The Billionaire Backlash - by Pepper Culpepper & Taeku Lee (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The surprising story of how corporate scandals - from Enron to the Facebook privacy scandal - change the way the world works for the better.

Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee draw on a decade of research on policymaking and public opinion to show us how scandals can ignite a public with few political outlets for their discontent. Scandals don't simply dominate news cycles: they can provoke us to demand better policy, spurring governments to adopt rules that protect us from massive corporations run amok.

Today it is giant companies, not governments, who run the world. They launch rockets into space, control satellite communication and develop era-defining AI technologies. But around the globe, these corporate titans are facing increasing public hostility.

Tech giants are seen as promoting misinformation, undermining democracy and violating our privacy. Big banks, reeling since the financial crisis of 2008, continue to be racked with major scandals. Drawing on real-life examples such as the powdered milk scandal that rocked France, the VW scandal in Germany, the Goldman Sachs scandal in the United States, Cambridge Analytica in Britain and Samsung in South Korea - the authors show that these scandals are not just symptoms of a careless corporate elite, they are opportunities for real political change.

Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee reveal how the shared anger of citizens can be channelled into a backlash that has the potential to reinvigorate our failing democracies. One corporate scandal at a time.

Review Quotes

"This book left me both better informed and more hopeful." --Steven Levitsky, author of How Democracies Die

"Captivating and insightful." --Gary Bass, author of Judgment at Tokyo

"Read it: this matters." --Paul Collier, author of The Future of Capitalism

"Just read it - have fun, get wiser and get out there!" --Margrethe Vestager, former EU Commissioner

"In an age of increasing corruption, Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee provide a valuable explanation of when corporate scandals provoke public fury, and when instead they fade away." --Henry Farrell, author of Underground Empire

About the Author

Pepper Culpepper is Blavatnik Professor of Government and Public Policy and a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. He is Vice-Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government, where his research explores the junction between capitalism and democracy.

Taeku Lee is Bae Family Professor and Faculty Dean of Dunster House at Harvard University. He is also former President of the American Political Science Association and has written extensively on identity and inequality, diversity and democracy.