The Dual Role of Law in Interwar Corporatism and Contemporary Governance

This paper explores the role of law in the turn to corporatism in the interwar period as well as the lessons of this turn for the turn to governance as unfolded from the late 1970s onwards. The guiding hypothesis is that both interwar corporatism and contemporary governance rely on a dual understanding of the law: First, law is regarded as an obstacle and hindrance preventing the freeing of ‘societal energies’, most notably political energies in interwar corporatism and economic energies in contemporary (neo-liberal) governance. Second, law is in both cases conceived of as a tool which is deployed in order to realise particular political objectives, thereby advancing an instrumental understanding of law. In both cases, this approach to law led to erosion and in some contexts to an outright breakdown of both the functional and normative integrity of the law thereby paving the way for profound societal crises.