Pervasive Powers

The Politics of Corporate Authority

Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-Olivier Déplaude, Nathalie Jas, Emmanuel Henry, Valentin Thomas, Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-Olivier Déplaude, Nathalie Jas, Emmanuel Henry, Valentin Thomas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367514426
• eBook ISBN: 9781000451061
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

In an era of systemic crisis and of global critiques of the unsustainable perpetuation of capitalism, Pervasive Powers: The Politics of Corporate Authority critically questions the conditions for the maintenance and expansion of corporate power. The book explores empirical case studies in the realms of finance, urban policies, automobile safety, environmental risk, agriculture, and food in western democracies. It renews understanding of the power of big business, focusing on how the study of temporalities, of multi-sited influence and of sociotechnical tools is crucial to an analysis of the evolution of corporate authority.

Drawing on different literatures, ranging from research on business associations and global governance to that on the social production of ignorance or on corporate crime, this book aims at contributing to existing works on the capacity of corporations to rule the world. Unlike approaches focused on economic elites and on the political activities of firms, it goes beyond analysis of the power of corporations to influence policy-making to depict their unprecedented capacity to transform and shape the social world. Operating in numerous social spaces and mobilizing a wide range of strategies, corporate organizations have acquired the pervasive power to act far beyond mere spaces of regulation and government.

Based on contributions from historians, science and technology studies scholars, sociologists and political scientists, this book will be of great interest to researchers, academics and students who wish to understand how corporations exert a pervasive influence on public policies, and to NGOs and regulatory agencies.

1 The Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority

Repertoire of Actions, Material Effects, and Democratic Challenges

Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-Olivier Déplaude, Nathalie Jas, Emmanuel Henry, and Valentin Thomas

A few years ago, Gary Younge (2014), a journalist with The Guardian, asked: “Who’s in control – nation states or global corporations?”. As far as he was concerned, the answer was clear: transnational corporations had succeeded in severely limiting the “ability of national governments to pursue any agenda” to the point of seriously threatening the exercise of democracy. State weakening in favor of very large corporations is nothing new. It has been regularly observed by committed observers and social scientists for several decades. The characterization of the political power of corporations and their capacity to reorder the world not only in its economic but also in its social, environmental, and political dimensions nevertheless remains highly topical. An understanding of “the nature, dynamics, and impacts of corporations and the power they exert within contemporary capitalism” (SPERI 2019) and therefore of how “the global economy functions and shapes people’s life chances” (ibid.), remains today a crucial issue for the social sciences.

Drawing on different literatures, ranging from research on business associations and “global governance” to that on the social production of ignorance or on “corporate crime”, we wish to contribute to existing work on the capacity of corporate actors to govern and administer the world. We analyze corporate actors not just as actors that influence policy but as actors who have acquired an unprecedented capacity to transform and shape the social world. Operating in numerous social spaces and mobilizing a wide range of strategies, they have acquired a power to act that extends far beyond mere spaces of regulation and government. We will use two related concepts to take account of this power: “pervasive powers” and “corporate authority”. The concept of the “pervasive powers” of large corporations and industries relates to the idea of diffuse and generalized powers that have both macro and micro dimensions. The concept of “corporate authority” aims to describe what these diffuse powers produce: the growing social and political legitimacy of corporate actors, imposing specific material and normative orders that compete or hybridize with those of states.

In the first two sections of this chapter, we will present research that has sought to analyze the political power of corporations, from the study of corporate elites to that of the role that private actors play in global governance. In the third section, we develop the concepts of “pervasive powers” and “corporate authority”, which are at the heart of this chapter. This will lead us, in the fourth section, to highlight the importance of the “corporate repertoire of actions” when considering the diversity of the work done by corporate actors to consolidate and perpetuate their power. In the fifth section, we focus on the material dimension and the irreversibility of their actions. Then in the final section, we return more broadly to what these forms of power do to democracy.

Corporate Elites, Corporations, and the State

Corporate power is a classic subject of analysis in sociology and political science. An initial Marxist-inspired set of works focused on the individuals who make up the business world and the networks in which they operate. In this research, corporate power is analyzed as class power. It has as its origin in C. Wright Mills’ seminal study of the “power elite”, defined as the coming together of “those political, economic, and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences” (2000 [1959], 18). For Mills, the study of the places where the different fractions of these elites interact (clubs, professional associations, philanthropic organizations, government commissions, etc.) is of decisive importance, because they allow their members to define common interests. Among them, those who run major companies exert a growing influence supported by the development of states’ capacities to intervene.

Mills’ study has fueled a vast body of sociological research on economic elites, some of which uses formal network analysis tools (Denord et al. 2020). This research has focused on “interlocking directorates”, which consists in senior executives of large companies sitting on the boards of other companies. Such practice has been described as essential when building the cohesion of economic elites and their social and political power (Carroll 2004; Domhoff 1970, 2013; Scott 1997; Useem 1984). This research was renewed in the 1990s in relation to the emergence of a “transnational capitalist class” (Carroll 2010; Sklair 2000). It continues to analyze the power of the business world as a class power, defined as the capacity to monopolize a large share of the profits generated by labor. The accumulation of wealth by business leaders and the professionals who work for them is thus seen as the main marker of their power. Finally, this literature argues that the power of corporate elites is even more important in as much as it is considered legitimate in the rest of society. Researchers have thus underlined the symbolic work carried out by certain categories of professionals who, on behalf of these elites, fulfill the function of organic intellectuals (in the Gramscian sense): consultants, business lawyers, and academics from law, business, or management schools thus play an essential role in the constitution of a hegemonic power – i.e., a power that is recognized as legitimate and which is rarely contested (Carroll 2004).

Focused on individuals and their networks, this research tells us little about the companies as such or about their strategies and policies. This is the subject of another body of work, rooted more in political science, on the relations between firms and their organizations (business associations, entrepreneurs’ clubs, think tanks, etc.), on the one hand, and public authorities, on the other hand. Some authors have analyzed these relations as the “capture” of certain administrations or regulatory agencies by economic actors who have succeeded in orienting their activities to their benefit (Carpenter and Moss 2014; Huntington 1952). However, other works have offered a more nuanced analysis of the relationship between the business world and government, in terms of “coproduction”. This is what Marlène Benquet, Paul Lagneau Ymonet, and Fabien Foureault propose in Chapter 6 in this book, taking as a case study the creation of a tax exemption favorable to private equity in France in the 1990s. Focusing on conflicts within both financial communities and public administration, they document the way in which the French government and certain financial actors coproduced a regulation that benefited the private equity sector in order to transform the structure of the French financial sector. More generally, this chapter emphasizes the important role that governments play in the construction of markets and in the processes of concentration and economic influence, whether in Europe, North America, or more recently in Asia and South America. The power of states and the power of the large companies whose development they support go hand in hand (Wilks 2013). Alongside these works that demonstrate the close interconnection between states and corporate actors, other literatures have sought to characterize the power that companies exercise, by situating themselves on a global scale.¹

“Private Authority” and “Corporate Power” in Global Governance

The question of the power exercised by private actors is crucial for another body of research, which is at the crossroads of the field of the analysis of international relations, international political economy, and the study of global governance. This research examines nonpublic actors and questions their capacity to perform functions that are a priori reserved for states or international organizations, such as the definition and implementation of public policies at national, international, or global levels. There are two trends: research that approaches this power through the concept of “private authority” and research that considers it from the angle of “corporate power”. These two approaches are based on the observation that, since the end of the Cold War, there has been an erosion of the capacity of states to perform certain functions due to the combined effect of several factors: increasing globalization, the development of international organizations, the concentration of large corporations, the financialization of the economy, the implementation of (neo-)liberal policies, and, for some authors, the acceleration of communication and trade made possible by technological transformations. In both streams of literature, it is a matter of highlighting and analyzing the non-state actors who participate in the construction of global governance, and the institutional, social, and geographical spaces in which these actors operate, or the instruments they have at their disposal.

The notion of “private authority” took shape during the 1990s (Cutler et al. 2003). Private authority is defined as an assemblage of “institutionalized forms or expressions of power”, the legitimacy of which is based on the fact that there is “some form of normative, uncoerced consent or recognition of authority on the part of the regulated or governed” (Hall and Bierstecker 2002, 4). It is therefore a question of understanding how private actors and organizations – and not only states – gain rule-making authority (Cashore 2002). This research distinguishes between different forms of private authority, including “delegated” and “entrepreneurial” forms. Delegated forms of private authority function as transfers of competences from states to privat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority: Repertoire of Actions, Material Effects, and Democratic Challenges
• 2 The Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry During the Early Francoist Dictatorship: Experts, Autarky, Agnotology, and Fascism
• 3 Corporate Systemic Ascendency: Perspectives from the Pesticide Industry in Postwar France
• 4 From Research Funding to Public Relations: The Making of a Food Industry Think Tank in 1970s France
• 5 From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?: When US Insurers Mobilized for Automobile Safety Regulation(1959–1974)
• 6 Coproducing the Rules of the Game: State, Insurance Companies, and Private Equity in 1990s France
• 7 Transnational Professional Service Firms and the Corporatization of Infrastructure Procurement
• About the Contributors
• Index