Dr. David Ciepley 

There is an unexamined paradox in the history of Western government. While the absolutist monarchs of Europe overwhelmingly chartered (licensed) republican corporations (i.e., “juridical persons” such as towns, universities, and guilds, whose members elected their leaders), modern constitutional republics have overwhelmingly chartered authoritarian corporations (e.g., universities and business corporations whose subjects, in most countries, have no vote). As the absolutist state became republican, republican corporations became absolutist. In consequence, corporations, which once distributed power and wealth, now concentrate them, straining constitutional democracy. I will complete a manuscript for a book on this great inversion, in which I also assess reforms to better align corporations and constitutional democracy while improving the investments and innovation needed to compete with emerging authoritarian systems of state-corporate relations. To this end, I draw on deep corporate history and present-day practices to map out a politically realizable path to a "stewardship economy" characterized by what I call purpose governance,, as an alternative to the principal-agent governance that currently dominates thinking about the business corporation.