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The article focuses on the book "Patterns of Corporatist Policy-Making," edited by G. Lehmbruch and P. Schmitter. The need to operationalize corporatism and develop methodologies for studying it produces in Lehmbruch and Schmitter's volume some advances that have eluded the literature directly pre-occupied with theory. In his paper in this volume, Wolfgang Streeck shows how West German unions behave in a very similar way, despite the ostensibly elaborate pluralism and decentralization of institutions imposed on that country at the formation of the Bonn republic. Industrial unionism and the legal framework contribute fairly clearly to this, but such apparently decentralizing features as the works councils are shown to do the same.

The article presents the author's comments on a paper on "Pluralism and the New Corporatism" by Ross M. Martin in the March 1983 issue of the periodical "Political Studies." According to the author, Martin turns to the role of the state as the fulcrum for his contrast between corporatism and pluralism. He says that if his argument is accepted that Martin has neglected the crucial feature of corporatism, then his central thesis that neo-corporatism is pluralism under an assumed name falls.