Project description
Companies acting as governments: What would happen?
Imagine a shadowy economic and political system controlled by corporations. That is a corporatocracy, in which corporate interests instead of citizens determine what governments do. Business corporations today exercise political power – both internally (towards employees) and externally (towards state, consumers and other actors). So what about this political role? The EU-funded CORPORATOCRACY will answer this question. It will also address the philosophical question of whether such corporate political power, if it exists, can be legitimised. It will focus on three conditions for legitimate ruling: respect of rule of law and human rights, democratic mechanisms of decision-making and requirements of social justice. Can these be applied to corporations? Special focus will be placed on transnational corporations. The findings of this 5-year project will help clarify corporations’ role in solving urgent social challenges.
Objective
Business corporations exercise political power, both internally (towards their employees) and externally (towards states, consumers and others). However, corporations have often fallen from the radar in the dominant theories of legitimacy in political philosophy/political theory, i.e. the social contract tradition. The latter has been wedded since the Westphalian era to an individual/state dualism in which there is no evident place for intermediate associations. The dominance of economic theories, understanding corporations as merely private, commercial actors operating in competitive markets, has reinforced this neglect of corporations political role. This neglect is untenable in the modern, globalized economy. For better or worse, contemporary societies must be interpreted as corporatocracies: societies in which corporations (increasingly) exercise political power. This raises the philosophical question of whether and if so, how such power can be legitimated, and hence whether corporations can be understood as part of a contemporary, updated, social contract theory. The aim of this proposal is to determine the conditions that underpin the legitimacy of corporate political power.
The project studies this question by focusing on three legitimacy conditions: the exercise of authority should be bound to (1) respect for the rule of law and fundamental rights of citizens, (2) democratic mechanisms of decision-making, and (3) requirements of social justice. It pays special attention to the role of transnational corporations, and to the interaction between the corporations political role and its economic functions. The scientific urgency of the project lies in the need to have a better normative understanding of the role of the corporation in the 21st century political order. Its social urgency lies in clarifying if and how corporations can be forces which strengthen societies capacities to solve urgent social challenges.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationsradio technologyradar
- social scienceslaw
- humanitiesphilosophy, ethics and religionphilosophy
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
3584 CS Utrecht
Netherlands