In her book,
Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market,
[3][4][5][6] Wedel explores the nontransparent ways in which, in her view, many of today's top power brokers operate. She explores what she suggests are the rules of the game these contemporary power elites are writing to benefit themselves and their
social networks, and what she sees as the negative implications for democracy, the rule of law and the free market. Her work assesses what she claims is the significant extent to which the new rules take us beyond traditional corruption and conflict-of-interest — and into an accountability-challenged era.
Labeling the new breed of U.S. and international political operators "flexians," Wedel finds these ultra-nimble players moving seamlessly among roles in government, business, think tanks, and media, advancing their own personal agendas and those of their associates (not the public and private organizations they are paid to serve), at the expense of democracy and accountability. Examples include retired four-star army general
Barry R. McCaffrey and financial advisor
Larry Summers, among many others, both foreign and domestic.
By a flexian wearing several hats simultaneously (think tanker, retired military or government official, corporate representative, so-called "objective" expert), as did Barry R. McCaffrey in the run-up to the Iraq war, Wedel claims to show how a flexian can gain extraordinary insider knowledge and influence in order to custom-tailor a version of the "truth" benefitting the highest monetary bidder. In this way, flexians not only "co-opt public policy agendas" but "craft policy with their benefactors' purposes (monetary profit) in mind."
Some flexians work together in what Wedel calls "flex nets," close-knit networks that guard and share information. Like flexians, flex nets arose to fill a new niche. Wedel writes that, just as flexians cannot be reduced to mere lobbyists, neither can flex nets be reduced to interest groups, lobbies, old-boy networks, mafias, and other such groupings in society, government, and business. Like interest groups and lobbies, flex nets serve a long-established function in the modern state, mediating between official and private. And, like the mafia networks, flex nets have their tentacles in both state and private organizations. But, unlike mafia, many of their activities are not secret, but open, as members of flex nets make their case all over the airwaves. Thus while flex nets incorporate important aspects of other such groupings, they also differ from them in crucial ways—and those ways are precisely what make flex nets less visible and less accountable. Examples include the dozen or so players around neo-conservative cold-warrior Richard Perle, some of whom have long been working together in various incarnations for as long as 30 years to change American foreign policy according to their own ideology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janine_R._Wedel#Shadow_Elite
