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DTSTART:20260514T120000
LOCATION: Postgraduate Research Hub, 2nd Floor Solomon Mahlangu House
DESCRIPTION:When Companies Rule: Corporate Power from the East India Company to Silicon Valley (book talk – book forthcoming, Columbia University Press, 2026).When Companies Rule: Corporate Power from the East India Company to Silicon Valley (book talk – book forthcoming, Columbia University Press, 2026) Dr Maha Rafi Atal, University of Glasgow The political power of corporations today is often theorized as a product of state weakness. Neoliberalism has rolled back regulatory capacity, while globalization has unleashed corporations into a transnational realm where no one state has jurisdiction. Corporations govern, so the story runs, in the gaps these changes create, shaping society to serve profit-seeking interests. This story, however, is a flawed one in two respects. First, corporate political power today is as much an ideological as a functional project, shaped by the moral vision that corporate actors have of an ideal society, a vision that is both richer and more idiosyncratic than mere neoliberalism would suggest. Moreover, people subject to corporate political control—whether in industrial enclaves or on the futuristic campuses of digital platforms—respond to it in ideological as well as material terms. Second, the “governance gap” account of corporate power overstates the novelty of contemporary private governance, and underplays the historical continuity of corporations’ status as public and political actors who long predate the modern state. As a result, efforts to curtail corporate power focus on reasserting the public regulatory authority of individual nation-states and restoring corporations to a private, economic realm. In fact, this lecture will argue, a more normative and historicized account of corporate power points to prospects for holding it accountable as a public authority at a transnational level.
X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:<strong>When Companies Rule: Corporate Power from the East India Company to Silicon Valley (book talk – book forthcoming, Columbia University Press, 2026).</strong><p>When Companies Rule: Corporate Power from the East India Company to Silicon Valley (book talk &ndash; book forthcoming, Columbia University Press, 2026) Dr Maha Rafi Atal, University of Glasgow The political power of corporations today is often theorized as a product of state weakness. Neoliberalism has rolled back regulatory capacity, while globalization has unleashed corporations into a transnational realm where no one state has jurisdiction. Corporations govern, so the story runs, in the gaps these changes create, shaping society to serve profit-seeking interests. This story, however, is a flawed one in two respects. First, corporate political power today is as much an ideological as a functional project, shaped by the moral vision that corporate actors have of an ideal society, a vision that is both richer and more idiosyncratic than mere neoliberalism would suggest. Moreover, people subject to corporate political control&mdash;whether in industrial enclaves or on the futuristic campuses of digital platforms&mdash;respond to it in ideological as well as material terms. Second, the &ldquo;governance gap&rdquo; account of corporate power overstates the novelty of contemporary private governance, and underplays the historical continuity of corporations&rsquo; status as public and political actors who long predate the modern state. As a result, efforts to curtail corporate power focus on reasserting the public regulatory authority of individual nation-states and restoring corporations to a private, economic realm. In fact, this lecture will argue, a more normative and historicized account of corporate power points to prospects for holding it accountable as a public authority at a transnational level.</p>
SUMMARY:Book talk: When Companies Rule: Corporate Power from the East India Company to Silicon Valley 
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