The reputations of major Taiwanese corporations and financial groups have been in free fall over the past two or three years, and are now trailing at levels as low as President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) popularity ratings. Putting aside for the time being questions of personal conduct, there is much to say about sacrificing the public good in the search for profits, self-interest and greed, and thinking little of damaging the democratic rule of law.
There has been no shortage of businesspeople attempting to use their influence on politics to further their own ends, and many have become the brunt of public ridicule and anger. With some, their names have become toxic. However, what has not changed is their pervasive political influence in the country.
In their 2008 book Corporations and Citizenship, Andrew Crane, Dirk Matten and Jeremy Moon contend that the idea that corporations cannot act as citizens within a democratic system is outdated. On the contrarary, they say that corporations can exercise their citizenship rights, and no longer need to confine themselves to the field of the market economy. All that is required is for these corporations to put out their feelers and be active within the political arena, in much the same way as ordinary citizens participate in political life, and this would lead to the emergence of corporate social responsibility.
According to the Chicago School of Economics, a neoliberal stronghold, it stands to reason that the greater a state’s intervention, the more reasonable and legitimate it is for corporations to flex their economic muscles to influence politics.
US economist Robert Reich, who served as former US president Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor, published a book in 2008, entitled Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life. In it, Reich explored how the burgeoning wealth disparity in the US, the increasing numbers of people being fired or laid off, and the greed and corruption that have seemingly become endemic in the country, are all inextricably intertwined with corporate political lobbying and the closer ties between politicians and big business.
In political-economic theory, major corporations in the era of globalization have obtained a degree of “power of definition” that would have been unimaginable in the past. What does this power allow them to define, exactly? The power to define the concept of polis, which in different languages and contexts can variously be used to incorporate the meaning of the market, the public sphere, advocacy, the collective and even the police.
One could even say that, in Taiwan, major corporations have their finger in almost every pie, and that there is little out there that does not come under the definition of polis.
However, we should be careful. History tells us that corporations and financial groups are rarely on the side of democracy, freedom and human rights.
Lin Chia-ho is an assistant professor at National Chengchi University’s College of Law.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs