations in the mode of economic production and the logic that guides economic processes; on the other, the state-based Hegelian perspective which seeks to understand the central transformations of modern society as linked to a transformation in the internal composition of the political system in the state form and in the way that the state structures its relations to the rest of society. These two outlooks have provided the central nexus upon which intermediary institutions have been conceptualised and analysed so far. However, both the strong focus on change in the structural composition of economic production, inherent to the Marxist- and Polanyi-inspired accounts, as well as the Hegelian focus on the state, provide a reductionist understanding of the processes which led to the breakthrough of modernity, and, with it, the emergence of new types of intermediary institutions. Not only economy and politics in the state form, but also other social spheres, such as law, science, education, health and art, became increasingly differentiated as part of the breakthrough of modernity. These spheres of society also became increasingly self-constituting, relying on their own resources of social meaning, specific types of organisations, professions and social roles. In the wake of the Humboldtian revolution, the move towards an economy based upon the objective of facilitating the economy’s own continued expansion through the pursuit of profit became, for example, supplemented by a new type of science in which the overriding purpose of science was the pursuit of scientific truths. In a similar manner, under the slogan ‘l’art pour l’art’, or ‘art for art’s sake’, a new type of art, whose sole justification was the pursuit of beauty rather than serving as praise to God or as an instrument of glorification for the political rulers of the time, emerged with the breakthrough of modernity. Thus, instead of an economy versus politics binary perspective, an adequate description of the modern condition implies a multi-dimensional approach, which is capable of describing and analysing the increased autonomy of a whole range of societal spheres, as well as the multiple overlapping and tangled relations between them. The protracted move to modernity implied a reconfiguration of society away from a structural dominance of stratification in the feudal form, and towards a structural dominance of functional differentiation as the central organising principle of society through the emergence of a whole range of functionally differentiated social processes related not only to the economy and politics, but also to areas such as law, religion, science, intimacy, art, health and education, with each of them being characterised by an orientation towards their own self-preservation.2 Thus, Polanyi’s historical reconstruction of the differentiation of the modern economic system is not fundamentally wrong, but just one-sided, and, as such, it ultimately leads to a false diagnosis of society because it does not take into account the co-evolutionary and simultaneous unfolding of a plurality of processes of differentiation relating to several distinct social spheres.

One of several consequences of this is that the embeddedness/dis-embeddedness problématique advanced by Polanyi is not specific to the economic sphere. The modern system of politics in the state form, for example, is also a dis-embedded structure. In contrast to pre-modern forms of rule, the modern state is not patrimonial, but is instead a systemic structure, which is distinct and characterised by an abstract legal personality, which makes it separate from its members. The modern sovereign state is a structure of generalised and impersonal rule, as its rules apply to all persons within a given territory. It is a form of rule which only requires a minimum of communication with its subjects, and only in a form which refers to specific roles that are unfolded within specific contextual settings, such as the quadrennial act of voting or the form-filling encounter with the bureaucratic agents of the state (Kjaer, 2011: 87–88). In a similar manner, modern science and art are also to be understood as dis-embedded phenomena. No layman or indeed even a scientist from another discipline has the capacity to understand what is going on in a scientific laboratory, just as contemporary art is produced within very small circles and only remains accessible to a small segment of the population. The embeddedness/dis-embeddedness problématique is therefore – as also highlighted by scholars as different as Rousseau, Kierkegaard and Adorno – a general feature of the modern condition rather than a phenomenon specific to the modern economy. Thus, together with the co-evolutionary and simultaneous emergence of a whole range of functionally differentiated societal spheres, the generality of the embeddedness/dis-embeddedness problématique indicates that modernity, rather than capitalism, needs to be the starting-point for theoretical reflections on the emergence and evolution of intermediary institutions.3

3.

Function: Intermediary institutions as interfaces

Against this background, the status and position of intermediary institutions in modern society becomes somewhat clearer, as far as their emergence can be seen as a reflection of processes of differentiation that involve a multitude of social spheres. The original question posed by Hegel, which was subsequently taken up by the emerging sociological discipline (Habermas, 1988: 34ff), concerned how society could remain integrated under the condition of functional differentiation. In feudal society, the household institution had been the central framework through which integration unfolded, since one of its central functions was to combine and stabilise relations between multiple social strata, as, for example, expressed through the widespread reliance on manorialism as the central organisational form in rural areas throughout Europe. The move towards an increased reliance upon functional differentiation, however, implied a breakdown of the household as the central institutional structure through which society was to be integrated.

Although the conversion of European society into a largely functionally differentiated society unfolded gradually through centuries-long processes and with substantial differences in intensity and speed within different areas of Europe, this development implied that the question of how society is integrated needed to be posed in a substantially different manner. The core question was no longer about how a mutual stabilisation of exchanges and expectations between different social strata became institutionally stabilised, but rather how exchanges and expectations between different functionally delineated social spheres became institutionally stabilised. It is this reconfiguration which provides the basis for the emergence of modern types of intermediary institutions in so far as corporatist, neo-corporatist and governance institutions share the feature of acting as interfaces between different societal spheres. They were – and indeed are – formations which bundle condensed social components, such as economic products and capital, political decisions, scientific knowledge, legal judgments and religious beliefs, which are produced within different spheres of society in order to make them compatible with other social spheres and to facilitate their transfer from one sphere to another.4

In order to be successful, such transfers require the transformation of intermediary institutions into sites where shared expectations involving multiple social spheres are established, thereby providing these institutions with a crucial position in society, since they become central sites where the construction of common contexts involving multiple social spheres unfold. It is through a reiterated process of successful transfer that the institutionalisation of shared expectations, and thus, the formation of an overarching framework in the form of a common context, emerges.5 Intermediary institutions are, therefore, not just ‘structural couplings’. The concept of structural coupling is essentially a ‘black box’ concept, and, as such, a ‘non-concept’.6 Furthermore, the notion of transfer implies that the components in question change through their transfer, in so far as what arrives is not identical to what was despatched, thereby indicating the autonomous dimension of such structures. The Luhmannian attempt to downplay the relevance of intermediary institutions as much as possible through their reduction to mere structural couplings, therefore, provides an implausible and rather simplified understanding of their centrality in modern society. In contrast to the Luhmannian perspective, intermediary institutions must be understood as autonomous social phenomena which produce their own sources of meaning and thus their own types of power and norms. In other words, as independent objects of social scientific enquiry. The acknowledgement of the independent impact and relevance of intermediary institutions is therefore likely to lead to a substantially different societal diagnosis than the one advanced by Luhmann.

Furthermore, the context-constructing endeavour of intermediary institutions goes beyond the binary relationship between the economy and politics. Early forms of corporatism emerged in societal settings where religion played a crucial role as either a positive or a negative marker. The differentiation of the economy implied the liberation of economic calculi from their embeddedness in religious belief systems, as, for example, reflected in the phenomenon of ‘just price’ which became an integrated element of Catholic theology from Thomas Aquinas onwards. Early corporatist institutions were, therefore, in their religious variant, oriented towards reintegrating the economy and religion, or, in their syndicalist and socialist variants, explicitly oriented towards substituting religious frameworks; a move which was further complemented by quests towards (re)integrating social praxis in relation to family, intimacy and educati...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I: The Big Picture: From Corporatism to Governance
• Part II: Intermediary Institutions in the Transformation of Economic Policy
• Part III: Intermediary Institutions in the Re-configuration of Social Policy
• Part IV: Intermediary Institutions and the Law
• Part V: Intermediary Institutions and Constitutional Transformations
• References
• Cases
• Index