How Big Money Changed The Democratic Game, with Daniel Ziblatt

01/02/25 • 49 min

Daniel Ziblatt is an American political scientist, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University, and the co-author (with Steven Levitsky) of several bestselling books, including How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority. Ziblatt writes from the position that what defines strong democracies is free and fair competition for power, inclusive participation, and a package of civil liberties that make those first two conditions possible.

2024 saw voters in more than 60 countries go to the polls—and deliver difficult outcomes for incumbents and traditional political parties. This week, Ziblatt joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss the fate of democracy after 2024. They explore how big money and corporate power have destabilized democracies worldwide by interfering with the conditions for free and fair competition for power. The consequence has been the movement of voters toward political extremes, which in turn can often threaten economic growth, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Nevertheless, should we judge the strength of democracy by process or outcome? Does democracy still thrive when the people vote for undemocratic politicians and parties?

Together, Ziblatt and our co-hosts discuss how to curb global democratic decline by realigning government away from the interests of corporations or big money and back to those of the people.

Episode Notes:

Revisit ProMarket’s series seeking to understand the issues of political economy driving global populist movements during the 2024 “year of elections.”

Together, Ziblatt and our co-hosts discuss how to curb global democratic decline by realigning government away from the interests of corporations or big money and back to those of the people.

Episode Notes:

Revisit ProMarket’s series seeking to understand the issues of political economy driving global populist movements during the 2024 “year of elections.”

Previous Episode

America’s Addiction to Easy Money, with Ruchir Sharma

Are bailouts the new “trickle-down” economics? Have government debt and deficits caused capitalism’s collapse—thus ending the American Dream?

Ruchir Sharma is a well-known columnist for the Financial Times, the author of bestselling books Breakout Nations and The Rise and Fall of Nations, and an investment banker who worked as Morgan Stanley’s head of emerging markets for 25 years. His new book, What Went Wrong With Capitalism, traces the roots of current disaffection with our capitalist economy to unabashed stimulus and too much government intervention. Take an example: Sharma writes that the United States federal government has introduced 3,000 new regulations in the last twenty years, and withdrawn just 20 over the same span. He likens the Federal Reserve’s constant bailouts—under chairs appointed by presidents from both parties—to the opioid crisis, in which the solution created more problems than the pain it was designed to treat.

Sharma joins Bethany and Luigi to explain how constant government intervention leads to inefficient “zombie” firms, higher property prices, housing shortages, massive inequality, and a historic government debt and deficit crisis. Together, they discuss the first step to a cure—a correct diagnosis of the problem—and how to approach the treatment without exacerbating the problems. In the process, they leave us with a renewed understanding of how “pro-business is not the same as pro-capitalism,” a distinction that Sharma says “continues to elude us.”

Episode Notes:

Link to submit papers for the Stigler Center 2025 Antitrust Conference

Revisit “Is the Federal Reserve an Engine of Inequality?”, our previous episode on modern monetary theory or the claim that debt doesn’t matter.

Revisit “Capitalism After the Crisis,” Luigi’s article for Foreign Affairs (2009), where he outlines the tensions between a pro-capitalism and a pro-business agenda.

Also, check out ProMarket.org, our publication at the Stigler Center that he founded in 2016, with the mission of shedding light on this tension and how to ameliorate it.

Next Episode

Should Companies Have A Social Responsibility To Be “Great Businesses”?, with John Kay

The public often imagines corporations as self-contained actors that provide a set of goods and services to consumers. Underpinning this image have been ideas of ownership, rights to capital and intellectual property, and corporate responsibility to stakeholders including consumers, workers, and shareholders. But what if almost everything we are told about the essence of the firm is wrong? So writes Sir John Kay, a British economist, corporate director, and longstanding fellow of St John’s College (Oxford) in his new book, The Corporation in the 21st Century.

The book revolves around contrasts between historical conceptions of corporations, capitalism, and contemporary practices. Kay writes, “A central thesis of [this] book is that business has evolved, but the language that is widely used to describe business has not.” In the 19th and 20th centuries, firms could be defined in terms of their control over material forms of productive capital (factories, steel foundries, railways, etc.) Socioeconomic critiques of capitalism, most prominently from Karl Marx, often centered on firms’ control of the means of production. Kay contends that firms today access productive capital as a service. For example, Amazon does not own its warehouses but rents them from another firm. Kay writes that today’s corporations and capitalism “[have] very little to do with ‘capital’ and nothing whatsoever to do with any struggle between capitalists and workers to control the means of production.”

Kay joins Luigi and Bethany to discuss the implications of this evolution in firms’ relation to capital: Why is it important to capitalism that its biggest firms no longer own their means of production? Why does the language used to describe this matter? What do Apple's manufacturing facilities, Amazon's warehouses, and TikTok's algorithms tell us about our notions of business ownership? How have these changes to capitalism redefined the struggle between the owners of capital, managers, workers, and consumers? In the process, Kay, Luigi, and Bethany explore the failures of capitalism and imagine what could and should be the purpose of the 21st-century corporation.

Show Notes:
Read an excerpt from the book (published by Yale University Press) on ProMarket
In Bethany and Luigi’s closing discussion of Kay’s book, Luigi cites several articles he has published on the topic, which we have linked below for the listener’s reference. In this past scholarship, Luigi studies how a firm and its operations often intertwine with other firms to form an ecosystem, and it is only through this ecosystem that value is created. Apple and Foxconn provide one example. Legally, they are distinct firms, yet Luigi contends they can be understood as elements of an ecosystem that creates value. Hence, it is sometimes productive to think beyond legal boundaries to consider how multiple firms may compose such a value-creating ecosystem in practice. Within the Apple/Foxconn ecosystem, Apple has a significant influence in dictating terms for Foxconn. Further, if Apple has such dominating power over its suppliers, then Apple could be said to have market power that raises antitrust concerns, which are less obvious if we take the legal boundaries of firms as the correct method of conceptualizing them.

Zingales, L., 2000. In search of new foundations. The Journal of Finance, 55(4), pp.1623-1653.

Rajan, R.G. and Zingales, L., 1998. Power in a Theory of the Firm. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 113(2), pp.387-432.

Rajan, R.G. and Zingales, L., 2001. The firm as a dedicated hierarchy: A theory of the origins and growth of firms. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(3), pp.805-851.

Zingales, L. (1998) Corporate Governance. In: Newman, P., Ed., The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Lancieri, F., Posner, E.A. and Zingales, L., 2023. The Political Economy of the Decline of Antitrust Enforcement in the United States. Antitrust Law Journal, 85(2), pp.441-519.