This paper will demonstrate the connection between corporatism, catholic social teaching as a political, economic and social doctrine and the emergence of complementarity regimes in the organized capitalism of continental Europe. By investigating the emergence of different aspects of welfare regimes in Italy and Germany in the 19th century the contribution shows that the establishment of complementarity regimes in organized capitalism is less the result of functionalist convergence but rather the outcome of a persistent domination of catholic political actors and the congruency of their doctrine with the specific needs of capital in late industrializing countries. Complementarity regimes are only the result of functionalism insofar as they correspond to the prevailing social micro foundation of Catholic mediation doctrine which prevailed as the overarching ordering principle in these societies from the end of the 19th century up till to the late 1960s.
