countries with deep economic cleavages have reconciled these cleavages quite differently and
industrial structure cannot account for all cross-national variation. For example, Germany with
its pronounced regional economic diversity has nonetheless produced corporatist peak
associations. Some countries with radically different industrial structures such as Sweden and
DK have produced very similar peak employers’ associations. To some extent these different
avenues of reconciliation depend on the party system. For example, Danish agriculture
accounted for 60 percent of GNP as late as 1960 and agricultural elites were historically more
firmly attached to laissez-faire liberal policies than manufacturers.
In the Danish multiple party
system economic elites were represented in dedicated business and farmer parties: the farmers’
Venstre party consistently lobbied for more laissez-faire policies than the manufacturers’
Conservative party, yet the two parties negotiated in public policy forums with the social
democrats and conflicts over the direction of the political economy were rationalized. In the
United States cleavages between agriculture and manufacturing and within industrial sectors
were treated by the party system much differently. Thus while industrial structure may account
for the differential development of sectoral trade associations, additional factors such as the
nature of the party system (discussed below) may be necessary to explain how employers take
the next step and develop national peak associations.
A second broad set of explanations posits employer organization as a reaction to labor
activism: business organizes to fight emerging labor power.
Elegant theories have been
developed to account for the different national trajectories to industrial and craft unions. When
unions predate widespread industrialization, industrial unions are more likely to develop;
alternatively craft unions develop when the new organizations arise out of earlier cartel forms
and these craft unions subsequently prevent the emergence of broader industrial unions. The
form of employer association might be influenced by the form of unionization; for example,
Convention