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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2015
The topic of Manuel Velasquez's clear and persuasive paper is of great significance today—far greater than is commonly realized. For multinational corporations have come to play an extraordinary—and largely unchecked—role in shaping the conditions of life today around the world. It is not so much that they have begun to control legislative processes—although there is some of this—as that they have increasingly escaped governmental control by playing governments off one another. Accordingly, the board rooms in New York, Toronto, and Amsterdam have more and more replaced the legislative chambers in Washington, Ottawa, and the Hague as internationally significant centers of power. And where the interests of business and government have tended to merge, there one finds the most powerful international forces in the world today—witness Japan, Inc.
1 In his Power and the Structure of Society (new ed. [New York: W. W. Norton and Co. 1974]),Google Scholar Coleman not only provides an historical perspective on the emergence of interactive structures of business and government, he also provides helpful bibliographic informatioi on associated issues.
2 Clark and Sohn set forth what they take to be the minimum conditions for world peace rather than attempt to construct a comprehensive scheme for perfect world order. Thei commitment to eschew utopianism surely should be followed with respect to any plan to regulate international business. See Clark and Sohn, World Peace Through World Law: Two Alternative Plans, Third Edition Enlarged (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1966).Google Scholar
