http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
Historically, corporatism or corporativism (Italian: corporativismo) refers to a political or economic system in which power is given to civic assemblies that represent economic, industrial, agrarian, social, cultural, and professional groups. These civic assemblies, known as corporations (not necessarily in the same sense as contemporary business corporations) are unelected bodies with an internal hierarchy; their purpose is to exert control over their respective areas of social or economic life. Thus, for example, a steel corporation would be a cartel composed of all the business leaders in the steel industry, coming together to discuss a common policy on prices and wages. When much political and economic power rests in the hands of such groups, then a corporatist system is in place.
The word "corporatism" is derived from the Latin word for body, corpus.
This original meaning was not connected with the specific notion of a business corporation, but rather a general reference to anything collected as a body. Its usage reflects medieval European concepts of a whole society in which the various components - e.g., guilds or trade unions, universities, monasteries, the various estates, etc. - each play a part in the life of the society, just as the various parts of the body serve specific roles in the life of a body. According to various theorists, corporatism was an attempt to create a modern version of feudalism by merging the "corporate" interests with those of the state. [citation needed]
Political scientists may also use the term corporatism to describe a practice whereby an authoritarian state, through the process of licensing and regulating officially-incorporated social, religious, economic, or popular organizations, effectively co-opts their leadership or circumscribes their ability to challenge state authority by establishing the state as the source of their legitimacy, as well as sometimes running them, either directly or indirectly through shill corporations. This usage is particularly common in the area of East Asian studies, and is sometimes also referred to as state corporatism.
At a popular level in recent years "corporatism" has been used to mean the promotion of the interests of private corporations in government over the interests of the public.
