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Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market Hardcover – Bargain Price, December 1, 2009
In this groundbreaking book, Wedel charts how this shadow elite, loyal only to their own, challenge both governments’ rules of accountability and business codes of competition to accomplish their own goals. From the Harvard economists who helped privatize post-Soviet Russia and the neoconservatives who have helped privatize American foreign policy (culminating with the debacle that is Iraq) to the many private players who daily make public decisions without public input, these manipulators both grace the front pages and operate behind the scenes. Wherever they maneuver, they flout once-sacrosanct boundaries between state and private.
Profoundly original, Shadow Elite gives us the tools we need to recognize these powerful yet elusive players and comprehend the new system. Nothing less than our ability for self-government and our freedom are at stake.
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBasic Books
- Publication dateDecember 1, 2009
- Reading age18 years and up
- Dimensions6.13 x 1.06 x 9.25 inches
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Review
"This fascinating, authoritative wake-up call should satisfy any American who wants a handle on the republic’s most successful agents of corruption."
Financial Times, January 3, 2010
"A clarion call against some insidious threats to a healthy democracy."
Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post, January 6, 2010
"…a gripping, disquieting book that exposes and explains why it's been so hard to bring about any real change in our country. "
BuzzFlash, November 25, 2009
" What makes Wedel's book so valuable is that she doesn't indulge in conspiracy theories that can't be proven; she provides the facts and describes how this informal group of elitists is fluid in moving among the powerful institutions that control public policy, including government."
James K. Galbraith, Author of The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too
"Of huge value. With an eye that sweeps from Poland and Russia to Cambridge and Washington, Janine Wedel has reinvented the study of public administration for an era of blurred roles and secret networks. Shadow Elite is a must-read for all who care about the future of government—even the possibility of decent government—in the age of flexians and truthiness."
Peter Bergen, Author ofHoly War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know
"Janine Wedel has written a thought-provoking and interesting book that explores the rise of powerful, informal networks that often drive what governments actually do. Her account of the 1990s "reformers" in Russia and their allies in the United States, as well as her analysis of the interlocking relationships and effects on history of the American neoconservatives are especially persuasive.”
Charles Lewis, Bestselling author and founder of the Center for Public Integrity
"Shadow Elite is a powerful, searing work about how, over time, public and private have become blurred—three out of four people doing the work of the federal government today are actually private contractors. Self-dealing and corruption have become endemic, with those wielding political influence and getting rich at our expense becoming less and less accountable. With this book, Janine Wedel has provided a magnificent public service."
Robert Jervis, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics, Columbia University
" We think of networks and flexibility as good and desirable, but Wedel shows their dark side. In a study as fascinating as it is disturbing, she delves into political actors and groupings where influence is not linked to accountability. This is a path-breaking exploration of a part of our world that we really need to understand.”
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B003STCNSW
- Publisher : Basic Books; First Edition first Printing (December 1, 2009)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 304 pages
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Item Weight : 0.01 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.13 x 1.06 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #5,584,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,671 in Government Management
- #4,508 in Sociology of Class
- #11,882 in Business Education & Reference (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Wedel has identified what she calls "flex networks" of individuals who share a common ideology and, by playing an array of related and interwoven roles, work together to manipulate the policies and actions of governments, corporations, and NGOs. She labels these individuals "flexians" for the way they use multiple simultaneous and sequential roles to pursue the goals of their flex net, often to the detriment of the companies and governments they represent or advise.
Dr. Wedel presents her thesis and then illustrates it using three detailed examples of flex nets, the individuals involved, and the global effects of their actions over time. She stresses that these are not conspiracies and often their actions are legal or at least not provably illegal.
The first example is a flex net operating in Poland and Eastern Europe after the fall of the communists in Poland. Another chapter describes the "Harvard-Chubais" flex net that oversaw and bungled the privatization efforts in Russia in the early 90's. The third flex net she describes is the "Neocon core" consisting of individuals centered around Richard Perle, and how their activities, over a 30 year period, culminated most recently in helping to lead the USA into the Iraq war based on their preemptive war ideology and a campaign of manufactured disinformation.
In all these cases, these flex nets, or "Shadow Elite," significantly determine policy and action at global levels and do so beyond the control, oversight, or even recognition of any national or international authority.
Dr. Wedel does not claim to have answers to all the questions mentioned at the start of this review or even for the cases she presents. In fact, she makes a point of saying that her goal is to simply describe the reality of what is happening. It is up to us to understand this new insight and to determine if the results of this new form of organizing are compatible with the type of government, economy, and culture we want. If not, and that is likely the case, it will take a new type of recognition, oversight, and control to change the situation.
Gary Lyndaker, Gravois Mills, Mo
She identifies a whole new universe of what she calls "flex" people and "flexnets"--the behind-the-scenes operators who increasingly are making the real decisions in the world, in their capacities as CEO's, consultants, special advisors, and so on. They drift from government to education to the private sector to think-tanks, often failing everywhere but sliding into a new and prestigious job. Larry Summers is the type: failed at the World Bank, failed at running Harvard (and not because of one remark, either), did a less-than-brilliant job in government, and yet is still powerful. The neoconservatives have similar records. So do the CEO's of the giant corporations, who are getting away with every imaginable crime--not only without being called to account, but not even being docked their 8-figure bonuses. So do countless other political and business operatives, left-wing, right-wing and center.
The real problem here is that these people are utterly unaccountable. They are not democratically elected. They are not dependent on the success of their endeavors. In business, they are CEO's, not bosses; old-fashioned bosses went down with their firms, but CEO's just go on to the next job. As TIME magazine reports the Goldman Sachs administrators saying, "I'll be gone, you'll be gone." In government, the same people are special advisors and consultants, not only unelected and unaccountable, but often serving both Democrats and Republicans indifferently. They can, and do, fail over and over again, taking whole countries down with them, and yet go right on. This is the real reason for the financial meltdown of 2008 and for its persistence today.
Only four stars, though, because this is a short (and somewhat rapidly written, occasionally repetitious) book. It could have gone much deeper into the history--in the United States, back to the 1870s and 1880s, when the country was run, de facto, by the robber barons (Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, the Big Four, and the rest of that gang). Shadow elites and flexnets are not new; what is new is their extreme power. This has resulted from downsizing government, and also from the explosive increase in subsidies, procurement, and other government support for firms. BP can get away with destroying the US south because it is not really a private firm; it is a British parastatal with American ties as well. ExxonMobil is essentially a parastatal also. From Halliburton to Monsanto to Goldman Sachs, the big firms do what they please and duly receive taxpayer support, bailouts, and so on, while avoiding oversight or regulation.
This is not "capitalism" and not really "socialism" either. It's closest (scarily) to Mussolini's original version of fascism: Government supports the big private firms and cracks down on anyone who doesn't like it. Eventually government and business fuse.
We are hearing no opposition to this from the right wing--indeed, they support it all, in spite of their insincere condemnations of "big government." The left (if there can be said to be a left today) is still locked in the illusion that we have "capitalism" and "free enterprise" and "neoliberalism." No, we don't. We have a shadow elite, a gang of non-accountable political operators who are devoted solely to keeping themselves on top, as the near-invisible powers behind the thrones and presidential chairs.
Top reviews from other countries
The real story behind the `shouting façade' is the `redesigning of government', its privatization.
Actually, three-quarters of the work of the federal government (measured in terms of jobs) is contracted out (a multi-billion dollar business). This outsourcing of governmental tasks created a new power system, a kind of parallel (shadow) government.
This parallel power base consists of a small set of players (the author is naming names) who are acting inside or outside the government and who are all the time changing jobs between the government itself, private companies, consulting firms, NGOs or think tanks. They always follow their own agenda or the orders of their masters.
Result
Hiding behind their `grand narratives of democracy and freedom', those who forced the merging of State and private businesses, created less competitive markets and less accountable governmental services. The fusion even eroded national sovereignty. `Ambiguous institutional arrangements are making it difficult to establish where authority resides.'
Moreover, the government is `emasculated' because the eventually gathered information stays in private hands, which gives contractors an edge over government overseers.
Russia
J. R. Wedel analyzed superbly the privatization of Russian State assets under B. Yeltsin.
A small group of insiders from Harvard and from PM A. Chubais's office sold a major chunk of State assets for token sums to seven (!) preselected bank chiefs.
Free marketeers created a new authoritarian State.
The author is not really optimistic that all the players `who operate largely above public input, knowledge and visibility' can be reined in.
This superbly researched book with an excellent index is a must read for all true democrats and for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
その目的とは、官と民の境界線に位置するものであり、政治的な目的(証券取引所の創設、契約関係の法律の整備、イスラエルへの支持など)だけではなく、私的な(もちろんその中にはインサイダーまがいの経済的な利害)ものも含まれます。案外一番大きな目的は、自分たちの「普遍的」な流儀を外に広めたいという個々人の「宣教師」的な熱情ものだったのかもしれません。
著者はこれらの人々をflexianそしてこの政官財文にまたがる仕組みをflexnetと命名しています。この背後には、新自由主義のもとでの統治という概念と実践の再設計、冷戦の終結、新しい情報通信技術の発展、そして「truthiness」という様式への屈服、があるというのが著者の結論です。結果として損なわれるのが国民国家と議会を前提とする民主主義なのです。
これは特殊アメリカ的な現象ではありませんね。規制緩和や金融をめぐって作られた政府のさまざまなタスクフォース、そして現行のTPPをめぐる動きにも如実に見受けられるものです。投資銀行業務なんてまさにこの政と官と民の境界で合法的な仮面をかぶりながらの、綱渡りそのものですからね。いわれてみりゃ、Financial Timesも、これらのさまざまなflexnetの宣伝の掲示板みたいなもんですわ。


