The United States government places an enormous emphasis on the value of democracy, both on the home front and abroad. However, this self-proclaimed modern exemplar of healthy democracy is in fact a perverse "corpocracy," according to Charles Derber, professor of sociology at Boston College.
Derber strove to answer the question, "Who Rules the World? Global Corpocracy or Global Democracy?" at his Monday lecture in Starr Auditorium.
Derber said that today, "It is the corporation, rather than the state, that is the dominant hegemonic force." He used the term "corpocracy" to refer to the special "marriage" of big business and big government that plagues not only the United States but also global governance bodies such as the World Trade Organization.
Derber said that, because U.S. corpocracy is obscured by a veil of superficial democracy, it is hard to come to terms with the fundamental contradictions that lie beneath its surface.
"The United States government is a formal democracy, accountable to its people, but it is also serving the interests of a very different agenda," Derber said.
Likewise, the newly established, ostensibly democratic Iraqi government is also a corpocracy, Derber added. Although many Iraqi citizens are voting for the first time, Iraq's government is driven by international corporate agendas, which sully the purity of its democracy and decrease the power of its citizens' voices, he said.
"I was happy that (Derber) reiterated the fact that just because the U.S. is implementing procedural elements of democracy abroad, doesn't mean that they're actually spreading true democracy," said audience member Caitie Whelan '07.
Derber ended his lecture on a somewhat optimistic note, saying that inherent weaknesses in the structure of corpocracies could mean their ultimate downfall as a legitimate and accepted mode of governance. "Despite its overwhelming political and ideological seduction, I find this system quite unstable," Derber said, pointing to various "cracks" in the corpocracy paradigm.
Assistant Professor of International Relations (Research) and event coordinator Simone Pulver said she was unsettled by the persistence of the insidious penetration of corporate power into the structure of the U.S. government. "These issues have such a long, deep history, as the U.S. Constitution was written by people suspicious of corporate power. Today, the same constitution no longer protects the average citizen," she said.
At the end of his lecture, Derber opened up the floor to the audience. One audience member noted that even Brown is in part funded by large corporations. Another challenged Derber, asking how he can enjoy the fruits of corporations in his daily life, such as when he flies on major airlines, while simultaneously attacking the corpocracy structure of the modern world.
Derber's lecture was the first in a five-part series entitled, "Corporate Power in Global Governance," sponsored by the Watson Institute for International Studies and the Center for Environmental Studies with funding from the Brown University Faculty Lectures. Derber's lecture was a "kickoff," that opened the series by speaking more generally about corporate power in the world today, according to Pulver. The subsequent four lectures will focus on more specific issues of corporate power and global environmental governance.
