Abstract
Whether and how the political role of business can be democratically legitimate is a critical issue when the practices of a multitude of actors and technologies of power in national and global societal and political settings are becoming increasingly intertwined. Aiming for a resolution, business scholars have increasingly turned to theories of deliberative democracy. This, we argue, is a problematic route ahead as normative democratic theories, and the Habermasian theory of deliberative democracy in particular, exclude businesses as legitimate societal actors in democratic processes. Moreover, extant research is more about political or moral legitimacy than democratic legitimacy. To overcome the seeming incommensurability between the practices of business in societies and theories on democracy, we propose a turn to more pragmatic theories on democracy in global governance. We further outline a research agenda for cross-fertilization between scholars on pragmatic democratic theories and scholars on the political role of business.