Meaning of Corporatocracy
Corporatocracy refers to a political system that is controlled by corporations or corporate interests. In corporatocracy, individuals are appomted to rule the state by another set of individuals that constitutes the shareholder or rather those who top in the hierarchy of stakeholders.
From the foregoing, corporatocracy involves a situation whereby political candidates or those seeking for people‘s mandate must first be anointed or their nomination supported by some ‘money bags‘ before they can be elected.
You may view that politics is capital intensive as someone competing for a political office will need money for public awareness (like the use of media), public acceptance (like branding T-shirts, traditional attires with party name and logo inscriptions), logistics, political recrurtment among others.
Considering the foregoing reason, panics spend huge amount of money on crowd hiring, and the more money a party can spend, the more crowd is likely to get in its rallies and conventions. You should not be surprised that more than half of the people you see chanting their suppon for a particular political party in a rally today can also be seen tomorrow doing sinular thing for another political party.
By and large, the ‘business of politics‘ is very expensive. Thus, there is tendency that the victory of political aspirants or gladiators will be hinged on the amount of support they can receive from wealthy elites.
These elites invest into politics by sponsoring candidates into political positions (government) for self-interest or the interest of their corporattoms). Most times. the so-called ‘money bags‘ would prefer to support sellable candidates who on the assumption of office will also protect their ‘corporate‘ interest.
Therefore, in corporatocratic government, the wealthy of the society have enormous powers; and the main goal of the ruling elites is to satisfy the interest of their (wealthy) benefactors or sponsors.
Features of Corporatocracy System of Government
Characteristics of corporatocratic government are;
- The wealthy determines who should be in political office.
- The interest of the wealthy sponsors is paramount.
- The state is used as instrument of force to protect the interest of private corporations.
- There is tendency for unequal distribution of wealth among the people.
