Political Power of Digital Transnational Corporations: To the Problem of Research

Abstract

The spread of digital technologies in the everyday life of citizens (social networks, streaming video, messengers) and in the socio-political sphere («smart city», e-government) has led to an increase in the power of transnational corporations specializing in the development and launch of these products and services on the market - digital TNCs. Thanks to the increase in financial power, such firms became actors that were able to influence the political sphere, for example, by influencing the views and attitudes of voters during electoral campaigns or mass protests, collecting confidential user data and providing it to intelligence agencies, etc. The purpose of the article is to characterize digital TNCs as actors with political power. To analyze the activities of digital TNCs at the present stage, the author applied the approach of Marius Busemeyer and Kathleen Thelen, who proposed to consider business representatives as actors with instrumental, structural and institutional sources of power. It is concluded that at the present stage, digital TNCs implement an instrumental and structural type of power, and also have the potential to implement institutional power, which involves the replacement of a number of government functions.