Transnational Corporations and Technological Transformation: The Political Economy of the New Digital Economy

Abstract

This chapter follows a Political Economy approach to articulate three dimensions of analysis (actors, scenarios, and mechanisms) to facilitate the understanding of the power relations that underpin the New Digital Economy (NDE). The author hypothesises that the NDE is further concentrating wealth as well as political and economic power in a few technology clusters that emerge around the business activities of the top-5 digital transnational corporations (TNCs) (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft). This increasing concentration is also grating these TNCs’ growing bargaining power over other non-digital TNCs, states, and the global citizenry. The main conclusion is that the NDE is characterised by a highly connected, complex, and fragile economic and political relations that make for a hierarchical, asymmetric, and deeply concentrated international digital economic system.