Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? This book explains how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. This book differs sharply from most treatments by explaining differences in minority shareholder protections and ownership concentration among countries in terms of the interaction of economic preferences and political institutions. It explores in particular the crucial role of pension plans and financial intermediaries in shaping political preferences for different rules of corporate governance. The countries examined sort into two distinct groups: diffuse shareholding by external investors who pick a board that monitors the managers, and concentrated blockholding by insiders who monitor managers directly. Examining the political coalitions that form among or across management, owners, and workers, the authors find that certain coalitions encourage policies that promote diffuse shareholding, while other coalitions yield blockholding-oriented policies. Political institutions influence the probability of one coalition defeating another.

Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Citizens United and other high-profile cases have sparked passionate disagreement about the proper role of corporations in American democracy. Partisans on both sides have made bold claims, often with little basis in historical facts. Bringing together leading scholars of history, law, and political science, Corporations and American Democracy provides the historical and intellectual grounding necessary to put today’s corporate policy debates in proper context. From the nation’s founding to the present, Americans have regarded corporations with ambivalence—embracing their potential to revolutionize economic life and yet remaining wary of their capacity to undermine democratic institutions. Although corporations were originally created to give businesses and other associations special legal rights and privileges, historically they were denied many of the constitutional protections afforded flesh-and-blood citizens. This comprehensive volume covers a range of topics, including the origins of corporations in English and American law, the historical shift from special charters to general incorporation, the increased variety of corporations that this shift made possible, and the roots of modern corporate regulation in the Progressive Era and New Deal. It also covers the evolution of judicial views of corporate rights, particularly since corporations have become the form of choice for an increasing variety of nonbusiness organizations, including political advocacy groups. Ironically, in today’s global economy the decline of large, vertically integrated corporations—the type of corporation that past reform movements fought so hard to regulate—poses some of the newest challenges to effective government oversight of the economy.

Why are crimes of the suite punished more leniently than crimes of the street? When police killings of citizens go unpunished, political torture is sanctioned by the state, and the financial frauds of Wall Street traders remain unprosecuted, nothing succeeds with such regularity as the active failures of national states to obstruct the crimes of the powerful. Written from the perspective of global sustainability and as an unflinching and unforgiving exposé of the full range of the crimes of the powerful, Unchecked Corporate Power reveals how legalized authorities and political institutions charged with the duty of protecting citizens from law-breaking and injurious activities have increasingly become enablers and colluders with the very enterprises they are obliged to regulate. Here, Gregg Barak explains why the United States and other countries are duplicitous in their harsh reactions to street crimes in comparison to the significantly more harmful and far-reaching crimes of the powerful, and why the crimes of the powerful are treated as beyond incrimination. What happens to nations that surrender ever-growing economic and political power to the globally super rich and the mammoth multinational corporations they control? And what can people from around the world do to resist the criminality and victimization perpetrated by multinationals, and generated by the prevailing global political economy? Barak examines an array of multinational crimes—corporate, environmental, financial, and state—and their state-legal responses, and outlines policies and strategies for revolutionizing these contradictory relations of capital reproduction, criminality, and unsustainability.

Deep and detailed research into the workings of corporate enables Professor Herman to throw considerable light on how the board of directors operates, how important outside directors are, how new members are selected, and how multiple directorships interlock the large corporations. Throughout the book the author contrasts the power of the managers with that of other interest groups - bankers, family - and he concludes that power lies with the managers. But this has not changed the basic objectives of the corporation - the pursuit of growth and profits - nor has it enhanced social responsibility. After thorough investigation Edward Herman concludes that government regulation has done surprisingly little to reduce the autonomy of the corporation. Just as the influence of bankers and investors has been resisted, so has the effect of regulation. Improved communications and controls, geographic dispersion, and the enhanced adaptability and mobility of the large corporation have all played a part in maintaining corporate power and managerial control. Corporate Control, Corporate Power will be essential reading for executives, policy makers, regulators, and all those concerned to make the corporation more responsible and accountable.

This is a reprint of a previosly published work. It deals with the constraints on corporate decison making.

A U.S. senator, leading the fight against money in politics, chronicles the long shadow corporate power has cast over our democracy In Captured, U.S. Senator and former federal prosecutor Sheldon Whitehouse offers an eye-opening take on what corporate influence looks like today from the Senate Floor, adding a first-hand perspective to Jane Mayer’s Dark Money. Americans know something is wrong in their government. Senator Whitehouse combines history, legal scholarship, and personal experiences to provide the first hands-on, comprehensive explanation of what's gone wrong, exposing multiple avenues through which our government has been infiltrated and disabled by corporate powers. Captured reveals an original oversight by the Founders, and shows how and why corporate power has exploited that vulnerability: to strike fear in elected representatives who don’t “get right” by threatening million-dollar "dark money" election attacks (a threat more effective and less expensive than the actual attack); to stack the judiciary—even the Supreme Court—in "business-friendly" ways; to "capture” the administrative agencies meant to regulate corporate behavior; to undermine the civil jury, the Constitution's last bastion for ordinary citizens; and to create a corporate "alternate reality" on public health and safety issues like climate change. Captured shows that in this centuries-long struggle between corporate power and individual liberty, we can and must take our American government back into our own hands.

​“A novel, insightful and provocative foray into the abilities, capacities and limits of corporate power on the one hand and public power and capacities on the other hand. Eckert offers new and refine insights on core issues in the theories of public and private interest regulation.”—David Levi Faur, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel “This impressive book breaks important ground in the regulatory governance literature by bringing in a fresh corporate perspective. Based on a set of fascinating case studies of European regulation, Eckert compellingly unpacks key facets of corporate power. A must-read for regulation scholars who often neglect the targets of regulation!”—Burkard Eberlein, York University, Canada “This book offers systematic and empirically fascinating insights into the regulatory power of corporations which unfolds outside the traditional political arenas. Its policy effects have important implications for the target groups of regulation, the general public, and the democratic political process as such. The conceptualization and use of rich empirical sources make for a compelling read.”—Adrienne Héritier, European University Institute, Italy This book takes a fresh look at corporate power in the regulatory process. It examines how corporations seek to prevent, shape, make or revoke regulation. The central argument is that in doing so, corporations utilise distinct power resources as experts, innovators and operators. By re-emphasising the proactive role of business, the book complements our acquired knowledge of policymakers’ capacity to put pressure on, or delegate power to private actors. Empirically, the book covers European consumer and environmental policies, and conducts case studies on the chemical, paper, home appliance, ICT and electricity industries. A separate chapter is dedicated to the assumption that Brexit will lead to an unprecedented result of EU regulation being lifted, and how this could put corporate power in regulation at risk. This book provides a new perspective on the policy implications of corporate power to scholars, students and practitioners alike.