Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

The Clintons emerged onto the public stage via their political careers, which included two terms as President and First Lady of the United States as well as Hilary’s tenure as Secretary of State and multiple attempts to be elected president. Giridharadas, however, focuses on the Clintons’ (especially Bill’s) work in the world of philanthropy, economic development, and other aspects of socioeconomic improvement.

Through the Clinton Global Initiative and other means, the Clintons have partnered with business leaders and other elites to foster market-driven, business-friendly, win-win approaches to solving global problems. Giridharadas critiques their practices, examining their shortcomings, particularly in light of Hillary’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election. Like similar ventures, Giridharadas argues, the Clinton’s projects haven’t delivered on their promise to help the less fortunate but have instead served to promote neo-liberal policies that favor elites.

Amy Cuddy is a social psychologist whose scholarly work has focused on gender issues, stereotypes, body language, and other topics. Her professional experiences include time as a professor at the Harvard Business School. In addition, Cuddy has become renowned as a public speaker and author of best-selling books on topics related to her academic research but aimed at general readers.

For Giridharadas, Cuddy exemplifies thought leadership. She has a clear background as an expert in her scholarly field but has also managed to break through and reach general audiences through her popular books and talks. Elites and business leaders have embraced these works. However, since Cuddy’s more general-audience work is based on diluted versions of her scholarly work and tends to ignore topics controversial to the MarketWorld (like inequality), Giridharadas sees Cuddy work as a prime example of how the thought leadership embraced by elites is biased to conform to their established beliefs and practices.

Hilary Cohen was born into a well-to-do family but was committed to doing work to increase equality and opportunity for all people regardless of their background or status. She entered Georgetown University as an idealistic student and was deeply affected by studying the liberal arts. After graduation, Cohen was convinced to take a job with the consultancy firm McKinsey because it seemed to promise her the opportunity to create real-world change by using approaches from the world of business.

During her time at McKinsey, however, Cohen became disenchanted and felt that that promise hadn’t been delivered upon. She continues to work within her field, having taken a position with the Obama Foundation, but remains unsure of the best way to foster real change in the world.

Sean Hinton’s professional career began with the study of musicology. He was led to study ethnomusicology in Mongolia and eventually decided to stay in the country. He used his knowledge of Mongolia to work as an economic liaison. When he finally decided to leave Mongolia, this work experience led him to work as a consultant.

Like Hilary Cohen, however, Hinton is suspicious of the narrowly focused methods of McKinsey and other consulting groups, which he finds to be at odds with the more open approaches to problem solving he learned as a musicologist and economic liaison working closely with individuals. He was eventually appointed to head billionaire philanthropist George Soros’s Economic Advancement Program but continues to question the idea that market-friendly, business-led approaches are the best way to solve all world problems.