Beyond Public and Private: Toward a Political Theory of the Corporation

American Political Science Review, Vol. 107, No. 1, February 2013

20 Pages Posted: 23 Aug 2014

See all articles by David A Ciepley

David A Ciepley

Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, The University of Virginia; Aarhus University

Date Written: February 1, 2013

Abstract

This article challenges the liberal, contractual theory of the corporation and argues for replacing it with a political theory of the corporation. Corporations are government-like in their powers, and government grants them both their external “personhood” and their internal governing authority. They are thus not simply private. Yet they are privately organized and financed and therefore not simply public. Corporations transgress all the basic dichotomies that structure liberal treatments of law, economics, and politics: public/private, government/market, privilege/equality, and status/contract. They are “franchise governments” that cannot be satisfactorily assimilated to liberalism. The liberal effort to assimilate them, treating them as contractually constituted associations of private property owners, endows them with rights they ought not have, exacerbates their irresponsibility, and compromises their principal public benefit of generating long-term growth. Instead, corporations need to be placed in a distinct category — neither public nor private, but “corporate” — to be regulated by distinct rules and norms.

Keywords: corportion, franchise, neo-liberal

Suggested Citation

Ciepley, David A, Beyond Public and Private: Toward a Political Theory of the Corporation (February 1, 2013). American Political Science Review, Vol. 107, No. 1, February 2013, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2484826

David A Ciepley (Contact Author)

Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, The University of Virginia ( email )

Aarhus University ( email )

Nordre Ringgade 1
DK-8000 Aarhus C, 8000
Denmark

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
1,475
Abstract Views
4,654
Rank
23,943
PlumX Metrics