REBALANCE Rebalancing disruptivE Business in multinAtional corporations and gLobal value chAins within a democratic and iNClusive citizEnship process

虽然全球化、金融化和垄断日益削弱民主，但大公司对欧洲如何实施民主的影响力越来越大，导致了“符合市场的资本主义”。企业逃避监管，为自身利益而非公民利益游说，滥用人权，迫使受虐待者退出民主进程，助长民粹主义。一些经济参与者正在尝试替代模式，并对可持续性和走向替代性“符合民主的资本主义”的试探性路线表现出更大的兴趣。在这场争论中，政治学的视角使大企业陷入困境，而管理学学者的观点通常只考虑企业的经济利益，而不考虑对社会和民主的影响。这使得我们对大公司和民主国家之间相互影响的理解存在差距。REBALANCE项目将通过调查大公司如何填补这一空白：（1）过去和现在对民主的威胁;（2）可以促进未来加强民主的商业模式和替代组织形式。该项目将确定：- 对经济行为者进行最有效的监管控制，避免反民主的扭曲，揭露侵犯人权者，以及是什么使大公司接受或抵制这种控制-如何解决与企业有关的侵犯人权行为受害者和其他边缘化群体被（自我）排除在民主参与之外的问题，依靠公司和其他实体（例如：非政府组织）-公司是否以及如何回应民粹主义，以及社会企业等替代组织形式如何嵌入和促进民主。预期的项目成果符合以下呼吁：“旨在灌输更大的民主问责制和经济进程中的包容性的理论和经验上的有力建议”。

While globalization, financialization and monopolies increasingly weaken democracies, large companies are having an ever-greater influence on how democracy is enacted in Europe, leading to a ‘market-conforming capitalism’. Firms are eluding regulation, lobbying for their own rather than citizens’ interest, abusing human rights and push the abused to withdraw from democratic processes, fuelling populism. Some economic actors are experimenting with alternative models and demonstrating more interest in sustainability and tentative routes toward an alternative “democracy-conforming capitalism”. In this debate, the application of political-science lenses has black-boxed large companies, while the viewpoint of management scholars has usually considered firms’ economic gains rather than impact on society and democracy. This has left a gap in our understanding of the mutual influence among large companies and democracies. The REBALANCE project will fill this gap by investigating how large companies (1) have contributed to past and present threats to democracy; (2) can promote future democracy-enhancing business models and alternative organizational forms. The project will identify: - the most effective regulatory control of economic actors, which avoids anti-democratic distortions and reveals human rights violators, and what makes large firms accept or resist such control - ways to tackle (self-)exclusion from the democratic participation of victims of business-related human rights infringements and other marginalized categories, relying on empowerment centered partnerships between firms and other entities (e.g.. NGOs) - whether and how companies respond to populisms, and how alternative organizational forms such as social enterprises might embed and foster democracy. The expected project outcomes are in line with the call for: ‘Theoretically and empirically robust recommendations aiming to instill greater democratic accountability and inclusion in economic processes'.