For William Domhoff, it has become apparent, as to many other elite theorists, that capitalism is now interlacing with politics, in such a way that corporations are now able to determine and effectively influence the direction that government policies should take. This corporate power uses a certain number of mechanisms, strategies and processes whether legal or illegal, official or unofficial, to reach that end (Domhoff, 1990). In this essay, I aim at establishing and describing these processes as well as evaluating their impact on society. Concurrently, I shall evaluate and analyse this argument.
Before establishing these strategies, I believe it is important that one be aware of what makes the corporate power elite and how it has managed to create a network or upper class and even corporate community network to determine domestic/national policy.
Modern capitalist societies are not simply made of the upper class and corporate communities who as Domhoff argues, include all large income-producing property owners who also happen to control all the source of capital, thus constituting both a social and economic class (Domhoff, 2010: 7) at the top of the social hierarchy. There are also a variety of non-profit associations that are significant because they structure and determine the different discussions over public policy as well as the public opinion which, indeed, matters most to governments (Wetherley, 2008). Although they have been qualified of non-partisan or bipartisan due to the fact that they are neither associated with politics nor political parties and factions, they constitute in fact the real source of political power of the upper class because they ensure that the society is stable and that the effective compliance of the government (Wetherley, 2008).
The upper class and corporations’ power over these major non-profit organizations can be observed