Description: Corporate Power (Spring 2010)

At the beginning of the 21st century, it appears the corporation reigns supreme as the most powerful institution in the world. What's so bad about that? This question involves, first, the mechanics of corporate power. With little coordination or motives other thanprofit, the corporation and the market have unleashed dramatic social change across political borders and cultural differences. If we 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 stems from the efficiency of capitalist markets (for products, jobs, and capital investment) to which the world’s citizens have largely consented. Is this true, or does the corporation exert non-market (and thus illegitimate) power over politics, culture, citizenship, the environment, and other spheres of society?

To address these issues, we will examine various theories and case studies of corporate power. Substantive topics that we address include corporate influence over government, local community, and the nonprofit sector; corporate impacts on global development, existing hierarchies of gender and race, and the natural environment; and business vulnerability to consumer demand and investor power.

The goals for this course are threefold. First, we will interrogate the prevailing theories of corporate power. Not all of them 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, consumerism, 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.