{"id":7137,"date":"2011-10-23T10:28:44","date_gmt":"2011-10-23T14:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=7137"},"modified":"2011-10-23T10:28:44","modified_gmt":"2011-10-23T14:28:44","slug":"who-runs-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/who-runs-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Runs the World ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here the opening paragraphs of an article from Planetsave<\/a><\/strong><\/em> . You can read the whole thing here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Who Runs the World ? \u2013 Network Analysis Reveals \u2018Super Entity\u2019 of Global Corporate Control<\/h3>\n

AUGUST 28, 2011\u00a0BY\u00a0MICHAEL RICCIARDI<\/a><\/h4>\n
\n
\n

In the first such analysis ever conducted, Swiss economic researchers have conducted a global network analysis of the most powerful transnational corporations (TNCs). Their results have revealed a core of 787 firms with control of 80% of this network, and a \u201csuper entity\u201d comprised of 147 corporations that have a controlling interest in 40% of the network\u2019s TNCs.<\/p>\n

\"global<\/a>Strongly Connected Component (SCC); layout of the SCC (1318 nodes and 12,191 links). Node size scales logarithmically with operation revenue, node color with network control (from yellow to red). Link color scales with weight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

[Note to the reader: see the very end of this article for a ranking of the top 50 \u2018control holders\u2019]<\/p>\n

When we hear conspiracy theorist talk about this or that powerful group (or alliance of said groups) \u201cpulling strings\u201d behind the scenes, we tend to dismiss or minimize such claims, even though, deep down, we may suspect that there\u2019s some degree of truth to it, however distorted by the theorists\u2019 slightly paranoid perception of the world. But perhaps our tendency to dismiss such claims as exaggerations (at best) comes from our inability to get even a slight grip on the complexity of global corporate ownership; it\u2019s all too vast and complicated to get any clear sense of the reality.<\/p>\n

But now we have the results of a global network analysis (Vitali, Glattfelder, Battiston) that, for the first time, lays bare the \u201carchitecture\u201d of the global ownership network. In the paper abstract, the authors state:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe present the \ufb01rst investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We \ufb01nd that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure* and that\u00a0a large portion of control \ufb02ows to a small tightly-knit core of \ufb01nancial institutions<\/em>. This core can be seen as an economic \u201csuper-entity\u201d that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.\u201d [emphasis added]<\/p>\n

* This \u201cbow tie\u201d structure is similar to the structure of the WWW (analyzing for most influential\/most trafficked websites); see diagram below.<\/p>\n

\n
\"bow<\/a>A bow-tie consists of in-section (IN), out-section (OUT), strongly connected component or core (SCC), and tubes and tendrils (T&T).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Data from previous studies neither fully supported nor completely disproved the idea that a small handful of powerful corporations dominate much or most of the world\u2019s commerce. The researchers acknowledge previous attempts to analyze such networks, but note that these were limited in scope to national networks which \u201cneglected the structure of control at a global level.\u201d<\/p>\n

What was needed, assert the researchers, was a complex network analysis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cA quantitative investigation is not a trivial task because \ufb01rms may exert control over other \ufb01rms via a web of direct and indirect ownership relations which extends over many countries. Therefore, a complex network analysis is needed in order to uncover the structure of control and its implications. \u201c<\/p>\n

To start their analysis, the researchers began with a list of 43,060 TNCs which were taken from a sample of 30 million \u201ceconomic actors\u201d contained in the Orbis 2007 database [see end note]. TNCs were identified according to the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) definition of a transnational corporation [see end note]. They next applied a recursive search algorithm which singled out the \u201cnetwork of all the ownership pathways originating from and pointing to these TNCs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The resulting TNC network includes 600,508 nodes and 1,006,987 ownership ties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Source:\u00a0Planetsave<\/a>\u00a0(http:\/\/s.tt\/138oe<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here the opening paragraphs of an article from Planetsave . You can read the whole thing here. Who Runs the World ? \u2013 Network Analysis Reveals \u2018Super Entity\u2019 of Global Corporate Control AUGUST 28,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,41,67],"tags":[1080,1081,1079,1082],"class_list":["post-7137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism","category-environment","category-man-made-disaster","tag-corporations","tag-economy","tag-planetsave","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7137"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7140,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7137\/revisions\/7140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}