What is "corporatocracy"

n. rule by corporations.

Corporatocracy , is a term used to refer to an economic and political system controlled by corporations and/or corporate interests. It is a generally pejorative term often used by critics of the current economic situation in a particular country, especially the United States. This is different from corporatism, which is the organisation of society into groups with common interests. Corporatocracy as a term is often used by social liberals and left-leaning critics, but also some economic libertarian critics and other political observers across the political spectrum.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs described the United States as a corporatocracy in his book The Price of Civilization. He suggested that it arose from four trends: weak national parties and strong political representation of individual districts, the large U.S. military establishment after World War II, big corporate money financing election campaigns, and globalization tilting the balance away from workers.

This collective is what author C Wright Mills called the Power Elite, wealthy individuals who hold prominent positions in corporatocracies. They control the process of determining a society's economic and political policies.

The concept has been used in explanations of bank bailouts, excessive pay for CEOs, as well as complaints such as the exploitation of national treasuries, people, and natural resources. It has been used by critics of globalization, sometimes in conjunction with criticism of the World Bank or unfair lending practices, as well as criticism of " free trade agreements".