In the US, as the midterm elections approach, the tech companies are spending billions of dollars to protect their interests, exercising undue influence on legislators.
Furthermore, as a practical matter it is at the local level where commercial interests exercise maximum leverage, often to the detriment of the public lands.
These issues will mostly be decided at the national level in political battles – just as they always have – with economic interests exercising a far more important impact than evidence in decision making – again, just as they always have.
Instead of focusing on campaign contributions and elections, Chopra takes a look at the way special interests exercise undue influence over the federal bureaucracy and the broader policy debate in Washington.
Congress responded by passing the 1988 Exon-Florio Amendment, which grants the president the ability to block or unwind a foreign acquisition if there is "credible evidence" that a "foreign interest exercising control might take action that threatens to impair the national security".
This article responds to this normative concern by examining the implications for the democratic legitimacy of multi-stakeholder governance arrangements in cases where private resource extraction companies, who do not necessarily act in the public interest, exercise a 'metagovernance' role.
One issue that has these interests particularly exercised is the possible expansion of foreign-owned big-box stores, such as Walmart and Carrefour, of France.
In whose interests do you exercise it?
Golden parachutes are offered as a remedy to the concern that executives will deviate from shareholder interests in exercising this power.
But in his written statement on Monday, Mr. Bloomberg said he would be able to save the two firehouses "because of the assistance we have gotten today from Albany, and in the interests of exercising the maximum caution allowable".
