Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How it Could Save Democracy

The surprising story of how corporate scandals - from Enron to the Facebook privacy scandal - change the way the world works for the better. Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee draw on a decade of research on policymaking and public opinion to show us how scandals can ignite a public with few political outlets for their discontent. Scandals don't simply dominate news cycles: they can provoke us to demand better policy, spurring governments to adopt rules that protect us from massive corporations run amok. Today it is giant companies, not governments, who run the world. They launch rockets into space, control satellite communication and develop era-defining AI technologies. But around the globe, these corporate titans are facing increasing public hostility. Tech giants are seen as promoting misinformation, undermining democracy and violating our privacy. Big banks, reeling since the financial crisis of 2008, continue to be racked with major scandals. Drawing on real-life examples such as the powdered milk scandal that rocked France, the VW scandal in Germany, the Goldman Sachs scandal in the United States, Cambridge Analytica in Britain and Samsung in South Korea - the authors show that these scandals are not just symptoms of a careless corporate elite, they are opportunities for real political change. Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee reveal how the shared anger of citizens can be channelled into a backlash that has the potential to reinvigorate our failing democracies. One corporate scandal at a time.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction Part One Corporate Scandals and Democracy 1 Scandals and Public Opinion 2 From Watergate to Dieselgate Part Two How Scandals Work 3 Goldman Sachs's Shitty Deal 4 Europe v Facebook 5 Cambridge Analytica and the Techlash Part three When Scandals Fail 6 #ExxonKnew 7 FTX – Rashomon for the Crypto Era 8 Sasol and the Death of Mossville Part four The Renovation Project 9 The Fall of a Samsung Prince 10 Good Populism Acknowledgements Notes Picture credits and permissions Index

About the Author :
Pepper Culpepper is Blavatnik Professor of Government and Public Policy at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College. He currently serves as Vice-Dean of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government. He lives in Oxford with his family. Taeku Lee is Bae Family Professor of Government and Dunster House Faculty Dean at Harvard University. Lee is also Past President of the American Political Science Association and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Review :
A smart set of case studies in support of greater corporate responsibility. Well-timed, tightly written… Admirably international in its approach. This book usefully shines a light into a little-studied area at the intersection between business and politics. At a time when democracies are in crisis and oligarchs are swaggering, Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee offer hope-and even better, hope that is backed by serious scholarship. In this captivating and insightful book, packed with rich insights ranging from the United States to the European Union to South Korea, two of our most respected political scientists powerfully show how corporate scandals can unite people to reclaim their democratic politics from the likes of Elon Musk. Few books are fun to read while suggesting credible ways of addressing urgent global problems: Billionaire Backlash does just that. It zeroes in on the Silicon Valley tycoons who have amassed unparallelled power over our lives. Through their opaque private companies, they now control essential public services. Through their newspapers and social media, they promote their interests and way-out opinions. Read it: this matters. In an age of democratic crisis, Billionaire Backlash shows us how corporate scandals offer unexpected opportunities for societal renewal – revealing how we as citizens can still assume the power to make the rules in modern democracies. Just read it – have fun, get wiser and get out there! Why is “good populism”-one that redirects public anger away from vulnerable minorities and toward the excessive greed and influence of big corporations-so difficult to achieve? Billionaire Backlash not only provides an answer but, crucially, explains how the obstacles to such good populism may be overcome. This book left me both better informed and more hopeful. In an age of increasing corruption, Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee provide a valuable explanation of when corporate scandals provoke public fury, and when instead they fade away.