Deep state

For other uses, see Deep state (disambiguation).

"State within a state" redirects here.

"imperium in imperio" redirects here.

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A deep state (from Turkish: derin devlet), also known as a state within a state, connotes a form of clandestine government made up of hidden or covert networks of power operating independently of a state's elected officials, in pursuit of their own agenda and goals. Government entities that might be part of a deep state include such organs of state as the armed forces or public authorities (intelligence agencies, police, secret police, administrative agencies, and government bureaucracy). The term itself is used variously to describe different phenomena. Deep state can refer to the actions of entrenched, career civil servants acting to further their own interests. In this case the intent of a deep state can include continuity of the state itself, job security for its members, enhanced power and authority, and the pursuit of ideological objectives.

In addition to promoting their own personal agenda, it can also be used to describe these state actors who operate in opposition to the agenda of elected officials, by obstructing, resisting, and subverting their policies, conditions and directives, or government-owned corporations or private companies that act independently of regulatory or governmental control.

However, deep state is most commonly used is to describe some form of conspiracy designed to thwart the will of the people. In this usage, deep state refers to an organized cabal of state actors who have their own political agenda and seek to promote it in opposition to the directives of the elected officials. Their actions are designed to resist or sabotage the policies pursued by the elected officials. This conspiratorial notion of a deep state bears a striking similarity to that of a shadow government with one major difference. A shadow government refers to an organization or group of non-state actors that are behind the scenes directing the actions or "pulling the strings" of the government officials. The notion of a deep state suggests that the actors are part of the government bureaucracy who are promoting their own power, or an ideologically driven agenda that differs from those of the office holders.

Theoretical Antecedents

The concept of a deep state has several historical antecedents. Among them are the notion of a shadow government (a force operating in the shadows that controls the government), a state within a state (a group within the government that actually runs things)

Shadow Government and State Within a State

The idea of a power behind the political head of state has been around for a long time. Historically, the idea of a shadow government of prominent, wealthy individuals who control the government's actions for their own benefit stretches back to the Middle Ages with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. During the Enlightenment the Illuminati became another group accused of being a shadow government. The Freemasons, a secret society, were also frequently the object of suspicion. In modern times, such groups as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group have also been accused of operating as a shadow government.

The idea of the deep state bears similarities to the concept of a shadow government with one significant difference. A shadow government is generally understood to be composed of non-state actors. The deep state by definition is a cabal of unelected state actors. The term itself suggests that there is a state within the state that is able to pursue their own interests and thwart the will of the elected officials. The Latinterm imperium in imperio can be found in the political and ethical writings of Baruch Spinoza. It appears to be a translation of the Greek language κράτος ἐν κράτει, (kratos en kratei) . However, Spinoza's argument is a critique of the notion that humans operate by their own laws and not those that govern the rest of nature. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries political debate surrounding the separation of church and state often revolved around the perception that if left unchecked the Church might turn into a kind of State within a State, an illegitimate encroachment of the State's natural civil power. However, it would not be until the rise of the modern, administrative state that the idea that a government within the government would develop.

The Administrative State

In the western world, the 19th century saw a rise in the professional civil service. "Prior to 1871, the president could select federal employees. He naturally selected loyalists who would do his bidding. Occasionally, he also would hire people as a political favor to solidify his base. And on occasion, he or one of his staff would sell positions to those who wanted them for a host of reasons, frequently to make money from the positions they were given.

Carl Schurz, a German-born Union Army general, proposed the idea of a nonpolitical civil service. It would be both a meritocracy and a technocracy – not his words, but his idea. Civil servants would be selected by competitive exams measuring their skills for the job. And the job of civil servants would be to implement laws passed by Congress in the manner the president wanted them enforced.

Previously, all government employees – save those from the two other branches of government – served at the pleasure of the president. This was no longer true, and it meant that a civil servant could not be fired on political whim, but rather with cause, such as failing to do his job competently or refusing to obey instructions from the office of the president."

The rise of the civil service would coincide with the emphasis on government efficiency and a new, more expansive role for government during the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th century. One of the leaders of this reform movement was future President Woodrow Wilson, whose studies of the state helped promote the rise of the administrative state and permanent bureaucracies to address social and political problems. The result was a rise in the development of government bureaucracies and the growth of government employees. This trend was not limited to the U. S. In Germany, Max Weber gave his famous lecture on "Politics as a Vocation" in 1919. Weber, like Wilson, contributed to the rise of the administrative state.

A natural tension has always existed between the elected officials and the bureaucracy.

"But a deeper concept was at work here that went beyond the United States, originating in Europe. That idea mandated a separation between the political state and the administrative state. As the state acquired more responsibility and its tasks became more complex, government administration had to be taken away from the politicians, who were unskilled at the job. This was in many ways the origins of technocracy, a doctrine that stated that a government run by experts broadly guided by their political masters was the only way to correct a democratic republic’s shortcomings. Elected politicians provided direction, while technocrats provided expertise, advice and continuity."

Historical Precedents

Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia

Although the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union exerted control over the "commanding heights" of Soviet power, the Soviet secret police have been described by some historians as a "state within a state." According to Yevgenia Albats, most KGB leaders, including Lavrenty Beria, Yuri Andropov, and Vladimir Kryuchkov, always competed for power with the Communist Party and manipulated communist leaders.

According to Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov in 1991, "It is not true that the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party is a supreme power. The Political Bureau is only a shadow of the real supreme power that stands behind the chair of every Bureau member ... The real power thinks, acts and dictates for all of us. The name of the power is NKVD—MVD—MGB. The Stalin regime is based not on the Soviets, Party ideals, the power of the Political Bureau or Stalin's personality, but on the organization and the techniques of the Soviet political police where Stalin plays the role of the first policeman." However, he also noted that "To say that NKVD is ‘a state within the state’ means to belittle the importance of the NKVD because this question allows two forces – a normal state and a supernormal NKVD – whereas the only force is Chekism".

According to Ion Mihai Pacepa in 2006, "In the Soviet Union, the KGB was a state within a state. Now former KGB officers are running the state. They have custody of the country's 6,000 nuclear weapons, entrusted to the KGB in the 1950s, and they now also manage the strategic oil industry renationalized by Putin. The KGB successor, rechristened FSB, still has the right to electronically monitor the population, control political groups, search homes and businesses, infiltrate the federal government, create its own front enterprises, investigate cases, and run its own prison system. The Soviet Union had one KGB officer for every 428 citizens. Putin's Russia has one FSB-ist for every 297 citizens.

Another example from the early modern period is Turkey. The term deep state is a translation of the Turkish term (from Turkish: derin devlet). The term referred to the secret network established in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,

The deep state is alleged to be a group of influential anti-democratic coalitions within the Turkish political system, composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services (domestic and foreign), the Turkish military, security agencies, the judiciary, and mafia. For those who believe in its existence, the political agenda of the deep state involves an allegiance to nationalism, corporatism, and state interests. Violence and other means of pressure have historically been employed in a largely covert manner to manipulate political and economic elites and ensure specific interests are met within the seemingly democratic framework of the political landscape. Former president Süleyman Demirel says that the outlook and behavior of the (predominantly military) elites who constitute the deep state, and work to uphold national interests, are shaped by an entrenched belief, dating to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, that the country is always "on the brink".

In 19th century Italy a scandal that became known as the Propaganda Due erupted. Propaganda Due (better known as P2) was a Masonic lodge belonging to the Grand Orient of Italy (GOI). It was founded in 1877 with the name of Masonic Propaganda. While under the management by the entrepreneur Licio Gelli, it became embroiled in a banking controversy that nearly took down the Vatican Bank. It deviated from the statutes of the Freemasonry and was determined to be subversive towards the Italian legal order. The P2 was suspended by the GOI on July 2, 1976; subsequently, the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the P2 Masonic lodge under the presidency of Minister Tina Anselmi concluded the P2 case denouncing the lodge as a real "criminal organization" and "subversive". It was dissolved with a special law, the n. 17 of 25 January 1982.

Cases

Chechnya

According to Julia Ioffe, the Russian Federal Subject of Chechnya, under leadership of Ramzan Kadyrov, has become a state within a state.

United Kingdom

The Civil Service has been called a "deep state" by senior politicians in the United Kingdom. Tony Blair said of the Civil Service, "You cannot underestimate how much they believe it's their job to actually run the country and to resist the changes put forward by people they dismiss as 'here today, gone tomorrow' politicians. They genuinely see themselves as the true guardians of the national interest, and think that their job is simply to wear you down and wait you out." The efforts of the Civil Service to frustrate elected politicians is the subject of the popular satiric BBC TV comedy, Yes Minister.

United States of America

In a Foreign Affairs journal article and subsequent expansion in a law review, UCLA Law professor Jon D. Michaels rejects "the premise of an American deep state” in a defense of what he terms the 'administrative state' against Trump's attempts to “deconstruct" it. Michaels argues that the concept of the 'deep state' is more relevant to developing governments such as Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey, "where shadowy elites in the military and government ministries have been known to countermand or simply defy democratic directives" than the United States "where governmental power structures are almost entirely transparent".

Venezuela

Further information: Cartel of the Suns

The Cartel of the Suns, a group of high-ranking officials within the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela, has been described as "a series of often competing networks buried deep within the Chavista regime". Following the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, the Bolivarian government initially embezzled until there were no more funds to embezzle, which required them to turn to drug trafficking. President Hugo Chávez made partnerships with the Colombian leftist militia Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and his successor Nicolás Maduro continued the process, promoting officials to high-ranking positions after they were accused of drug trafficking.

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Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Deep state  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Deep state"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.