Continental Corporate Power: Domination and Dependency

Review article Continental Corporate Power: Domination and Dependency DAVID A. NOCK Wallace Clement, Continental Corporate Power (Toronto: McClellend and Stewart, 1977) 408 pp., $16.50, $6.95 paper In his first book, Wallace Clement provided a stunning analysis of Canada's corporate business elite. In his second book, Continental Corporate Power, Clement has managed a second tour de force. He analyzes the American (multinational, imperialist) business elite, compares it to the Canadian, describes the political and economic forces which directed Canadian and American development, surveys a sample of sub-elite Canadian-born managers resident in the U.S., tries to categorize Canada in the scale of world economies, adheres to strict sociological canons of data collection, yet is able to write in a critical, radical style that goes beyond rhetoric. Needless to say, this newest book, with its wider North American and even world focus, will catapult Clement to international acclaim in development scholarship. Clement was originally a graduate student of John Porter, and his method of dividing the economic sector into dominant and non-dominant firms is derived from Porter. In his original Canadian study, Clement considered 113 firms as dominant; the comparable figure for the American economy is 194. These 194 dominant firms had a total of 2,450 directors, of whom Clement found information on 2,007 (82%). Since he wished to consider business manpower migration between the two countries, Clement also surveyed 302 Canadian-born U.S. resident managers. As might be expected, Canadians did not form a large enough group of the American business elite to 94 provide much of a sample (although "7.3 per cent of the U.S. economic elite hold at least one Canadian post" [253]). Therefore Clement surveyed the non-elite managers mentioned. Although not part of the American elite, this group of business managers may be considered what Bryman calls a "sous-elite": There is no attempt to argue that archdeacons are equal in ecclesiastical stature to bishops....However, it is frequently pointed out that elite and non-elite cannot be analytically distinguished with great facility. This introduces the possibility of grades of elite status. I If the above description makes Continental Corporate Power sound like an encyclopedia, that is because there are encyclopedic features to it. Clement, rather like Harold Innis, burdens one with illustrative material to an extent that some may feel excessive. In the case of Clement, this is probably not caused by pedantry, but rather his feeling that the constituent facts themselves , not just the resulting generalization, are worthy of record. One of the larger themes of importance is the openness or closed nature of opportunities in Canada and the United States. Many observers of Canadian society have felt that Canada was a more closed society, a less entrepreneurial society than the U.S. Thus has arg~ed S.D. C_lark: In very broad, general terms, the temper of Canadian society can be described as more conservative, less dedicated to such American values as democracy, equality and liberty. Ours is a society more ready to compromise with the past, to accept without protest the limitations upon individual endeavour, freedom of expression and achievement which our institutional heritage prescribes. We are less concerned about getting on, being successful .2 It is a shock, though, to find such expressions of opinion voiced by the managers who ''voted with their feet," and to see that Clement's statistical data bears out the supposition. Compare Clark's analysis to that of one of the most successful Canadian migrants, one who has joined Revue d'etudes canadiennes Vol. 13, No. 3(Automne1978 Fall) the American business elite: It appeared to me that the United States had a more fluid society, with greater opportunity for upward mobility social and economic - than Canada offered at that time. Canadians were then attached to British class rigidities and emphasis upon birth and racial origin - prejudices from which American society was freer, and which I believed would be frustrating handicaps to an ambitious young man. I concluded that my progress in Canada would be slowed by the fact that I was not of British birth, origin_or name [257]. The members of the sous-elite of...