Transition to Corporate Democracy?

Abstract

In the study of the current East European transitions from communist autocracy to liberal democracy, there are two distinct questions we should ask. First, what does it take to make the democratic transition? Second, what will the transition lead these nations into? The answer to the first query seems to be a lot less difficult than what political theorists of many persuasions have supposed. Some of the East Europeans did it or are doing it with remarkable quickness. The answer to the second query is much harder. In part, it is the question of whether these polities will turn out to be like the liberal democracies of the West. This is a more complex question than it might seem for the reason that the democracies of the West, as will be exemplified for present purposes by the United States, are themselves far from any liberal ideal that one might think they represent. They can increasingly be characterized as corporate democracies, in the sense spelled out later.

I wish to thank Bruce Ackerman, Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, April Flakne, János Kornai, Susan Rose-Ackerman, and Alexandra Vacroux for acute written comments on this chapter. I also wish to thank participants in colloquiums and a conference at the Collegium Budapest, and James Fearon and colleagues of the Thursday faculty lunch seminar at Stanford University for discussions of the chapter.