Corporations Vs. Democracy

Term Paper # 101491

Business
Economics
Political Science

This paper explores whether corporate power challenges the concept of democracy.

2,259 words () | 8 sources | APA | 2008 United States

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how in American society corporations exert a great deal of influence and control, giving rise to complaints that big businesses, through lobbyists and other means, affect Congress to too great a degree and so make the concept of democracy meaningless. The paper provides a literature review on corporations and democracy as well as an economic analysis of capitalism and democracy. The paper also shows how preventing corporations from exerting detrimental effects on democracy will protect the basis of democracy itself.

Outline:
Introduction
Positive Analysis
Normative Analysis

From the Paper:

"The political system indeed perpetuates a number of social, political, and economic inequalities between classes, racial groups, and other social and economic divisions. American government and politics are not neutral and any government action produces winners and losers, those who get benefits and those who pay most of the costs of those benefits. The ideal of the American system, as embodied in the Constitution, is to limit the separation between winners and losers and to see that no one group is always to be found in either category. This is an ideal that is not always met, and the effort to achieve this ideal itself entails ethical concerns about the rights of the citizen in a democracy."

Sample of Sources Used:

Aman Jr., A.C. (2001). Privatization and the democracy problem in globalization: Making markets more accountable through administrative law. Fordham Urban Law Journal 28.5, 1477 - 1501.
Anderson, G.L. (2005). Democracy or oligarchy? Regulating financial power. International Journal on World Peace 22.2, 29 - 52.
Chua, A.L. (1998). Markets, democracy, and ethnicity: toward a new paradigm for law and development. Yale Law Journal, 1 - 17.
Clark, B. (1991). Political economy. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.
Crane, A., Matten, D. & Moon, J. (2003). Can corporations be citizens? Corporate citizenship as a metaphor for business participation in society. International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, 1 - 32.