Janine Wedel - Shadow Elite - How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market

20. Information on Federal Computer Week ’s audience and circulation is from its publisher, 1105 Media, Inc., http://certcities.com/pressreleases/release.asp?id=2. Kelman’s column, “The Lectern,” can be found athttp://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/list/blog-list.aspx. For an example of Kelman presenting himself as a Harvard professor and former OFPP administrator, while failing to disclose his paid company connections yet advocating policies that benefit that company, see, for instance: Steve Kelman, “A Pair of Misguided Bills,” Federal Computer Week , September 18, 2000, http://fcw.com/articles/2000/09/18/a-pair-of-misguided-bills.aspx.

21. Under Share in Savings contracting, contractors finance on behalf of the government certain capital improvements—typically information technology or energy equipment (such as heating or cooling systems)—in return for which the contractor receives a “share of the savings,” a largely hypothetical calculation of what the government agency “would have spent” but for the contractors’ contributions to capital improvement that led to “savings.” Anitha Reddy, “Sharing Savings, and Risk: Special Contracts Appeal to Cash-Strapped Agencies,” Washington Post , Business section, February 16, 2004, p. E01, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/545898301.html?dids=545898301:545898301&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&fmac=&date=Feb+16%2C+2004&author=Anitha+Reddy&desc=Sharing+Savings%2C+and+Risk.

At the time of the Post article, Kelman was a registered lobbyist for Accenture Ltd., one of the largest beneficiaries of Share in Savings contracts, as well as a board member of FreeMarkets, Inc. Accenture’s primary business model employs Share in Savings techniques (see GAO report, http://www.gao.gov/htext/d03327.html). The Washington Post’s original article and correction are available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44259–2004Feb15?language=printer. Following such incidents and letters to editors demonstrating that Kelman had failed to disclose relevant industry affiliations, he began doing so in his Federal Computer Week column.

22. Kelman’s op-ed can be found at Steve Kelman, “The IG Ideology,” Washington Post , April 4, 2007, p. A13. Information from the Project on Government Oversight can be found at “Gutting Government Oversight: The Steve Kelman Ideology,” POGO Web site, April 30, 2007, http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2007/04/gutting_governm.html.

23. With regard to members of flex nets being united by shared activities and interpersonal histories, in social network terms, members have “multiplex” ties vis-à-vis each other, meaning that they play multiple roles vis-à-vis their fellow members. Their ties are also “dense” in that each person in the group knows and can interact with every other person independently of any intermediary. Social network analysis is a long-standing method and theoretical perspective that focuses on social relations among actors, rather than the characteristics of actors. Pioneers in the field were John Barnes, Clyde Mitchell, and Elizabeth Bott, all associated with the Department of Social Anthropology at Manchester University in the 1950s. They saw social structure as networks of relations and focused on “the actual configuration of relations which arose from the exercise of conflict and power.” John Scott, Social Network Analysis: A Handbook (London, UK: Sage Publications, 1991), p. 27. With respect to interest groups, some scholars have defined them broadly. In his summary analysis of the literature, political scientist Grant Jordan defines “interest groups” (the term typically used by American authors) and “pressure groups” (used by British authors) simply as “organizations that seek to influence public policy.” Adam Kuper and Jessica Kuper, eds., The Social Science Encyclopedia , 3rd ed., vol. I: A-K, New York: Routledge, 2004, p. 514. The category typically encompasses labor unions, professional associations, and voluntary associations founded to further a common interest, such as, to name some of the more powerful American groups, the National Organization for Women (NOW), Common Cause, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or the National Rifle Association (NRA).

24. Lenin said: “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” Vladimir Lenin, quoted in Doug Lorimer, The Birth of Bolshevism (Resistance Books, 2005), p. 106, http://books.google.com/books?id=B0q8emwoTncC. Political scientist Theodore J. Lowi elaborates on this point. See Theodore J. Lowi, The Politics of Disorder (New York: Basic Books, 1971), especially chapter 2 and pp. 42–47.

25. Ideology and intense interconnectedness in multiple roles and venues distinguish flex nets from “issue networks,” as defined by government scholar Hugh Heclo. Heclo coined the concept in 1978 to describe the “partnerships of groups or individuals” who organize around particular policy issues and attempt to influence policy development (James P. Pfiffner, interview with Hugh Heclo, “The Institutionalist: A Conversation with Hugh Heclo,” Public Administration Review , May/June 2007, p. 421). When it suits their cause, these working groups of individuals form loose alliances with interest groups, nongovernmental organizations, and economic actors (Heclo, “Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment,” The New American Political System [Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1978], pp. 87–124). Today, says Heclo, “issue activists are . . . increasingly important in all aspects of governing and political campaigning” (Pfiffner, “The Institutionalist”).

With regard to the crucial role of information, as anthropologist Annelise Riles points out, information has replaced capital as an organizer of social groups (Annelise Riles, The Network Inside Out [Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001], especially pp. 92–94).

26. For these reasons, among others, flex nets are not simply cliques, core groups whose members contact one another for multiple purposes and advance their own interests; see Jeremy Boissevain, Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators and Coalition (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1974). Although flex nets can be seen as a type of clique (see Jacek Kurczewski, ed., Lokalne Wzory Kultury Politycznej [Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2007]), cliques do not typically possess key features of the flex net modus operandi that define its operations. Similarly, flex nets also are not merely political elites. While elites in many contexts exert power and control, as anthropologists (see, for instance, Cris Shore and Stephen Nugent, eds., Elite Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives [New York: Routledge, 2002]; and Mattei Dogan, ed., Elite Configurations at the Apex of Power [Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2003]) have shown, flex nets—small, mobile, and with a certain modus operandi—mean something much more specific than political elites.

Flex nets also are not Mafias. While flex nets, like Mafias, work at the interstices of state and private (see Anton Blok, “Mafia,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences , vol. 13 [Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001], p. 9126), pursue common goals, and share rules of behavior, they should not be confused with Mafias (which, in the classic usage, are a type of patronage system, run by family enterprises, that developed in Sicily and Calabria, Italy.) Unlike flex nets, which primarily seek to influence policy, Mafias pursue illegal transactions to gain power or wealth and employ violence to achieve their objectives. Federico Varese, “Mafia,” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics , eds. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003).