Corporate Power

insights

A 2021 qualitative analysis finds that codetermination is an effective strategy for curbing corporate political power. Codetermination can help protect the democratic process by curbing excessive corporate power. The largest corporations already account for a larger share of the economy than at almost any time during the last 100 years, and the emerging data economy threatens to further consolidate economic resources. By allowing employees to elect a significant portion of corporate directors, codetermination can play a similar role as that of the Constitutional separation of powers. If the goal of codetermination is to curb excessive political power, it may be sufficient to impose mandates that affect only a handful of the largest corporations, without making codetermination a generalized feature of the US corporate landscape. The "non-domination principle": excessive power in the hands of a few corporations is a threat to the democratic state.

sources

Codetermination and the Democratic State

authors

Horst Eudenmueller Jens Dammann

reports

Codetermination