Janine Wedel - Unaccountable - How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt Our Finances, Freedom, and Security

For scholarship on performance, evaluation, and audit culture, see John Clarke, “Performance paradoxes: The politics of evaluation in public services,” Howard Davis and Steve Martin (eds.), Public Services Inspection in the UK. London, Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2008; Michael Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999; Michael Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994; and Mark Bovens, “Analysing and Assessing Public Accountability. A Conceptual Framework.” European Governance Papers (EUROGOV) No. C-06-01, January 2006.

10. E-mail correspondence with Helen Sutch, June 2014.

11. As anthropologist Raymond June points out, “[O]ne can be transparent and demonstrate accountability without being accountable. We must be careful not to conflate terms and concepts” (Raymond June, “The discreet charm of flexians: reviewing Janine Wedel’s Shadow Elite. ” Global Integrity, January 18, 2010 [http://www.globalintegrity.org/node/491].)

12. The Workshop on “Building Accountability into International Development and Advising in an Age of Diffused Governance” was funded by the Ford Foundation. For the results of the workshop and larger project, and for analysis of accountability issues in international development advising, see Lloyd J. Dumas, Janine R. Wedel, and Greg Callman, Confronting Corruption: Building Accountability: Lessons from the World of International Development Advising . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

13. Kazimierz Wyka, “The Excluded Economy,” Janine R. Wedel (edited, annoted, and with introductions by), The Unplanned Society: Poland During and After Communism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, p. 58.

14. Eric Sagara, Charles Ornstein, and Ryann Grochowski Jones, “As Full Disclosure Nears, Doctors’ Pay for Drug Talks Plummets.” ProPublica , March 3, 2014 (http://www.propublica.org/article/as-full-disclosure-nears-doctors-pay-for-drug-talks-plummets).

15. Tim LaPira, “Erring on the side of shady: How calling out ‘lobbyists’ drove them underground.” Sunlight Foundation, April 1, 2014 (http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/04/01/erring-on-the-side-of-shady-how-calling-out-lobbyists-drove-them-underground/); The Executive Order: The White House, Executive Order 13490: Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel,” January 21, 2009 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Ethics-Commitments-By-Executive-Branch-Personnel).

16. Journalist Christian Caryl explores a fascinating case in this regard: that of Burmese oppositionists and jailed pro-democracy activists who have forged alliances even with those responsible for putting them in jail (Christian Caryl, “Burmese Days.” The New York Review of Books, July 12, 2012 [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jul/12/burmese-days/]).

17. See the work of sociologist Alena Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices that Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006.

18. “Double strategy” is from Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth, The Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists, and the Contest to Transform Latin American States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 11.

19. See, for example, Ali J. Abbas, Islamic Perspectives on Management and Organization . Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2005; Syed Hussein Alatas, Corruption: Its Nature, Causes and Functions . Brookfield, VT: Gower, 1990, pp. 13-14; Maxime Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism . London: Saqi Books, 2007 (1966); Richard Rubenstein, Thus Saith the Lord . New York: Harcourt, 2006.

20. Lloyd J. Dumas, Janine R. Wedel, and Greg Callman, Confronting Corruption, Building Accountability: Lessons from the World of International Development Advising. New York: Palgrave, 2010, pp. 24-25.

21. Ibid., p. 24.

22. However corruption is conceptualized, we must keep in mind that establishing a normative definition of the phenomenon across time and place is not a fruitful starting point for understanding the dynamics and social organizational underpinnings of corruption in a given society or what that society might regard as corruption. A robust body of anthropological, sociological, and other social-science literature demonstrates that point. Corruption can be accurately studied only by examining the patterns and systems of influence that underlie it. For analysis of and further sources on this issue, see: Janine R. Wedel, “Rethinking Corruption in an Age of Ambiguity.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science, vol. 8, December 2012.

From Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party activists to authors of books on the financial crisis—for instance, Gretchen Morgenson’s Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon , with Joshua Rosner (Morgenson and Rosner, New York: Times/Henry Holt and Co., 2011)—corruption is being reconsidered.

23. I co-organized an initiative and an international Working Group, with Ford Foundation sponsorship, to create a code of ethics for international development consultants. The code we developed, if appropriately adapted and implemented, could help reduce bad projects and wasted aid dollars. See: Lloyd J. Dumas, Janine R. Wedel, and Greg Callman, Confronting Corruption, Building Accountability: Lessons from the World of International Development Advising . New York: Palgrave, 2010, pp. 33-63.

24. http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/55397168#55397168

25. See Michael Gerson’s biography on the Washington Post : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/biographies/michael-gerson.html.

26. Sociologist Alena Ledeneva’s focus on the “informal practices” of players is illuminating in this regard (Alena Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices that Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business . Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006).

27. With this framework, I have launched a Mapping Shadow Elite project to document and chart the operations of players, using cases from the finance and military sectors. The idea is to illustrate the MO of players and networks in visual terms and to offer practical tools to the public and the media to help unmask such players (see http://shadowelite.net/).

28. American Economic Association, “AEA’s Disclosure Policy,” July 1, 2012 (http://www.aeaweb.org/aea_journals/AEA_Disclosure_Policy.pdf).

29. It is registered as a 501(c)(4).

30. See, for example, the work of Annelise Riles (Annelise Riles, Collateral Knowledge: Legal Reasoning in the Global Financial Markets. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011; Annelise Riles, “ Shadow Elite: Move Your Money and Beyond—Reforming Market Culture from the Bottom Up.” Huffington Post , January 27, 2011 [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/annelise-riles/shadow-elite-move-your-mo_b_814681.html]). See also: Karen Ho, “Disciplining Investment Bankers, Disciplining the Economy: Wall Street’s Institutional Culture of Crisis and the Downsizing of American Corporations.” American Anthropologist , vol. 111, no. 2, 2009.

Acknowledgments

This project has benefited immensely from the wisdom, experience, and research of numerous colleagues and associates.

I am enormously indebted to Linda Keenan, who stimulated my conceptualization of the book and worked with me to shape it. The book benefits considerably from her experience, especially in the realms of media and finance. Beyond that, she conducted research, suggested examples, and assembled materials for my review. I thank her for her keen insights, camaraderie, and countless hours in conversation.