Description: Corporate Power (Spring 2007)

At the dawn of the 21st century, the corporation reigns supreme as the most powerful institution in the world. Not just corporate apologists should ask: What's so wrong with that? This question involves, first, the mechanics of corporate power. With little coordination or extrinsic motive besides profit, the corporation and the market have proven highly effective in promoting social change across political borders and cultural differences. If we clearly understand how corporate power works, could we imagine ways to harness it for the greater good? Second, this question also highlights corporate power’s legitimacy. Many economists and policy-makers argue that corporations' reach reflects effects of capitalist markets (for products, jobs, and capital investment) to which the world’s citizens have largely consented. Is this so, or does the corporation exert non-market (and thus illegitimate) power over politics, culture, citizenship, the environment, and other spheres of society?

To answer such questions, we will examine various theories and case studies of corporate power. Substantive topics that we address include corporate influence over public policy, local community, and global development; corporate impacts on public culture and the natural environment; and business vulnerability to consumer demand and management trends.

The goals for this course are threefold. First, we will interrogate the prevailing theories of corporate power. Not all these theories are compatible; our task is to understand the issues and methods that produce such divergent accounts and the ways they contradict or supplement one another. Furthermore, we will scrutinize each theory against the economists' null hypothesis that so-called corporate power is only a legitimate exercise of market activity.

Second, we will examine the historical and structural development of the corporation and capitalism. Our readings begin at the 19th century era of competitive capitalism and then turn to cutting-edge 21st-century modes of capitalist organization. Just as important as these evolving macro-structures are the changing contexts for corporate activity: war, financial markets, global development, and so on. We will use this history to understand how corporate power has changed in both the forms it takes and the interests it advances.

Finally, we will develop research skills for studying corporate power, in form of class presentations and a written term paper. These assignments entail archival research, document analysis, data-gathering, and the synthesis of multiple (and sometimes divergent) accounts -- skills that you can hopefully continue to use to understand the stakes and continuing evolution of corporate power long after you have left Vassar.