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

在全球化、金融化和垄断日益削弱民主的同时，大公司对欧洲民主的实施产生了越来越大的影响，导致了“符合市场的资本主义”。公司逃避监管，为自己的利益而不是公民的利益进行游说，滥用人权，迫使被滥用者退出民主进程，助长了民粹主义。一些经济参与者正在尝试其他模式，并对可持续性和通往另一种“符合民主的资本主义”的试探性路线表现出更大的兴趣。在这场辩论中，政治科学视角的应用给大公司带来了黑箱效应，而管理学者的观点通常考虑的是公司的经济收益，而不是对社会和民主的影响。这给我们对大公司和民主国家之间相互影响的理解留下了空白。REBALANCE项目将通过调查大公司如何在过去和现在对民主的威胁中做出贡献来填补这一空白；(2)可以促进未来促进民主的商业模式和替代组织形式。该项目将确定：-对经济行为者的最有效监管控制，避免反民主的扭曲和揭露侵犯人权者，以及大公司接受或抵制这种控制的原因-如何解决与商业有关的侵犯人权行为的受害者和其他边缘化类别的受害者（自我）排斥民主参与的问题，依靠公司和其他实体之间以赋权为中心的伙伴关系（例如……）非政府组织（ngo）——公司是否以及如何应对民粹主义，以及社会企业等其他组织形式如何嵌入和促进民主。预期的项目成果符合以下要求：“在理论上和经验上提出强有力的建议，旨在在经济进程中灌输更大的民主问责制和包容性”。

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'.