Workshop Building Corporatist Europe at the University of Zurich from 27 to 28 November 2025.
This workshop reflects upon one of the key themes of 20th century European history: corporatism, meaning the integration of organised interests into the legislative and administrative branches of the modern state.
By hosting this workshop we also commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Charles S. Maier’s Recasting Bourgeois Europe, one of the works that has defined contemporary research on this theme.
The workshop explores European varieties of corporatism, which emerged in Western, Central and Eastern Europe over the ‘trans-war’ timespan stretching from the Great Depression of the 1930s until the Oil Crisis of the 1970s.
This is an interdisciplinary exercise. We hence warmly welcome contributions from:
• historians of the economics of dictatorship, military mobilisation and reconstruction,
• historians of authoritarian and democratic regimes,
• historians of political and economic thought,
• historians of the labour movement and industrial relations,
• historians of business politics,
• historians of the state and civil administration.
The aim of the workshop is to produce an edited volume. To participate in the conference, please send a 500-word abstract to jonas.pluess@uzh.ch by 1 September 2025. The selected participants will have time until 1 November 2025 to produce a 1500-word summary of their paper.
Travel expenses and accommodation costs will be covered by the organisers.