The worlds of authoritarian corporatism in Europe and latin America

In 1952, President Laureano Gomez tried to reorganize political representation in Colombia along authoritarian corporatist lines and this attempt might be the end of the first wave of corporatism associated with the era of fascism in Europe and Latin America. After 1945, the authoritarian corporatism would be highly influential in the development of the new populism, especially in Latin America when populists first reached in power. The powerful intellectual and political presence of corporatism in the political culture of Catholic elites both in Europe and Latin America paved the way for other more secular influences. Many ideologists of social corporatism - particularly within Catholic circles - advocated a societal corporatism without the omnipresent state, but the praxis of corporatist patterns of representation was mainly the result of an imposition by authoritarian political elites on civil society. During the interwar period corporatism existed across the right wing political spectrum and beyond.