IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ajecsc/v74y2015i4p654-675.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Foundations Exercise Power

Author

Listed:
  • Joan Roelofs

Abstract

Foundations (and philanthropy in general) have great political power in the United States and worldwide, yet this is hardly noted by political analysts or journalists. Their power is exerted in many ways, such as by funding progressive organizations and movements; sponsoring policy “think tanks” and organizations of public officials; influencing the political culture through media, academic researchers, and university programs (including public interest law in law schools); and co-opting activists and potential rebels among the rich and poor. Because of their resources and prestige, they are powerful members of coalitions and collaborations with overt and covert government departments, U.N. agencies, universities, and nongovernmental organizations. Foundations have been major actors in the “Cold War,” which continues as the attempt to deflect any movement towards socialism here or abroad. Globalization has amplified the power of foundations, for many of the global institutions were created by foundations and continue to be fostered by them. The sponsorship of civil society institutions worldwide by private foundations, now with additional billions from governments and international governmental institutions, supports U.S. hegemony: military, political, and economic. We cannot know what the world would have been like absent foundation activities, but the current one does not appear to have a democratic, peaceful, or sustainable future.

Suggested Citation

  • Joan Roelofs, 2015. "How Foundations Exercise Power," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(4), pages 654-675, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:74:y:2015:i:4:p:654-675
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ajes.12112
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Valeria Giacomin & Geoffrey Jones, 2022. "Drivers of Philanthropic Foundations in Emerging Markets: Family, Values and Spirituality," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 263-282, September.
    2. Ruth Puttick, 2023. "The Influence Of Philanthropic Foundations On City Government Innovation," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(5), pages 774-791, September.
    3. Simon, June & Hong, Jeeyeon & Pecora, Peter J. & Cloepfil, Geoffrey & Gillespie, Troy & Parker, Elizabeth & Klein, Reed & Garcia, Thalia & Hardy, Mariah, 2023. "An examination of recent federal and philanthropic funding for child welfare research in the United States," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    4. Williamson Alexandra Kate & Luke Belinda, 2020. "Agenda-setting and Public Policy in Private Foundations," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-12, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:74:y:2015:i:4:p:654-675. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0002-9246 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.