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

I’ve chosen exemplary cases that show how the mode of organizing influence has changed from the recent past and how unaccountability is thereby heightened. Every day, the media offer up more stories from which to choose—indeed, until the minute this book went to press, I was continually including new ones.

As you read Unaccountable , your own examples will occur to you as you see them in action in your communities and countries. In them, you’ll find yourself identifying the different forms of organizing influence spelled out in the book, and you’ll be equipped to make the connections among players and arenas. Like an amateur anthropologist, you’ll have the tools to take effective action.

Since I’ve been writing and speaking about the new corruption, people as far-flung as a city planner in Columbus, Ohio; a farmer in Saskatchewan who serves on a Canadian agricultural board; and a political scientist in Israel have enlisted my analysis to help them understand the players and patterns in their own circumstances.

Unaccountable draws heavily on examples from investigative journalists, as well as (of course) my own fieldwork, interviews, and experience. It is informed by perspectives from political and other social sciences and by research ranging from that of anthropologists and practitioners of finance to philosopher-sociologists of science and to media studies conducted by research institutes. And yet, Unaccountable is decidedly the work of an anthropologist.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I— In Only Our Own We Trust —lays the groundwork for understanding the new corruption. I explain the “structured unaccountability” that is today built into our corporate and government organizations, how the “High Priest” economists and their approaches to the anti-corruption “industry” helped blind us to the corruption that matters most, and why the personalization of media and “performance” of truth today pervade finance, politics, and beyond, not just media.

Part II— The New Corruption at Work —takes unaccountability from a different angle, with modes of organizing as the point of departure. We’ll look at how a variety of types of players and entities, ranging from consulting firms to “think tanks” and universities to “nonprofits” and “grassroots” organizations, all coordinate influence to sway policy and public opinion.

Finally, in Part III— Restoring the Public Trust —we’ll look at what can be done to counter the effects of the new corruption and how we can begin to trust public institutions again.

PART I

IN ONLY OUR OWN WE TRUST

CHAPTER 1

New World, New Corruption

What does “SWIMNUT” know that the world’s supposed experts on corruption or the elites who gather each year for skiing and schmoozing in Davos do not?

This anonymous commenter was responding to an online article about the 2013 ranking of the world’s most corrupt countries, as measured by the best-known international arbiter of corruption, the organization Transparency International. In TI’s survey, the experts canvassed perceive Somalia, North Korea, and Afghanistan as the worst transgressors. But “SWIMNUT” sees it differently:

Not quite sure how corruption is defined but I think the US needs to be included as one of the most corrupt “civilized” countries in the world. . . . In the US . . . we have created a political elite that extorts hard working people for their own political and financial gains.

“SWIMNUT” wasn’t the lone voice of skepticism. Well over half of the 180-odd commenters to this article targeted the United States as an offender that was grievously under-scrutinized. 1Amid the usual partisanship, name-calling, and crackpot conspiracy theories that one finds in comment sections, many of these readers conveyed undeniable threads of truth, ones I’ve been weaving together for decades.

From “kolar63”:

. . . Washington DC knows very well how to hide and disguised their corruption thru lobbying elites . . .

From “onelifelive”:

We are not on top of this list because we call it “LOBBYING”, “FAVORS”, “GIFTS”, “CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP”, “PACS”, ETC. ETC.

What struck me in the case of SWIMNUT is that s/he and fellow readers were no longer buying this media performance. A website was engaging in an annual ritual of presenting these metrics without much context or reflection, something that looks and feels like news but really isn’t and probably never was. In fact, the real news story can be found in the comments themselves. They show the chasm between corruption as measured, on the one hand, and corruption as experienced by Americans, who see something deeply amiss in their own land, not just in the far-flung and exotic. Wealth has been fast accumulating among the few, leaving the rest of us languishing with stagnant pay and rampant unemployment among the young.

How is it that ordinary people have an instinctual grasp of the real nature of corruption and the inequality that often results, while many experts are still wedded to the idea that corruption happens somewhere “out there”?

Witness the “Occupy” protests that began on Wall Street in 2011 and the “Tea Party” movement that helped grind the U.S. government to a halt in the fall of 2013. They may otherwise have little in common, but they share a resounding refrain: that the “system” is gamed by the powerful.

Research out in 2014 shows just how gamed it really is. Two political scientists looked at 1,779 policy issues hashed out from 1981 to 2002 and found that policies widely supported by economically elite Americans were adopted about forty-five percent of the time. If these same Americans indicated little support? Eighteen percent. They write: “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” 2Lest you blame the typically business-oriented Republicans, consider what one of the researchers said in an interview: “Both parties have to a large degree embraced a set of policies that reflect the needs, preferences and interests of the well to do.” 3

That the system is rigged resounds worldwide. There’s a documented and striking loss of confidence in formal institutions, from governments, parliaments, and courts to banks and corporations, to the media. 4Apparently, people feel that their public institutions and leaders now merit even less confidence than in the past.

The frustration and anger this breeds appear to be a major reason that middle-class people in democracies around the world—from Turkey and Greece to India, Brazil, Ukraine, and the United States—feel enraged and have taken to the streets. While protestors may have an intuitive sense of this loss, they may not realize that at its core is a modern-day form of corruption that is so far little understood. Their instincts are spot on, even if they don’t quite grasp the ins and outs of what I call the new corruption.

Indeed, people the world over sense that unseen elites are at work, using forces beyond anyone’s control. It seems almost conspiratorial, but it’s far more complex and elusive than that; if only it could be so easily dismissed. We sense that something big has changed—and not for the better.

But what, exactly? Let’s look at the old world versus the new. By “old,” I mean within recent living memory.

• In the old world, high officials retired to a life of leisure or good works. Now, many turn themselves into one-man brands, with their public service a stepping-stone to lucrative, enmeshed business, government, philanthropic, and policy endeavors, leaving the public to wonder whose interests are being served.