The tripartite commission in Korea is a social agreement building body which was born from the social corporatism. Corporatism can be defined as a sociopolitical system organized on the basis of functional groups rather than individualism or one man-one vote and there has been a world-wide concern on the social corporatism during the past 40 years, especially in the industrialized countries.

This study provides a comparative discussion of the different types of social corporatism in the industrialized countries. It examines the varieties of the origins, development, and recent change of social corporatism in Sweden, England, Germany, and Netherlands. It also gives Korean tripartite commission some policy suggestions, based on the experiences of the four countries.