Periodic Reporting for period 2 - REBALANCE (Rebalancing disruptivE Business of multinAtional corporation and gLobal value chAins within democratic and iNClusive citizenship processes)
Période du rapport: 2023-10-01 au 2025-09-30
While globalization, financialization and monopolies increasingly weaken democracies, large companies are having an ever-greater influence on how democracy is enacted in Europe, leading to a ‘market-conforming capitalism’. Firms are eluding regulation, lobbying for their own rather than citizens’ interest, abusing human rights and push the abused to withdraw from democratic processes, fueling populism. Some economic actors are experimenting with alternative models and demonstrating more interest in sustainability and tentative routes toward an alternative “democracy-conforming capitalism”. In this debate, the application of political-science lenses has black-boxed large companies, while the viewpoint of management scholars has usually considered firms’ economic gains rather than impact on society and democracy. This has left a gap in our understanding of the mutual influence among large companies and democracies.
The REBALANCE project fills this gap by investigating how large companies have contributed to past and present threats to democracy and how they can promote future democracy, enhancing different business models and alternative organizational forms.
The project aims to identify which is the most effective regulatory control of economic actors, which avoids anti-democratic distortions and reveals human rights violators, and what makes large firms accept or resist such control and which are the most effective ways to tackle (self-)exclusion from the democratic participation of victims of business-related human rights infringements and other marginalized categories, relying on empowerment centered partnerships between firms and other entities (e.g. NGOs).
REBALANCE investigates whether and how companies respond to populisms, and how alternative organizational forms such as social enterprises might embed and foster democracy.
The project outcomes are in line with the call for: ‘Theoretically and empirically robust recommendations aiming to instill greater democratic accountability and inclusion in economic processes'.
The REBALANCE project fills this gap by investigating how large companies have contributed to past and present threats to democracy and how they can promote future democracy, enhancing different business models and alternative organizational forms.
The project aims to identify which is the most effective regulatory control of economic actors, which avoids anti-democratic distortions and reveals human rights violators, and what makes large firms accept or resist such control and which are the most effective ways to tackle (self-)exclusion from the democratic participation of victims of business-related human rights infringements and other marginalized categories, relying on empowerment centered partnerships between firms and other entities (e.g. NGOs).
REBALANCE investigates whether and how companies respond to populisms, and how alternative organizational forms such as social enterprises might embed and foster democracy.
The project outcomes are in line with the call for: ‘Theoretically and empirically robust recommendations aiming to instill greater democratic accountability and inclusion in economic processes'.
The REBALANCE project has successfully completed its objectives. All planned activities related to the listed deliverables and milestones have been successfully completed. The project has produced all expected scientific and dissemination outputs, including the five Working Papers of WP3 and the three Working Papers of WP4, as well as the associated short video documenting the core research results and community engagement. The Policy Brief and Roundtable Report on “Democracy past and present”, the Roundtable Report on “The future of democracy”, and the final Agenda Setting Position Paper providing recommendations for policy and practice and a suggesting a transformative agenda have all been delivered as foreseen.
The final conference has taken place as planned, presenting the overall results of the project to a the audience, consisting primiraly of scholars and practitioners, including entrepreneurs championing responsible business.
From a management and governance perspective, the project has also successfully completed all planned tasks. The annual Project Meetings Reports for Years 2 and 3 have been delivered, capturing the main outcomes of the Steering and Ethical Committees, Advisory Board, and Project Assembly meetings. The final versions of both the Risk Management Plan and the Data Management Plan have been prepared, updating and consolidating the preliminary versions delivered earlier in the project. Finally, the Progress Report has been submitted, summarising the main achievements, critical issues encountered, and the overall positive implementation of the REBALANCE project.
The final conference has taken place as planned, presenting the overall results of the project to a the audience, consisting primiraly of scholars and practitioners, including entrepreneurs championing responsible business.
From a management and governance perspective, the project has also successfully completed all planned tasks. The annual Project Meetings Reports for Years 2 and 3 have been delivered, capturing the main outcomes of the Steering and Ethical Committees, Advisory Board, and Project Assembly meetings. The final versions of both the Risk Management Plan and the Data Management Plan have been prepared, updating and consolidating the preliminary versions delivered earlier in the project. Finally, the Progress Report has been submitted, summarising the main achievements, critical issues encountered, and the overall positive implementation of the REBALANCE project.
REBALANCE advances beyond the state of the art by addressing key limitations in existing scholarship on business, human rights, and democracy. While prior research has documented corporate influence on regulation, public policy, and social and environmental outcomes, it remains fragmented and largely siloed, with limited empirical integration across domains such as lobbying, taxation, human rights, environmental governance, and civic trust. REBALANCE overcomes these gaps by providing a novel, longitudinal, open-access dataset linking firm-level misconduct—including human rights abuses and tax avoidance—to multi-jurisdictional measures of institutional integrity, democratic participation, and regulatory compliance. It introduces the concept of “double social offloading,” demonstrating that firms engaged in tax avoidance are significantly more likely to commit human rights abuses, thereby shifting both fiscal and social burdens onto communities. The project further establishes causal pathways between corporate misconduct and democratic erosion, as exemplified by micro-level evidence linking industrial pollution to lower voter turnout and increased support for populist parties. Beyond documenting corporate risks, REBALANCE also systematically identifies conditions under which firms strengthen democratic practices, including through internal democratic organizing and intermediary-led multi-stakeholder partnerships that enhance civic engagement, transparency, and inclusion both within firms and across communities. By integrating diverse corporate behaviors—political engagement, regulatory influence, responsible organizing, and multi-stakeholder governance—into a single analytical framework, REBALANCE provides the first empirically grounded account of the cumulative effects of corporate activity on democracy. This holistic approach enables policy-relevant insights, showing not only how to curb harmful corporate practices but also how to leverage responsible firms as allies in strengthening democratic resilience, offering a benchmark for future interdisciplinary research.