Corporate Power and the Politics of Change with Matteo Gatti
Episodes: 4
Over the past decade, something fundamental has shifted in the relationship between corporations and political power. Corporations have stepped into contested social and political spaces — taking positions on gun control, climate, voting rights, LGBTQ+ legislation — in ways that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. What does it mean when a corporation becomes a political actor? Not a lobbyist or a donor. A genuine participant in the political fights that used to belong to governments — on climate, on civil rights, on the basic structure of democratic life. And what does it mean when that same corporation steps in where governments have stopped showing up — or will never show up — setting the rules, filling the void, becoming something new altogether?
That's the question this series is built around. And the answer cuts against the comfortable stories we tell about it — whether we think corporations in politics are heroes or a threat.
Corporate Power and the Politics of Change is an eight-episode series produced by ECGI to accompany my book of the same title, published by Cambridge University Press. Each episode is a conversation with a scholar whose work illuminates a different facet of this transformation — from the structural logic of systematic corruption to the political evolution of corporate elites, from shareholder activism to corporate criminal liability, from ESG to the future of stakeholder governance.
My guests include Stephen Bainbridge, Jill Fisch, Swarnodeep Homroy, Elisabeth Kempf, Ann Lipton, Katharina Pistor, Mark Roe, Veronica Root Martinez, Roy Shapira, Tim Smith, and Reilly Steel. Together, they represent some of the most rigorous and original thinking in corporate law, governance, and political economy today. I have learned from all of them, and I hope these conversations are as stimulating for you as they were for me.
- Matteo Gatti, Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School.
Episodes
The Law of Corporate Governing with Stephen Bainbridge and Roy Shapira
The Economics of Corporate Governing with Swarnodeep Homroy and Elisabeth Kempf
Corporate Governing and Shareholder Voice with Jill Fisch and Tim Smith
