Jean Philippe Sapinski

Université de Moncton · Maîtrise en études de l'environnement

This paper explores the political involvement of transnational corporations and their directors in elaborating the project of 'climate capitalism' advanced to address climate change. Climate capitalism seeks to redirect investments from fossil energy to renewable energy generation, so as to foster an ecological modernization of production and reduc...

This paper analyses the corporate hegemonic structures of power underlying the project of climate capitalism. Its promoters present climate capitalism as an emerging regime of accumulation founded on carbon markets and the ecological modernization of production, that could replace the prevalent carboniferous capitalist regime and provide a deeply n...

This article presents a network analysis of elite interlocks among the world’s 500 largest corporations and a purposive sample of transnational policy-planning boards. The analysis compares the situation in 1996 with 2006 and reveals a process of transnational capitalist class formation that is regionally uneven. Network analysis points to a proces...

Although a literature on the transnational capitalist class (TCC) began to form in the 1970s, along with the first stirrings of neoliberal public policy, both of these intersecting phenomena have deeper lineages in elite capitalist networks, transnationalizing investment, and the interaction between the two. This chapter traces the development of c...

Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have emerged as a component of global civil society, generating visions and strategies for a “globalization from below” that point toward post-capitalist alternatives. Here, we map the global network of TAPGs and kindred international groups in order to discern how TAPGs are embedded...

Proposals for slowing climate change by reflecting sunlight back to space, known as solar geoengineering (SG), are gaining traction in climate policy. Given SG’s capacity to slow warming without reducing carbon emissions, prominent criticism suggests that it will enable fossil fueled business-as-usual. This assessment is not without merit, yet the...

Geoengineering is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system in an attempt to mitigate the adverse effects of global warming. Now that climate emergency is upon us, claims that geoengineering is inevitable are rapidly proliferating. How did we get into this situation where the most extreme path now seems a plausible d...

Alongside the climate change denial movement, a section of the capitalist class has been organizing to promote a project of “climate capitalism” that relies on carbon markets and other policies compatible with the neoliberal order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Like the denial movement, promoters of climate capitalism have constructed an exten...

Canada is ruled by an organized minority of the 1%, a class of corporate owners, managers and bankers who amass wealth by controlling the large corporations at the core of the economy. But corporate power also reaches into civil society and politics in many ways that greatly constrain democracy. In Organizing the 1%, William K. Carroll and J.P. Sa...

Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have generated visions and strategies pointing to alternatives to capitalist globalization. However, TAPGs are also embedded in networks of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and foundations, and may thus be subject to NGOization. This article examines two bodies of data relevant...

Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have generated visions and strategies pointing to alternatives to capitalist globalization. However, TAPGs are also embedded in networks of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and foundations, and may thus be subject to NGOization. This paper examines two bodies of data relevant to...

Although a literature on the transnational capitalist class (TCC) began to form in the 1970s, along withthe first stirrings of neoliberal public policy, these intersecting phenomena have deeper lineages in elitecapitalist networks, transnationalizing investment, and the interaction between the two. This chapterexplores those lineages and interactio...

Although systematic network analyses mapping the social organization of business power date only from the 1970s, scholars have explored the relations that link corporations and their directors into corporate elites and intercorporate networks for over a century.

This chapter provides an introduction to the literature on interlocking directorates and corporate networks. It first traces the historical roots of the field back to the early 20th century, when researchers on both sides of the Atlantic started expressing concern about the threat to democratic process posed by the emergent corporate form, the pote...

Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have emerged as a component of global civil society, generating visions and strategies for a ‘globalization from below’ that points toward post-capitalist alternatives. This study proceeds from a neo-Gramscian understanding that hegemonic think tanks and TAPGs are embedded in opposing...

This chapter provides an introduction to the literature on interlocking directorates and corporate networks. It first traces the historical roots of the field back to the early 20th century, when researchers on both sides of the Atlantic started expressing concern about the threat to democratic process posed by the emergent corporate form, the pote...

The idea that climate geoengineering could be used in conjunction to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change has gained credence in both scientific and policy circles. Because of the inherent uncertainty about the risks involved, debates on the topic abound. Scientists agree that more research is needed on both the po...

Alongside the climate change denial movement, a section of the capitalist class has been organizing to promote a project of “climate capitalism” that relies on carbon markets and other policies compatible with the neoliberal order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Like the denial movement, promoters of climate capitalism have constructed an exten...

Climate capitalism has emerged over the last two decades as the response of a section of the global elite to the crisis of global warming. Greater consciousness of threats to the stability of the global carbon cycle, and thus to the general conditions for capital accumulation, has led certain members of the global elite to design a project of clima...

Since the 1970s, transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) have emerged as a component of global civil society generating visions and strategies for a ‘globalization from below’ which is also a process of transnational class formation. Such groups as the Transnational Institute (Amsterdam), Focus on the Global South (Bangkok), International F...

Carbon markets represent a case in point for the study of the organization of neoliberal markets. Like any market, they have been created and are being regulated by a variety of public and/or private organizations interested in their effective functioning. Carbon markets rely on a specific discourse, corporate environmentalism, according to which e...

This presentation will begin with an account of the process of circulation of capital that underlies the exponential growth of the economy and thus of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during the last two centuries. Building on this framework, I will re-frame the discourse of ecological modernization as one that is founded on an ideological, as oppose...

Throughout the world, there has been a growing wave of interest in global corporate power and the rise of a transnational capitalist class, triggered by economic and political transformations that have blurred national borders and disembedded corporate business from national domiciles. Using social network analysis, William Carroll maps the changin...