Power Without Representation: The Coherence and Closeness of the Trilateral Commission

Abstract

This chapter argues that governance networks claiming to represent the global public opinion need to follow two opposing principles: coherence and openness. To probe this argument and observe its practical implications, the authors focus on the Trilateral Commission (TC), which brings together leaders of several influential think tanks and outstanding personalities from business corporations, political organizations, academic institutions, and media firms. They find that the TC is highly coherent but excessively endogamous, centering on an exclusive group of pro-US leaders, members of transnational corporations, and partisans of free trade. Thus, the TC is a coherent but closed network, very powerful but scarcely representative, which is ironic for a network that claims to promote the use of “soft power” in the international sphere.