This essay seeks to draw from Miguel Vatter’s Divine Democracy: Political Theology after Carl Schmitt some implications for thinking about the legitimacy of corporate power. It takes up the trajectory of Vatter’s argument about the significance of the theory of representation for political theology and his placing of Carl Schmitt in relation to the pluralist thinkers of corporate bodies on the one hand, and the centrality of corporate personhood to Ernst Kantorowicz’s genealogy of liberal governmentality on the other. In doing so, I hope to highlight some of Vatter’s novel contributions to the field of political theology, whilst also drawing out the usefulness of his work for thinking critically about corporate power and its legitimacy as parallel questions to the concerns with contemporary state power.
