UNACCOUNTABLE - ARTICLES, REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, EXCERPTS, QUOTED IN

Articles:

• "Shadow Elites: Beyond Institutional Corruption Theory and Ill-Conceived Anti-Corruption Regimes. Toward A New Research Agenda." In Handbook on Quality of Government, Andreas Bågenholm, Monika Bauhr, and Marcia Grimes, Bo Rothstein, eds., Oxford University Press, 2021, pp.63-90.

• "It's 2020. Do You Know Who Your Government Is Serving? America Has Been Conflating Politics and Business for Years-And if We're Not Careful, We Could Go the Way of Post-Soviet Eastern Europe," Zócalo Public Square, December 10, 2020.

• "Dirty Populists," Project Syndicate, January 2, 2019.

• "Déjá Vu: How Today's Western Democracies Recall Eastern Europe under Communism," "Lessons for Liberalism from the 'Illiberal East'," Dace Dzenovska and Larisa Kurtović, eds., Special Issue, Cultural Anthropology, April 25, 2018.

• "From Power Elites to Influence Elites: Resetting Elite Studies for the 21st Century," Special Issue on Elites, Theory, Culture & Society, Aeron Davis and Karel Williams, eds., Sept. 2017. (Read in PDF)

• "The Venal Roots of Political Turmoil," Project Syndicate, Dec. 21, 2017.
Reprinted in The Straits Times, and in LiveMint.
(Read in PDF)

• "Meet the New American Influence Elites: How Top Players Sway Policy and Governing in the Twenty-First Century," The Death of Public Knowledge?: How Free Markets Destroy the General Intellect, Aeron Davis, ed., MIT Press, Jun 2017, , pp. 213-230.

• "THE BIG QUESTION: WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KLEPTOCRACY AND AUTHORITARIANISM?" National Endowment for Democracy, November 16, 2017, The International Forum for Democratic Studies asked five leading experts about the relationship between authoritarianism and kleptocracy.

• "Why so many distrust government: It doesn't work for them.," San Francisco Chronicle, May 28, 2017.

• "Trump Is Right That the System Is "Rigged"-and He's Stacking It More: Average Americans Are Losing Power While Self-Serving Elites Lose Public Trust," Zocalo, May 16, 2017.

• "A Field Guide to Trump's Swamp," Sapiens, January 19, 2017.

• "The Battle-Hymn of the Generals-For-Hire," The Huffington Post, January 17, 2017.

• "Foreign Influencing Goes Far, Far Beyond Russian Hack Attacks," The Huffington Post, December 21, 2016.

• "'Extreme Vetting' Needed... For Pro-Putin Trump Players," The Huffington Post, December 14, 2016.

• "Donald Trump and a World of Distrust," Project Syndicate, November 11, 2016.

• "When the public's trust is betrayed, it only fuels a demagogue like Trump," The Huffington Post, November 1, 2016.

• "Trumpism 101: The Outsider, Ignored For Years. No longer.," The Huffington Post, October 27, 2016.

• "Einfluss ohne Grenzen: Die neuen globalen Schatteneliten (Influence Without Borders: The New Global Shadow Elite)," Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, pp. 77-88, June, 2016 (Read in PDF format in German).

• "Clinton's Credibility Questioned as Bill's Philanthropy 'Takes It to the Limit'," The Huffington Post, February 29, 2016.

• "We Need to Clean Up Our Understanding of Corruption," New America Weekly, December 17, 2015.
Syndicated and reprinted: Pacific Standard, January 8, 2016.

• "The Petraeus Wrist-slap," USA Today, March 24, 2015.

• "High Priests and the Gospel of Anti-Corruption," Challenge, vol. 58, Issue 1, March 2015, pp. 4-22.

Editors' Pick: "Beyond Bribery: It's time to start fighting the most insidious form of corruption — the kind that's legal," Foreign Policy, February 17, 2015.

• "Davos & Disruption Done Right: In Praise of "Difficult Women" in Finance," Featured in The Huffington Post, February 5, 2015.

• "This is why Piketty matters: Davos and the real story about economists and the 1 percent," Salon, February 1, 2015.

• "Forget the McDonnells. We're ignoring bigger, more pernicious corruption right under our noses," The Washington Post, January 12, 2015. (Read in PDF)

• "In the Shadows: How Unaccountable Elites Corrupt Democracy," Discover Society, December 1, 2014, Issue 15.

• "Dark money' goes way beyond elections: Three areas where hidden cash holds sway," USA Today, November 21, 2014.

• "Booted by Voters? Still in Hot Demand: 5 Places Former Pols Go After Leaving Congress," Featured in The Huffington Post, November 18, 2014.

• "Is Your Doctor on Bid Pharma's Dole?," Featured in The Huffington Post, October 8, 2014.

Reviews:

• David Wineberg, "Book Review: "Unaccountable" by Janine Wedel," San Francisco Review of Books, November 17, 2018. Reposted (Read in PDF)

• David Wineberg, "Book Review: "Unaccountable" by Janine Wedel," San Francisco Review of Books, August 26, 2017. (Read in PDF)
"As an anthropologist who has studied the ingrained corruption of communist-era Poland, Janine Wedel sees a lot of familiar signs in the United States. Much like the ruling class in Poland, the ruling class in the USA slides easily between corporate and government and back, as needed."

• Greg Cusack, "Systemic corruption undermines democracy in the United States," Shanghai Daily, February 24, 2017. (Read in PDF)
"Janine Wedel's "Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom and Security" shows how deeply the ideal of being accountable to the citizens has weakened in both public and private life. "Ethics," she writes, have shrunk, "reduced to individual choice" with little if any reflection on the public good. Through the proliferation of "think tanks" and use of "area experts," figures inside and outside of government have been able to often cloak their true identity and motives behind veils of "unaccountability.""

Bloomberg News, Unaccountable named in Bloomberg survey of 2014 favorite reads:
William White, chairman of the Economic and Development Review Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development:
"Wedel documents an alarming increase in the number of individuals and associations who, while purportedly acting in the public's interest, seem actually to be pursuing their own objectives." More...
Bloomberg News, December 12, 2014.

• Kai Chen, "Untold stories of elite power brokers," Journal of Political Power, vol. 8, issue 2, 2015. (Read in PDF)
"Elite corruption is by no means a new problem, and in her new book titled Unaccountable, Janine R Wedel acknowledges that this has long been 'committed by public-sector bureaucrats, with the typical act of corruption being a bribe'(p. 91). The focus of Unaccountable, however, is new forms of corruption and how this gives rise to pervasive public mistrust, evident in countries as different as Brazil, Turkey, Ukraine, and the US."

• Ray Locker, "Book highlights USA TODAY work, pervasive corruption," USA Today, November 28, 2014:
"Too often, [Wedel] wrote in her book Unaccountable, Americans don't know that the decisions made by the government, economists and academics are swayed by financial interests, not the facts."

• A.R. Sansderson, "Review of Unaccountable: how elite power brokers corrupt our finances, freedom, and security," Choice Reviews Online, vol. 52, no. 5, January 2015:
"What do corruption and unaccountability mean in today's world? The subtitle of this book mirrors anthropologist Wedel's subtitle in her previous work, Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market (2009). In a world increasingly dominated by gossip columns and television reality shows, from the New York Post's Page Six to TMZ and tweets, the author's chapter titles seemingly fit: two of them, "High Priests and the Gospel of Anti-Corruption" and "Spies, Company Men, and the Melded Company-State," complement book jacket descriptors such as "groundbreaking exposé" and "chilling." With 100 pages of endnotes (but no bibliography) and an index largely composed of a names list, the book resembles more the work of an investigative reporter than that of a scholar. Dramatis personae are the usual suspects: think tanks, retired military, prominent economists and government officials, and talking heads from Wall Street and K Street. For political junkies and those in the Left and Right tails, there will be plenty to like in this book that will confirm their worst fears. The book is engaging-and frightening."

• Robert Winship, "Mason professor holds rich and powerful accountable in new book," March 19, 2015.

Interviews:

• "Liberals Must Quit the Bicoastal Bubble: Well known American social anthropologist Janine R. Wedel on the factors that led to Donald Trump's victory in US presidential elections." Pranay Sharma interview with Janine Wedel, Outlook India, November 28, 2016.

• "How Hillary's Latest Email Scandal Fuels Trump's Candidacy." Joan Brunwasser interview with Janine Wedel, OpEdNews, November 4, 2016.

• "'New Corruption' Scholar Says FIFA Scandal Is Old School." Buzz McClain interview with Janine Wedel, Mason News, George Mason University, June 9, 2015.

• "The New Corrupt Elite That Is Running Our Economy." Lynn Stuart Parramore interview with Janine Wedel, Truthout, May 8, 2015.

• "'The Buck Stops Nowhere': Meet the Corrupt New Elite Running (and Ruining) Our Economy." Lynn Stuart Parramore interview with Janine Wedel, Salon, May 7, 2015.

• "Want to Fight New Forms of Financial Corruption? Hire Women." Lynn Stuart Parramore interview with Janine Wedel, The Huffington Post, May 5, 2015.

• "The New Corrupt Elite that is Running Our Economy." Lynn Stuart Parramore interview with Janine Wedel, AlterNet, May 5, 2015.

Excerpts:

• "The propagandists have won: What Fox News and the pornography revolution have in common," Salon, December 21, 2014.

• "How We Can Fix Broken Institutions," Medium.com.

• "They won, we lost: How corruption became America's national past time," Salon, October 11, 2014.

Quoted In (selected):

• Jesse Hyde, "The rise and fall of the defense contractor who bought off Navy brass with meals, liquor, women and bribes," RollingStone, March 11, 2018.

• Callie Crossley, "Vote Of Confidence: Can Our Civic Institutions Restore Public Trust?," WGBH, 89.7 FM, December 2, 2016.

• Uri Baruchin, "This Year's Political Campaigns Hold An Ugly Mirror To Marketing," The Huffington Post (UK), November 11, 2016.

• Piotr Ozieranski and Lawrence King, "More accountability needed in how drugs are priced and reimbursed," The Conversation, May 23, 2016.

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