The Political Foundations of British Social Enterprise Law

Abstract

The community interest company (CIC) is a corporate organisational unit designed for use by private actors seeking to engage in pro-social entrepreneurship and investment for public benefit. Although the UK introduced the CIC in 2005, it has not received any serious academic treatment to date. In this article, I argue that this is a mistake for three reasons. First, an analysis of the CIC gives us a deeper understanding of how politics, specifically welfare state politics, can catalyse the production of corporate rules. Second, the CIC is an example of how corporate law can be used to promote objectives other than shareholder wealth maximisation. Third, because the CIC’s political economy manufactured a new and unfamiliar type of corporation with its own unique regulatory infrastructure, it opens another avenue of inquiry into the wider literature on corporate theory. These insights have some implications for the future trajectory of UK corporate law.