Analytical Conclusion

Abstract

Chapter 8 evaluates the prior findings in order to address three major questions. First, is it more appropriate to see billionaires as “super-actors,” or as a global “super-class”? It finds limited applicability of the “transnational capitalist class” concept, and substantial evidence of individual agency. Institutional logics also appear as relatively weak within the political organizations created by billionaires, because these institutions are so dependent on the volatile resources provided by their sponsors. Second, what is the relative power of billionaires within the international system? States continue to set the legal framework for transnational politics. Yet, as outsiders coming from abroad and from business, billionaires can gain power via disruptive innovation and flexible alliance-building, using their wealth and their entrepreneurial skills. Counterfactual reasoning identifies substantial capacities for “making a difference” in world politics to most of the billionaires in the book’s case studies. Finally, what does the power of billionaires mean for the liberal norms of legitimate political order? With billionaires as transnational actors, the tensions inherent in modern liberalism get magnified: individual freedom clashes with collective self-determination, private property subverts the public sphere, and territorially bounded conceptions of the demos conflict with cosmopolitan ideals. Billionaires like to see their actions in terms of output legitimacy, but this cannot make up for a basic lack of accountability.