Abstract

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the discussion on neocorporatism with refering to the Belgian socio-economie concertation system. The central thesis is to understand neo-corporatism as a functional specific concertation system alongside or in function of the traditional parliamentary-democratic decision-system. The fact that this neo-corporatist socio-economic concertation system is interwoven with the parliamentary system stands for its strength and strategie facilities to come to a socio-economic concensus between trade unions, business organizations and the state. Specially the fact that neo-corporatism is not always very structured, and works more or less in an informal way puts our attention to the traditional formal democratic way of decision-making and the informal concertation between workers, employers and the state. This difference between formal and informal, or legally institutionalized and semi-institutionalized concertation plays a major role in the functioning of the Belgian socio-economic concertation system.