Democracy and the Corporation: The Long View
David Ciepley
There is an unexamined paradox in the history of government West. The so-called absolutist monarchs Europe overwhelmingly chartered republican corporations—e.g., towns, universities, and guilds whose members elected their leaders. Indeed, modern constitutional democracy patterned after them. Yet, democracies themselves have authoritarian universities business corporations subjects no vote. After this Great Inversion, corporations, which once distributed power wealth, now concentrate them, straining democracy. Against backdrop, article analyzes major types relation maintained between states corporations: constitutive (states charter corporations), mimetic recurrently copy one another's organizational features), instrumental (each leans on other, sometimes captures it, to better advance its own purposes). then examines special challenges that corporate economies pose considers whether a partial reversal Inversion could reduce
Annual Review of Political Science