Corporate Power and Globalization in US Foreign Policy

This book examines the manifestations of corporate power in US foreign policy and the global economy over the past thirty years, culminating in an assessment of the implications of greater concentrations of wealth and power for democracy, both in the US and abroad. This book includes contributions from critical theorists in political science and international relations whose work is associated with an examination of the relationship between business interests, the US state, and US foreign policy within the current global political economy. The chapters provide an historical and contemporary examination of the expansion of business power and the "right turn" in public policy in the US and abroad. The contributors focus their attention on the growth of an increasingly global or transnational capitalist class, the ascendancy of global financial capital from the collapse of the Bretton Woods system to the present, and the increasing structural and institutional power of the military-industrial complex within the US state. This work addresses the lack of sustained focus on business-state relations in the current literature, highlighting that these relations constitute the most important power dynamic of contemporary global capitalism.