Four Faces of Firm Power: Corporate Titans and the First Image of World Politics

• In Event: New Research on Leaders in International Politics

Abstract

Like the corporate titans of the Gilded Age, contemporary corporate leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, and Rupert Murdoch intervene directly and indirectly in global affairs to influence commerce, communications, information, and transportation. Given their lack of accountability to, and significant influence over, both state and international systems of democratic governance, the disproportionate power of corporate titans in international politics represents a profound challenge to democracy at the national and international levels. While IR acknowledges the power of transnational corporations and of individual heads of state, it has yet to focus on the individual leaders behind corporate power. The paper extends the individual level of analysis in the first image beyond state leaders. Drawing on both historical comparison with titans during previous eras of rising inequality and monopolies, like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, as well as different theories of authority, particularly Weber’s typology of traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal authority, this paper develops a typology of the forms of authority corporate titans possess. For example, Murdoch and Dimon offer a traditional, transactional approach to global influence, Bezos relies on a charismatic “founder myth,” while Zuckerberg pursues rational-legal bureaucratization. These types in turn have implications for titans’ structural positions within politics and their repertoires of power, as well as how that power might be resisted, co-opted, and undermined. The paper aims to inspire a research agenda that takes corporate titans seriously as international political authorities.

Authors

• Swati Srivastava, Purdue University

• Erin Lockwood, University of California, Irvine