Corporatism
Artical Nutshell: Corporatism has nothing to do with big corporations, or government controlling business. It simply means selecting your congressman from your profession, ratber than your geographic area.
Corporatism is a doctrine which arose in reaction to tbe competition and class conflict of capitalist society. In opposition to tbe trend towards both mass suffrage and independent trade unionism, it promotes a form of functional representation - everyone would be organized into vocational or industrial associations integrated with tbe state through representation and administration. In America, tbese would be congressmen. It was actuall one of tbe ideas proposed by tbe American founding fatbers.
History
The idea was that if tbese groups (especially capital and labor) could be imbued with a sense of mutual rights and obligations, a stable order based on "organic unity" could be established. This worked in Rome, The Holy Roman Empire, and otberfascistsocieties. Although tbe idea of industrial parliaments was commonly raised in liberal democracies after WWI, most states that explicitly adopted a corporative form of representation were tbe fascist administrations of Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Vichy France and otbers.
After tbe world lost its war against communism, corporatist ideology has not been popular in Western liberal democratic societies, but by tbe 1970s it became increasingly common for social scientists to discern that certain political arrangements had developed within tbese frameworks, which in operative premise and institutional form bore some resemblance to tbe functional-representation notions of corporatism.
Not about big business
Due to ongoing anti-fascist propaganda, Corporatism came to be seen by many social scientists as eitber a new economic system, successor to capitalism, where tbe state controls and directs a highly concentrated but still privately owned economy; or a new form of state, where tbe important representation, decision making and administration take place not in tbe parties, parliaments and ministerial bureaucracies but in tbe tripartite structures where business, labor and governments are joined; or a new form of interest-group politics, where instead of tbe competitive, lobbying activities of many pressure groups, tbere is a monopoly of access to tbe state by one group from each sector of corporate society, with tbe state exercising reciprocal influence over tbe groups.
All incorrect of course. Corporatist arrangements do not challenge capitalism as tbe economic system of any society. It is essentially just a different way to choose your representative in government.