Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

242 What To Make of Itinto consumer products or by using them as fertilizers, itwill have heard from interested corporations, whether ornot ordinary citizens mobilize to be heard.In large nations, democracy at the national level is difficultenough and only partially achieved. Whether and howdemocratic control over international institutions can beachieved for an “electorate” of several billion people of diverseaspirations and understandings is an almost frighteningquestion. Perhaps it cannot be established. How thesemarket-regulating institutions will shape international tradeand finance in the twenty-first century remains to be seen.In the meantime, corporations, banks, and international politicalelites make momentous decisions under little democraticcontrol.Authority Within the EnterpriseCorporations, we know, operate through an autocraticrather than democratic internal structure. The structurehas been sustained by corporate rights to private property inproductive assets. At the edges, the law has whittled awayat those rights. It has permitted unions to bring some smallmeasure of democracy into industrial relations, and somenations have established employee councils, though ofhighly limited authority.The idea that in a democratic society every large corporationshould internally be organized as a democracy, itsemployees playing the role of citizens, thus choosing, removingand in other ways controlling the active managers,continues to attract a steady following. An appeal to consistencyis a formidable argument for it: if democracy is a goodidea for the state, it is also a good idea for corporations thatare in many respects like states. But only a few nations have