Democracy and the Corporation: The Long View

What is it about?

In the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods, corporations--guilds, towns, and universities, for example--operated as little republics and were the leading centers of republican (democratic) theory and practice. The US Constitution is significantly patterned after them. But in a Great Inversion, most corporations, and especially the business corporation, became autocratic in structure, and they now pose challenges to democracy. Alternative forms of corporate governance are considered that would mitigate this and other downsides of the modern business corporation.

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Why is it important?

This article goes behind the rise of authoritarian populism to discuss the deeper corporate roots of the political polarization that feeds it. And it shows how the corporate form has been, and could again, can combine high productivity with widely spread benefits, instead of intensifying inequality, as it currently does.