Does corporatism help the green transition?

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies

Join Nina Lopez-Uroz and Luca Cigna as they explore how business fragmentation shapes environmental policy outcomes, drawing on insights from the Netherlands’ nitrogen crisis.

Gaining the support of industries is critical for governments to pass stringent environmental policies. However, transformations in production models are likely to generate costs and, in turn, resistance from organised interests. Both corporatist and pluralistic structures of interest intermediation are usually understood as enabling governments to defuse organised opposition to policy change. Beyond the corporatism-pluralism distinction, this paper argues that governments' capacity to pass on stringent reforms also depends on the ‘ecosystem’ within which cost-bearing interest groups operate and develop their policy positions.

Business fragmentation, in particular, reduces these groups’ capacity to support costly reforms. Using theory-building process-tracing, the paper develops this argument through the crucial case of the so-called ‘nitrogen crisis’ in the Netherlands, and particularly its impact on the agricultural sector. Fragmentation within the sector allowed fringe actors to politicise the debate, shifting mainstream groups from cooperation to opposition and weakening the government’s capacity to implement necessary policies. The article makes three key contributions. First, it refines institutional theories in environmental policy. Second, it provides insights into the agricultural sector's unique role in climate politics. Third, it reassesses corporatist explanations, questioning the effectiveness of consensual democracy in addressing environmental challenges.

This event is hybrid. The video link is provided upon registration.