Democracies and (Private) Global Powers

This article addresses the asymmetries between major U.S. digital corporations (commonly referred to as GAFAM — namely Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, hereinafter ‘Big Tech’) and public powers, both national and supranational. The aim of the analysis is to highlight the challenges posed to national and supranational legal orders by the rise of private powers of global scale. This is a relatively new issue. Until a few decades ago, the main actors on the world stage were nation-States. When the latter acknowledged the emergence of economic globalization, they responded by forming networks and establishing, through agreements, around 2,000 global regulatory regimes and tens of thousands of international organizations known as ‘forums’. As a result, a bipolar balance emerged: nation-States and supranational bodies. Today, however, a new phenomenon has appeared: alongside nation-States and international or supranational organizations, there are now private actors of universal scale, with financial power that in many cases exceeds that of most States.