Multinational Corporations Between Depoliticization of the Economy and Economization of Politics

Abstract

Many corporations, like General Motors, are bigger than the entire economies of small and medium-sized nations and wield a strong influence economically, politically, and socially. Neoliberals argue that corporate actions are conditioned by the market mechanism and thus obscure corporate power behind the notion of the perfect market, while (neo)realist scholars in international relations overemphasize the state's power to condition multinational corporations' (MNCs) activities in the global political economy. This chapter examines the emergence of MNCs as quasi-governmental institutions and shows that the classical liberal goal to depoliticize the economy inevitably gave rise to the reverse process of an implicit politicization of powerful corporations in the neoliberal era. This process, dubbed “the neoliberal paradox,” is an indispensable prerequisite for the rise of MNCs to political power. After discussing the depoliticization of the economy based on the program of classical liberalism, the chapter analyzes the economization of politics from the perspective of neoliberalism and the implicit politicization of the private enterprise.