Date: 17 May 2018
Time: 10:00-12:00
Welcome to Janine Wedel's inaugural lecture as a Kerstin Hesselgrens Visiting Professor: The Role of Elite Corruption in Today’s Illiberalism: Trump as “Trickster,” Why Trumpism is No Accident, and the Corruption Coming Now
This talk, by social anthropologist and public policy professor Janine R. Wedel, examines how the activities of a novel breed of “shadow” or “influence elites” have helped corrode civic trust and fueled the surge in income inequality. Partly as a result, many citizens in the United States and Europe (notably Poland and Hungary) have turned to demagogic figures who flout both the norms of the rigged system they seek to smash, and the Weltanschauung of the establishment. The talk will explore why people turn to them, Donald Trump’s role as “trickster,” and how Trump and other taboo-breaking, system-busting leaders govern once in power.
Janine R. Wedel, a social anthropologist and University Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, writes about governance, corruption, “shadow” and influence elites, and accountability. A public intellectual, her most recent book is Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom, and Politics and Created an Outsider Class (2016 &2014). Other prizewinning books include 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).
Time: Thursday, May 17th, kl. 10.00–12.00
Place: Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13 i Stockholm
