Shadow Elite: HOW THE WORLD'S NEW POWER BROKERS UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY, GOVERNMENT,AND THE FREE MARKET - Softcover

Wedel, Janine R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465022014 ISBN 13: 9780465022014

Publisher: Basic Books, 2011

Synopsis

It can feel like we're swimming in a sea of corruption, confused by who exactly is in charge and what role they play. The same influential people reappear time after time in different professional guises, pressing their own agendas in one venue after another. These are the powerful "shadow elite," the main players in a vexing new system of power and influence.

In her profoundly original Shadow Elite, award-winning public policy scholar and anthropologist Janine R. Wedel gives us the tools we need to recognize these powerful yet elusive figures and to comprehend the new system. Nothing less than our freedom and our ability to self-govern is at stake.

About this title

About the Author

Janine R. Wedel is a Professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and a Fellow at the New America Foundation. Her previous books include Collision and Collusion. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Review

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."
Publishers Weekly, starred review, December 7, 2009
"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."

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0465022014
• ISBN 13: 9780465022014
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 303