POLITICAL POWER
Whohas the most political power in the United States?
Unit
In the US and many other countries around the world, big corporationscontrol governments behind the scenes. While democratic governmentsare supposed to be run by the people for the people through politicalrepresentatives, it has emerged that politicians and governments aremere puppets controlled by big corporations commanding billions ofdollars in revenue and profits. Sociologists and liberal economistshave coined the term corporatocracy to refer to government systemscharacterized by corporation control (Levin2011). As such, the US canbe defined as a corporatocracy because big corporations have foundways to control government policies through political representativesat various levels. In most cases, these political representatives arelured with deals and benefits in order to make policies that servethe interests of these businesses as opposed to the common man(Perkins 2004). In the long run, the citizens lose and the businessesgain.
These corporations have different ways of exerting their control ofgovernments. In most cases, they lobby for policies that favor themor even sponsoring or endorsing politicians to create or removecertain policies. However, creation of favorable policies andlobbying are the most common. For instance, Monsanto, a global leaderin agrichemicals and agricultural biotechnology has been accused ofusing chemicals and genetically modified crops with harmful effectson the environment and human life. Several countries especially inEurope have thus banned some of the offending products but the US isyet to do so because the firm has lobbied politicians against makingsuch prohibitions (Chow 2015). Again, private security firmscontracted by the government have been accused of fuelling war aroundthe world in order to create business. The same happens for privateprisons which lobby politicians to enact policies that increaseincarceration rates to create more business opportunities. Wherepoliticians are controlled by corporations, the citizenry is at aloss because public interests are ignored. In an ideal situation, thegovernment should be controlled by the people through their variousrepresentatives including the president but in the current case inAmerica, large corporations control government.
References
Chow, L. (2015).It’s Official: 19 European Countries Say ‘No’ to GMOs.Retrieved from
http://ecowatch.com/2015/10/05/european-union-ban-gmos/
Levin, B. (2011).The myth of U.S. democracy and the reality of U.S. corporatocracy.
Retrieved fromhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-e-levine/the-myth-of-us-democracy-corporatocracy_b_836573.html
Perkins, (2004).Confessions of an economic hit man. New York: Berrett-KoehlerPublishers
.