No Logo (Naomi Klein) - 1 - a bunch of impenetrable corporations decide so many issues of the world politics

During the 1970s, the companies fine-tuned their capacity to act as a class, sacrifying their competitive instinct in favor of their unity and in favor of a cooperative action in the legislative arena. (...) a shared interest for undermining laws (such as those devoted to protecting the rights of consumers) and for pushing forward the reform of the labor laws became the dominant topic in the politics strategy of companies.

                                                      The New Politics of Inequality, Thomas Edsall, 1985

What do open and responsible Parliaments and Congresses serve for, if a bunch of impenetrable corporations decide so many issues of the world politics in the back alley? (page 395)

The last decades, many civic movements have tried to invert the conservative economic trends by electing liberal, labourist or social-democrat governments, only to discover that their economic politics is the same, or that it is yet more directly subjected to the wills of the international corporations. Centuries of democratic reforms have allowed creating more transparent governments but have been revealed soon as inefficient in the new climate of multinational power. What do open and responsible Parliaments and Congresses serve for, if a bunch of impenetrable corporations decide so many issues of the world politics in the back alley?

(…) An important defeat occurred in 1986, when the US government managed to eliminate the barely known Commission of the United Nations on Transnational Corporations. Founded in the mid-1970s, this commission was devoted to elaborate a universal code of conduct for those companies. Its goals were to prevent abuses by corporations, like the selling of medicines in developing countries which were illegal in the developed world, examining the labour and environmental effects of the exportation of industries to developing countries, and imposing more transparency and responsibility to the private sector.