The Constitutionalization of the Global Corporate Sphere? - Tapa dura

... this book is to be recommended. Anyone with an interest in the current global economic and political establishment would f ind much to admire in this text, with the caveat that readers with an optimistic view of globalisation may well be disappointed by the pessimistic account put forward by Thompson. (Luke McDonagh, London School of Economics)

Grahame Thompsons book is a challenge to all those concerned with the role of global corporations in the current era. He asks fundamental questions about the nature and status of corporations and how they can be subjected to an international regime of accountability and transparency ... The result is a book brimming with stimulating ideas, concepts, and theories, together with radical, yet practical, policy suggestions built on a deep understanding of the global context, the role of law, and the nature of corporations. At a time when concern about the role of corporations, their leaderships, and their impact on inequality and the environment is so current and relevant, this book should be required reading for researchers in business and management and the social sciences more generally, as well as those claiming to be informed policy makers. (Glenn Morgan, Professor of International Management, Cardiff Business School)

A work of great importance. As we might expect from one of our leading experts on globalization the book throws an invaluable light on the corporation as a global political and legal entity. Technically it is an extraordinary accomplishment: a crystal clear mobilization of material from many disciplines, notably law, political science, and applied economics. The argument is of great subtlety, summed up in Thompsons remark that not all companies are alike. The book is a must read for scholars and for policy makers. (Michael Moran, Professor of Government, University of Manchester Business School)

Thompson deftly examines the development of an increasingly effective functional structure of constitutional law that persists in the face of a stubborn resistance to develop equally compelling coherent formal systems. In crafting this constituting universe of form and function, Thompson skilfully weaves a complex set of law and governance rules to produce a compelling picture of a fluid and fractured system that begins to outline the constitution of a system in which the key elements of public law constitutionalism, and principally rule of law principles, can be imported. Thompson's work should be required reading for anyone interested in the development of constitutional structures for corporate actors in the transnational sphere. (Larry Catá Backer, W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar and Professor of Law, and Professor of International Affairs, Pennsylvania State University)

With the advent of globalization - where corporate organizations and the commercial relations that accompany them are argued to be becoming increasingly transnational - the locus of powers, authorities, and responsibilities has shifted to the global level. The nation-state arena is losing its capacity to regulate and control commercial processes and practices as a transformational logic kicks-in, associated with new forms of global rule-making and governance. It is this new arena of global rule-making that can be considered as a surrogate form of global constitutionalization, or 'quasi-constitutionalization'. But as might be expected, this surrogate process of constitutionalization is not a coherent system or set of rounded outcomes but full of contradictory half-finished currents and projects: an 'assemblage' of many disparate advances and often directionless moves - almost an accidental coming together of elements. It is this assemblage that is to be investigated and unbundled by the analysis of the book.

The book discusses governance, law, and constitutional matters in the context of international corporate constitutional governance. It examines how and why the business world, commercial relations, and company activities have increasingly become subject to legal and constitutional forms of regulation and governance at the international level. It analyses how we should characterize the process that has seen the international corporate arena increasingly subject to juridical and constitutional-like regulatory initiatives and interventions and whether this amounts to a new attempt to subject international commercial relations to the 'rule of law' and, indeed, to rule the world through these very means.