Bringing new ideas to housing research

Although academic definitions of ‘corporatism’ differ, the concept is generally about organisational influence on state politics. Around 1980, Sweden was regarded as the archetype of welfare-state corporatism, but around the turn of the millennium the broad representation of organised interests in state politics was largely abolished. However, in the housing sector, strong interest organisations have continued to play a dominant and institutionalised role. Rents are negotiated collectively between organisations of estate owners and tenants, and these organisations also have strong influence on rental legislation and on housing policy more generally. We argue that this system should be seen as corporatist and to that end suggest a somewhat modified version of Philippe Schmitter’s well-established definition of corporatism. We claim that our ‘view from housing’ may contribute to the increased relevance of corporatism theory also in studies of other welfare sectors where market distribution is increasingly important.

The durable structures of housing and housing institutions are often subject to long-term processes of incremental change. Nevertheless, housing studies have largely focused either on static snapshots of policies or, more recently, on the inertia of institutional path dependence, while processes of incremental change have been almost entirely neglected. Political scientists (Streeck/Thelen/Mahoney) have proposed a typology of patterns of incremental institutional change, and this paper explores the applicability of this typology to housing structures and housing institutions. We draw on empirical illustrations from the housing literature to show how five types of change – layering, conversion, displacement, drift, exhaustion – apply to housing structures and institutions. We conclude with some general observations on how the typology can be used in further studies of developments in national housing regimes.