Democratic Legitimacy of Transnational Corporations in Global Governance

The objective of this chapter is to explore the democratic legitimacy of transnational corporations (TNCs) in global governance. In pursuit of this objective, the chapter investigates political activities of TNCs within transnational processes of private and public governance. It starts from the recognition that, global governance is increasingly being created not only by (inter)governmental actors but also by private actors. Corporations, in particular, have become key players in the global governance system. On the one hand, they have acquired and expanded a ‘new’ role as a political actor through the creation of private governance institutions, such as private standards, or public-private or private-private partnerships (PPPs). On the other hand, they have expanded their ‘traditional’ political power in terms of influence exercised on public governance output, due to their advantage over other actors in terms of resources, such as exclusive information and financial and human resources. As a result of the central role that TNCs play as political actors in global governance structures and processes today, the question of the democratic legitimacy of their political activities moves into the spotlight. Democracy, after all, is one of the major political achievements of mankind. With the shift of political decision-making to the global level and to non-state actors, as captured in the global governance literature, there is an urgent need to address the question of how to maintain basic requirements of participation, transparency, and accountability. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.