ICS Working Papers Nº2/2016

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ICS WORKING PAPERS 2016
associative and syndical structures were abolished, with the corporatist chambers being
placed under the control of the respective ministries that nominated a large number of their
members. The regime also created a state economic council and a state cultural council to
supervise the activities of the different corporatist chambers. While some observers have
noted that Ulmanis wished to create a corporatist parliament, based on this embryonic
institution, permanently replacing the ‘plenary meeting of political parties’, the project only
left some traces. The first joint meeting of the two councils was convened in 1939, but the
Soviet invasion put an end to these plans. There were claims Ulmanis was seriously
considering the possibility this ‘joint summit’ of the two councils representing the chambers
would have a central role in a future constitutional design.
The fate of corporatism under Axis rule
The fate of corporatism in the so-called ‘puppet’ and satellite regimes during the Second
World War is illustrative of several facets: on one hand, the degree of independence and
diversity of the national political elites in the institutional design of these regimes and the
varied condition of the occupying forces and, on the other, the ‘economy of war’ factor,
which in many cases was instrumental for the corporatist models of social and economic
intervention. In this short analysis of the countries under Nazi occupation (Vichy France,
Slovakia, Croatia and Norway) we will give priority to the former, with the understanding,
however, that it is clear the war strengthens the corporatist arrangements of state, labour
and interest groups relations.
The decision to introduce social corporatism in Marshall Pétain’s collaborationist ‘French
state’ was an illustration of its great influence in the political culture of the French
conservative and radical-right elites. Under Vichy the tensions inherent in the approval of the
charte du travail (labour charter) were not between the corporatists and anti-corporatists,
but rather between variants of the same species. In addition to this, the ideological and
legitimating output based on corporatism developed strongly and was present in the
discourse of Marshall Pétain and some sections of the Vichy elite. In fact, of all the regimes
associated with the Nazi occupation, Vichy was the one in which corporatism had by far the
greatest presence and, significantly, where it was most rooted ideologically among the
political elite, their institutions and their propaganda. Nevertheless, while social corporatism
made a real attempt to become institutionalized, the same cannot be said of political
corporatism, which was only vaguely sketched out in some constitutional projects.
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