We have long been told that corporations rule the world, their interests seemingly taking precedence over states and their citizens. Yet, while states, civil society, and international organizations are well drawn in terms of their institutions, ideologies, and functions, the world’s global corporations are often more simply sketched as mechanisms of profit maximization.
In this book, John Mikler re-casts global corporations as political actors with complex identities and strategies. Debunking the idea of global corporations as exclusively profit-driven entities, he shows how they seek not only to drive or modify the agendas of states but to govern in their own right. He also explains why we need to re-territorialize global corporations as political actors that reflect and project the political power of the states and regions from which they hail.
We know the global corporations’ names, we know where they are headquartered, and we know where they invest and operate. Economic processes are increasingly produced by the control they possess, the relationships they have, the leverage they employ, the strategic decisions they make, and the discourses they create to enhance acceptance of their interests. This book represents a call to study how they do so, rather than making assumptions based on theoretical abstractions.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
List of Tables and Figures
Abbreviations
1. Introduction: The Global Corporate Takeover
2. Theorizing Global Corporations’ Power
3. Geographical Concentration
4. National Institutional Embeddedness
5. Private Authority and the Potential for Private Governance
6. Conclusion: Three Implications
References
Index
About the author
John Mikler is Associate Professor in the Department of Government and International Relations at The University of Sydney.
More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
13,357 Ebooks in this category
