Challenging standard dependency theory, William Carroll argues from empirical evidence that Canada's financial-industrial elite have maintained and consolidated their competitive position at the centre of an inter-corporate network. Corporate Power and Canadian Capitalism thus acknowledges the unusually high degree to which capital is concentrated in a relatively few giant corporations in Canada, but it denies that these commercial interests are subordinated to American corporate capital.

To test the validity of this new perspective on the transformation of indigenous capitalists into a national bourgeoisie, Carroll traces the accumulation of capital in the largest Canadian corporations and the institutional relations that have existed among the same firms since World War II. Instead of selling out to foreign capital, Canadian firms have in fact become increasingly interlocked, and Canadian-controlled firms have been and continue to be the focus of both the industrial and financial sectors, with foreign-controlled companies occupying decidedly peripheral positions.

From this interpretative position, Canada's development is seen as markedly similar to that of other advanced capitalist countries, culminating in consolidation of control under an elite accompanied both by penetration of foreign economies by domestic financial capitalists and a concomitant penetration of the domestic economy by foreign capital.

William K. Carroll is a professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria, where he served as founding director of the Social Justice Studies Program (2008-2012). Among his recent books are The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class: Corporate Power in the 21st Century, Remaking Media: The Struggle to Democratize Public Communication (co-authored with Bob Hackett), Challenges and Perils: Social Democracy in Neoliberal Times and Critical Strategies for Social Research. He has won the Canadian Sociological Association's John Porter Prize twice for his books on the structure of corporate power in Canada. He is a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, an associate editor of the journal Socialist Studies and a member of the International Network of Scholar Activists.

Kanchan Sarker has a PhD in sociology from the University of North Bengal and teaches at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan. He has also taught at York University, the University of Windsor, the University of Waterloo and Cleveland University. He was a researcher at the Sociological Research Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India, from 1990-2001. He studies social movements, social inequality, globalization and neoliberalism, and has published several papers in national and international journals.

William K. Carroll's profile page

The book is an excellent critical assessment of Canadian dependency theory - rethinking of Canadian dependency and providing empirical data in support of the renewed conceptualization ... This solid empirical work should be of great interest to various social scientists including sociologists.

Canadian Book Review Annual

The strength of this book lies in elaborating the internal organisation and processes of capitalist development within Canada from a perspective that looks outside it, if not in terms of dependency and underdevelopment. It is a most valuable contribution.

Labour/Le Travail