Search results

The aim of this paper is to test and explore the hypothesis global ruling power, as well as review the six approaches featured in the special edition on global governance/ruling power.

Anthropological and historical records are presented as support for the emergence of ruling power in society; moreover, evidence of global ruling governance/power is reviewed in the six papers featured in the special edition.

Alternatives for global governance are reviewed in two papers, while four papers present evidence in support of the thesis of the emergence of a transnational ruling power/class.

Because global ruling power exists informally and surreptitiously, the exact mechanisms of control are difficult to delineate, especially due to the fact that the Powers that Be spend much effort to block research into this area; however, this special edition opens up a promising area for new research efforts into global ruling power and the potential for global democracy.

Practical implications, although minimal in the short-term, increase as awareness grows, and policy alternatives are considered for the transition to a long-term, democratic global future.

Once social consciousness grows about the non-democratic, authoritarian nature of global ruling power/elite, the more the momentum will grow for reforms in the direction of global democracy – towards a more sustainable and equitable global system, politically, economically and ecologically.

This paper represents a relatively new area for interdisciplinary research into global futures. Futurists, political scientists and sociologists should find it valuable.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how capitalism has developed into a deeply integrative economic system of financial investments and manufacturing. This process of globalization has brought about the emergence of a transnational capitalist class that rules the world’s economy. Financialization, created by the speed and interconnectivity of information technologies, is a key element that has produced immense wealth for a few while reducing their dependence on the labor of workers. This system of global accumulation has lead to a crisis of democracy with several different possible outcomes.

This paper begins with an historical examination of capitalism and capitalist class formation by tracing developments from nation-centric capitalism to globalization. A conceptual explanation of the development of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) is offered. Research on current economic data to support the thesis on the emergence of the TCC in both its private and statist forms is included, as well as an examination of the latest technology developments that affect financialization and how this impacts class relations. The conclusion analyzes the development of democracy as a class dialectic, and the impact of globalization that is altering the historic relationships between capital and labor. The paper ends with a discussion of possible political/economic futures.

Globalization is a new era in which capitalism has deepened its inherent tendency toward creating world markets and production. This process has been greatly enhanced by the new technological tools of financial production. Organizing and overseeing this system of global accumulation is the transnational capitalist class. The emergence of this class has transformed class relations based within the historic perimeters of nation-states, and it threatens the content and character of democracy that arose out of the bourgeois democratic revolutions in America and France.

Transnational Capitalist Class Theory is a recently developed field of research. It is a new critic of mainstream international relations analysis which centers on nation to nation relationships. It also differs with world system theory which divides countries into a center/peripheral analysis. Within the field of TCC research, this paper offers an original historic perspective between global economics and the development of democracy. It also makes new theoretical connections between information technology, financialization and the destruction of the social contract.

This paper aims to summarize the major theoretical elements in the definition of a global ruling class. It then examines how neoconservatives in the USA took power and used regime change to install US-friendly governments in other regions. A strategy of tension is used to press the American population into conformity. But the real revolution is to what extent factual politics escape any attempt to democratic control.

The research relies on case studies of material already published and provides a synthesis.

Three case studies show how far the Deep State already goes. Democracy is on the brink of survival.

This paper is an original hypothesis of the potential end of democracy as we know it, supported by empirical data.

The purpose of this paper is to expand upon one theme in Richard Slaughter's The Biggest Wake Up Call in History (BWCH) – that of the “collective shadow.”

Along with Slaughter, the author contends that the denialism indicative of strong negative reactions to the publication of Limits to Growth since 1972 is part of a larger problem within the collective psyche that must be understood and confronted.

For the first time in history, largely due to the emergence of global consciousness and, more recently, the advent of the internet, it is conceivable that authentic global democracy could emerge as an alternate network power, which challenges the structural criminality within the collective shadow, as well as the secret rule of the Empire Power Elite.

This paper exposes structural criminality within the collective shadow, its relationship to the advent of disaster capitalism, and its role in the emergence of a global ruling class.

This paper aims to answer two questions: How do technologies of governance explain how global governance is enacted? and What alternatives can be proposed for a sustainable future for the governed 7 billion?

Using institutional theory and Galtung’s (1971) structural theory of imperialism as critical theoretical frameworks, this paper confronts orthodox conception of global governance by offering transformative alternatives to inequality, a “historically situated urgency”, which is the product of a faulty global governance system.

Concrete, purposively sampled empirical illustrations on transnational corporations’ resource control and how “flight capital” fleeces the poor to enrich the affluent are provided to aid understanding. This helps to explain how such secretive financial mechanisms perpetuate global inequality in health, education and general well-being.

The study introduces the concept of compressed spheres of global governance. It is theorized that diverse institutional logics provide clusters of governors in coopetition that affect individuals and communities of places and communities of interests differently.

The novelty in this study is the concept of compressed spheres of global governance which explain how both visible and invisible systems shape all the worlds of the governors and the governed, as well as how they both interpret their lived experiences.

In recent decades, it has become clear that the major economic, political, and social problems in the world require contemporary development research to examine intersections of race and class in the global economy. Theorists in the Black Radical Tradition (BRT) were the first to develop and advance a powerful research agenda that integrated race–class analyses of capitalist development. However, over time, progressive waves of research streams in development studies have successively stripped these concepts from their analyses. Post-1950s, class analyses of development overlapped with some important features of the BRT, but removed race. Post-1990s, ethnicity-based analyses of development excised both race and class. In this chapter, I discuss what we learn about capitalist development using the integrated race–class analyses of the BRT, and how jettisoning these concepts weakens our understanding of the political economy of development. To remedy our current knowledge gaps, I call for applying insights of the BRT to our analyses of the development trajectories of nations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate who rules the world. The hypothesis is that it is the 0.1 per cent of owners and controllers of capital.

This study used secondary sources including the Bureau Van Dyk and The World Top Incomes database to look at distributions of income and wealth (stock ownership). This is supplemented with a secondary source analysis and with some interviews.

The top point one per centers, the wealthy, those on the top incomes and transnational capitalist class are all distinct but overlapping categories that describe the (white) men and (few) women who hold power through their ownership and/or control of capital and who are thereby directly or indirectly able to act hegemonically on an emerging global basis.

Theorists of the global school of capitalism Alveredo et al., 2013 argue that there has been a qualitatively new twenty-first century transnational capitalism in the process of emerging (see Robinson, 2012a). This paper tests this assumption and relates it to the work by Hamm 2010.

The flip side of this progressively widening concentration of income and wealth into fewer (0.1 per cent) hands brings new lows to the polarisation of class, exploitation and domination. All of these have intensified since the 1980s with the end of the Keynesian Compromise. This north/south accentuated division has implications for social justice.

This seeks to identify empirical evidence to support the theory of an emerging transnational capitalist class.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a critical approach of the identification and rejection strategies in discourses and practices of a “global elite” of business leaders and managers.

A literature review of mainstream and more critical management and sociology literature on global or transnational elites and classes is presented. The identification and rejection discursive strategies of some (French) multinational corporations’ managers and internationalization agents are then empirically and qualitatively observed and analyzed.

The findings are interpreted under the following strategies: constructive strategies, reproductive and legitimizing strategies and exclusion strategies. Some members of the global elite deploy a cosmopolitan and welcoming discourse to not only identify legitimate members of that class but also turn this discourse into one of exclusion, that is, find ways through language, and practice, to exclude those they perceive as illegitimate.

Management research on global elites needs more critical thinking and reflexivity to avoid acting as a mere vector of global managerial doxa. Studying values, practices and reactions of other less “prestigious” classes confronted with those elites (small- and medium-sized enterprises’ entrepreneurs, individuals from emerging countries, etc.) may contribute to such perspective.

The paper shows that the literature (in management) often speaks very highly of global elites. It identifies some dynamics of power between members of that/those classes and individuals who intend to join them and thus provides explanations about the elite’s unwritten codes of conduct, pre-requisites for consideration and inclusion and shows how global classes/elites discursively legitimize and exclude others.