Andrew Fraser’s socio-legal study resurrects the original conception of the modern American business corporation as a little republic. Well into the nineteenth century, the idea of the corporation as a civil body politic played a significant role in the constitutional genesis of civic authority. In our time too, republican ideas can challenge the dictatorship of the economic in corporate governance.
The author’s republican model of corporate governance looks beyond managerial accountability to shareholders. He highlights the responsibility of shareholders for risks imposed upon society at large by the corporations they own. Political responsibility for the adverse consequences of corporate activity must be vested in a new political class of shareholders. A self-selecting aristocracy of substantial shareholders can constitute senatorial elites with the authority to balance the otherwise irresponsible power of corporate managers.
In exploring the contemporary relevance of republicanism to corporate governance, the author discusses the nature of aristocracy and democracy in the era of reflexive modernization; corporations and the economic logic of efficiency; as well as the relationship between risk, responsibility, and the political realities of corporate power.
