Seminar - Meet the Flexians: How Today's Top Power Brokers Fuse Politics and Markets

The rise of a new type of flexible power broker is a signature feature of our era. As they swivel through roles in government, corporate, think tank, and media organizations, the influence of these players resides not so much in formal institutions, but in social networks that operate in and around and connect them.

Thursday, October 10, 2013 - 09:30 to 11:30

Meet the Flexians: How Today's Top Power Brokers Fuse Politics and Markets

The rise of a new type of flexible power broker is a signature feature of our era.  As they swivel through roles in government, corporate, think tank, and media organizations, the influence of these players resides not so much in formal institutions, but in social networks that operate in and around and connect them.  Involved in fields from finance to foreign policy, the players test both the rules of democratic states (accountability) and of the “free market” (competition).  Their influence derives from their ability to blend and blur the boundaries of official and private, bureaucracy and market—boundaries that have long defined both the democratic state and the free market.  Thus theoretical frameworks that assume the opposition of markets and politics are ill-equipped to illuminate how relationships between them are organized. Studying these relationships requires frameworks that take players and organizations as the units of analysis and explores how players connect with each other and with organizations.

Speaker: Janine R. Wedel

Janine R. Wedel is a university professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, with a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.  Her publications include two award-winning books: Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market (2009) and Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (2001).  A public intellectual, she has written for the New York Times, Financial Times, and many other outlets.

The lecture is organized by Christina Garsten, Mikkel Flyverbom and Adrienne Sörbom, in conjunction with the workshop Political Affairs.

Registration is necessary

Please send an email to Conference.icm@cbs.dk with your name and position.

The page was last edited by: Department of Management, Society and Communication // 10/20/2021