Crepaz asks whether corporatism retards pollution, because the inclusive
structure of corporatism allows the internalization of externalities. This
hypothesis is based on Mancur Olson’s argument^15 that the more encompas-
sing organizations become, the more their interest and the general interest
converge. Corporatism, Crepaz suggests, uniquely resolves collective action
problems, limits transaction costs, and reduces uncertainty, and this enables it
to tackle environmental problems.^16
A second study, by Scruggs (1999) also argues that there is a robust positive
relationship between corporatist institutions and national environmental
performance. Just as corporatist institutions promote economic public goods
(for example, wage restraint), so they provide non-economic public goods by
overcoming collective action problems characterizing environmental sustain-
ability.^17
Why might corporatist institutions be more conducive to environmental
regulation of production than pluralist ones? Scruggs suggests several
reasons. First, under corporatism, the government retains the threat to use
direct regulation. Second, monitoring and enforcement, necessary to effective
environmental regulation, are more acceptable when there is a history of
producer-government trust. Third, corporatist institutions seem to have a better
ability to pursue public goods than do pluralist ones, because of three factors:
- national peak associations have power over local units and can reduce
parochial interests and avoid policy paralysis; 2) corporatist arrangements
have better schemes to compensate losers with economic adjustments, and
thus socialize the distributional costs of environmental policies; and 3)
producers in corporatist states are active agents in resolving environmental
problems.^18
These studies concern the role of the state and business in the reduction of
atmospheric pollution. This is a different environmental issue than
biodiversity conservation. Air pollution is relatively easy to measure and in
most nations (including China and Taiwan) the issue has higher salience than
the preservation of species and ecosystems because of its direct impact on
human health. Endangerment of non-human species and ecosystem
degradation are less immediate and typically affect humans indirectly. Yet
there is no reason to suspect that the form of state-society relationship will be
unimportant to mitigation of disturbances.
Applications to China and Taiwan
Most scholars studying the impact of different models of state-business
relations have worked in the capitalist and liberal environments of North
America and Europe, and one should not assume that the concepts are of
immediate applicability to China and Taiwan. Yet a number of scholars have
Business organizations and biodiversity conservation 139