12/29/2023 0 Comments Government monopoly examples![]() ![]() ![]() New antitrust enforcement should not seek to punish corrupt behavior, but to encourage structures of power that make corruption less likely. The antimonopoly approach is prophylactic instead of punitive in this way it resembles elections, another prophylactic anticorruption tool. The critical strategic solution to this design flaw is to engage antimonopoly laws in anticorruption efforts. Unlike small companies that have limited incentive or capacity to corrupt – because they do not exercise public power – multinational corporations, at a certain size and with enough power, are built to corrupt. Corporate monopolies are a result of legal frameworks that enable excessive concentration of private power, limit the freedom to engage in moral action by officers and directors, and create overwhelming incentives to bend public power to selfish ends. It flows from our failure to protect markets from concentrated economic power. This kind of corporate and multinational corruption is a tragedy of design. As Lord Acton famously put it: “Power tends to corrupt.” Power is especially likely to corrupt when it is unconstrained by democratic accountability. Failure to name legal corporate behavior as public corruption in global anticorruption campaigns to date has led to a focus on passing criminal laws and transparency laws, instead of examining problems of market structure and monopolization with global and domestic impacts. The practical implications are also substantial, and flow from the improved description: our anticorruption strategies must include antimonopoly laws, not because antitrust violations are themselves corrupt or because mergers are themselves corrupt, but because corruption is more likely when economic power is centralized. ![]() The descriptive implications of this conclusion are substantial: it means that some of the great drivers of contemporary corruption around the world today are large multinational corporations engaging in legal behavior. Corporate actors are corrupt when they exercise public power in a way that serves selfish ends at the expense of public ends, regardless of whether it is illegal, and regardless of whether they formally hold office. The key theoretical point is this: public power, not public office-holding, ought to be our marker for determining who may be guilty of public corruption. By extension – with understanding that it is not easy to identify what constitutes “public power” or even “selfish behavior” – all selfish exercise of public power is corrupt. Elected officials who exercise public power in the service of private ends are corrupt irrespective of the legality of their behavior. I argue that we should use the same test for corporations as we do for public officials, condemning selfish behavior as corrupt when it accompanies the exercise of public power, regardless of whether that public power derives from formal office-holding. But if legality is not the line between corrupt and noncorrupt corporate political behavior, what is? We can certainly agree that the former is corrupt I think most would accept that the latter is also corrupt. In 2017 America, because of Citizens United, it is not illegal for a corporation to spend millions of dollars to punish a congressperson who voted against its interests. In 1820 America, it was not illegal for a corporation to give money to a member of Congress in explicit exchange for that congressperson’s vote. The question is, which of these behaviors should we call corrupt, and which are merely corrupting? Depending on which side of the law they stand on, corporate actors may push to legalize the most powerful of their mechanisms of control, criminalizing the tools used by weaker societal agents, or they may exercise their influence to decriminalize their behaviors in a new market. Having built their power within the United States or similar legal systems, corporations then use legal tools to exert influence in other countries. 3 All of these behaviors are not only legal in the United States, but are encouraged and taught as essential strategies in business schools. 2 These behaviors are also explored in depth in the works of sociologist Amitai Etzioni. ![]() These kinds of behaviors make up what Michael Johnston has termed “influence markets,” which he identifies as the primary mode of corruption in developed democracies. 1 But more frequently, corporate actors use sophisticated legal means to exercise power over public officials: by making campaign contributions, lobbying, exerting media influence, funding nonprofits, sponsoring think tanks, paying speaking fees, or even cornering the market on key goods and services, creating public dependencies on the corporation. Of course, in some cases, corporate actors engage in illegal bribes of public officials, and we can easily label this behavior corrupt. Should we call legal corporate political behavior corrupt? If so, when? ![]()
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