Janine R. Wedel

Janine R. Wedel, a social anthropologist, is a recognized pioneer in the study of power networks, elite influence, complex corruption, shadow elites, informal governance regimes, privatization of policy, and weaponized corruption—with area foci primarily in the United States, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Ukraine. A Distinguished University Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government, she is the first anthropologist to win the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, an honor typically reserved for political scientists (recipients include Samuel Huntington and Mikhail Gorbachev). Wedel’s work has been popularized through high-impact and prize-winning books, including Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom, and Politics and Created an Outsider Class (2016); Shadow Elite (2009); and Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (2001). Her forthcoming book on elite influence will be published by Oxford University Press. A five-time Fulbright fellow, Wedel also won major awards from the National Science Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Social Science Research Council, German Marshall Fund, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, New America Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Institute for New Economic Thinking, among others. Her work has been favorably reviewed and quoted in the New York Review of Books, Economist, New York Times, Newsweek, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Investor's Business Daily, New Republic, Foreign Affairs, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Publishers Weekly, among many others, and has been reviewed or translated into more than a dozen languages. She has been invited to speak at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, MIT, Chicago, Berkeley, Oxford, Central European University (Budapest), Institute of Social Studies (the Hague), United Nations University (Helsinki), Freie Universität (Berlin), TEDx (Berlin), Bruno Kreisky Institute (Vienna), European Journalism Observatory (Lugano), New America Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, National Press Club, and National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, among others. A public intellectual, her television and radio appearances include MSNBC, CNN, PBS's Frontline, C-Span, Al-Jazeera, BBC, Deutsch Welle, and NPR. She is cofounder and past president of the Association for the Anthropology of Policy (ASAP), a section affiliated with the American Anthropological Association.

Wedel is currently the recipient of major grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Swedish Research Council, and heads a work package in the 15-consortia EU Horizon grant/project BridgeGap. In all, she leads or co-leads teams of researchers who are studying complex corruption, networks, undue influencing, or corruption-related issues such as offshoring.

Recent Publications and Appearances:

• “The Corruption is the Point.” Project Syndicate, Nov. 28, 2025.
• “How to Bring Down a Storied Think-Tank? Humiliation Works.” The Hill, May 28, 2025. 
• Interview with Deutsche Welle: “Trump/Musk: Is the Bromance Over?” June 6, 2025
  “Reconstruction Aid to Ukraine.” VOX EU, June 14, 2023
• “When Civilizational Models Collide.” Project Syndicate, Mar. 3, 2023.
• “It’s 2020. Do You Know Who Your Government Is Serving?” Zócalo Public Square, Dec. 10, 2020. 
• “New Directions in Anti-Corruption: THE MAPPING METHOD.” ACE Programme, Dec. 2020.
• Institute for Futures Studies Inaugural Lecture, May 29, 2018
• “From Power Elites to Influence Elites.” Theory, Culture & Society, July 10, 2017.
• UNACCOUNTABLE: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom, and Politics and Created an Outsider Class (Pegasus; updated paperback, Oct. 2016). Unaccountable was included in Bloomberg’s survey of favorite reads of 2014.
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Paris. Talk: “Unaccountable: How Elites Corrupt Finance, Freedom and Security,” invited by the OECD Chief of Staff, G20 Sherpa, and Special Counsellor to the Secretary-General, Oct. 21, 2015.
• Editors’ Pick: “Beyond Bribery: It’s time to start fighting the most insidious form of corruption — the kind that’s legal,” Foreign Policy, Feb. 17, 2015.