Captive Democracy: Corporatocracy and patrimonial capitalism

Filippa Chatzistavrou
Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Politics, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (UoA)

According to the “Unmute Democracy” research findings, people in Greece perceive corruption in the political system (59.4%) and the lack of justice and accountability (57.6%) as the most significant threats to democracy. Citizens associate economic interests and influential groups with corruption, which is why the most pressing demand according to the survey is to limit the influence of major economic interests (55.7%).

First of all, it is common knowledge that the debate surrounding corruption intensifies during periods of capitalist crisis. Prosperous countries with high incomes have low levels of corruption as perceived by their citizens. However, it would be dangerously hasty to conclude from the above findings that the influence of major economic interests is exclusively linked to the issue of corruption. Economic and corporate influence first grows through entirely legal mechanisms, and the more effectively it penetrates public structures, the easier it becomes to exert influence through illegal means, i.e., corrupt practices.

Therefore, endless analyses of clientelism are not enough to help us understand how the links between politics and economic interests are structured in the historical period we are living in. There are obvious issues with the patriarchal logic of bargaining with voter pools. This type of corruption as an issue of collective action originates from “old” Greece. Nevertheless, several manifestations of systemic corruption are a secondary effect of corporatocracy.

Corporatocracy focuses on public governance that primarily serves corporate interests, over those of the workforce and society in general. For example, let’s take a look at multinational corporations that spend large sums of money to promote pro-business policies that benefit them, or political parties that hire consulting firms (penumbra parties), or large private companies or groups that act as the political arm of ideological and party movements. Or let’s talk about showcase companies that, under the guise of providing “independent” advice, promote political or party agendas and are thus directly or indirectly involved in public governance. Let’s assess the impact of the increase in the practice of “revolving doors,” where politicians and high-ranking officials take on related portfolios in the private sector after the end of their term in public office.

Following the debt crisis, Greece has been transformed into a broker state that manages the distribution of property rights amid intensely polarised intra-capitalist conflicts. Through mechanisms for mobilising public (mainly European) resources, it produces legal frameworks that favour new regimes for the concentration of the means of production in the hands of domestic or foreign actors.

However, in Greece, as in other countries, corporate power, private wealth, and inheritance can intersect. Wealthy families often hold controlling stakes in large companies. Thomas Piketty describes the patrimonial capitalist system that has revived the belief that the primary purpose of the economy is to protect and enhance private property (proprietarism). This is an indisputable victory for capitalism which, although in constant crisis in recent decades, favours the accumulation of wealth through inheritance and family control, further cementing social inequality (inequality is highlighted as the fourth most serious threat to democracy in the survey, at 30.2%).

Whether it is corporate elites merging with hereditary elites to build corporate dominance on an intergenerational basis, or internationalised corporate elites operating on the basis of shareholder dominance, the forms of private-public governance that emerge disproportionately shape, though not always in a striking way, legislative agendas and the public dialogue. Public policies are becoming synonymous with the outsourcing of contracts to private capital, the private procurement of services and the appropriation of goods (land, natural resources, infrastructure, energy, information, digital data, knowledge, etc.), and of course no regulation prevents the offshore transfer of the wealth produced.

The prevalence of such shadowy forms of power, which blur the boundaries between public and private, destabilise weak political regimes and operate in a parallel time frame that does not intersect with electoral cycles and is rarely linked to media-led “everyday politics” snippets (in the survey, the third most significant threat to democracy is the economic and political control of the media, with 32.3%). Therefore, political competition, parliamentarianism, and elections, as they function today, are cogs in another timeline that we are called upon to follow and participate in as citizens. The political system now incorporates authoritarian traits and calls on us to consume politics, while the undermining of the public sector’s position as a provider of public goods is growing and deepening.

For this reason, any institutional interventions concerning transparency, democratic accountability, and the oversight of power must be discussed after establishing grounds for discussion regarding economic influence and its political impact on the way the state functions. The findings of the “Unmute Democracy” research show that citizens clearly prioritise threats. And this is a deeply political call that concerns us all.