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What Can Post Democracy Tell Us About Mncs And Extraterritorial Violations Of Human Rights?

Decent Essays

What can Post-Democracy tell us about TNCs and Extraterritorial Violations of Human Rights?
In Colin Crouch’s Post-Democracy (2004), we are presented with the prospect of a society in which the global firm is the central institution, government policy is increasingly captured by elite and corporate interests, and the middle class has but a tenuous grasp on its sense of political identity. The trappings of democracy - in the form of free elections - are in place, yet the state is increasingly hollowed out as political power shifts to the corporate sphere. Crouch’s explanatory framework considers a range of political institutions in detail, but this article focuses on just one: the transnational corporation (TNC). I specifically consider the …show more content…

Furthermore, corporations have largely succeeded to date in their lobbying efforts to remain free of any direct obligations under international law.
The term ‘corporation’ encompasses a range of corporate structures including subsidiaries, holding companies, and joint ventures. ‘Transnational corporations’ are those corporations (and their related entities) that have operations in more than one state. Such entities are able to operate across national borders, sell products and source labour in multiple markets, and shift production, resources and expertise as and when required. There is no doubt that global firms are engines of prosperity and growth across many areas of the world. Corporations generate valuable employment and educational opportunities, revive living conditions in flagging communities with much-needed investment and new technologies, and enhance the prosperity of those states able to ride the globalization wave.
Yet this capacity to do great good is matched by an ability to inflict or be complicit in great harm. Merely by operating in certain areas of the world, corporations can give economic support and moral sanction to governments implicated in highly oppressive or corrupt activities. Even in developed countries, the Starbucks and Amazons of the world

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