Subsystem Politics and Corporatism in the United States

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Abstract
Recent changes in American politics, particularly the rise and proliferation of public, single and professional interest groups, are difficult to account for in traditional pluralist or elite formulations. These groups not only try to affect policy at the point of adoption, but also penetrate intergovernmental delivery systems during the implementation stage of the policy process. In this way American groups and organisations perform the same sort of interest intermediate functions as their European counterparts. Hence, U.S. politics increasingly resembles the European/Scandinavian model of corporatism — with a crucial difference. Because in the US there is no central, overarching coordination of policy sectors, only the sectors (e.g., housing, welfare) are corporatist. Thus, the United States suffers from the costs of corporatism (e.g., alienation of individuals, atrophy of legislatures) but gains none of the benefits (e.g., economic and social planning, coordinated resource allocation among sectors).

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