A deep state (from Turkish: derin devlet), also known as a state within a state,
is a type of governance made up of networks of power operating
independently of a state's political leadership in pursuit of their own
agenda and goals. In popular usage, the term carries an overwhelmingly
negative context although this does not reflect scholarly understanding.
Potential sources for deep state organization include organs of state, such as the armed forces or public authorities (intelligence agencies, police, secret police, administrative agencies, and government bureaucracy). A deep state can also take the form of entrenched career civil servants acting in a non-conspiratorial discretionary manner to further their agency mission or the public good, sometimes in contravention of the current political administration.
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 or programmatic
objectives. It can operate in opposition to the agenda of elected
officials, by obstructing, resisting, and subverting their policies,
conditions and directives.
Etymology and historical usage
The modern concept of a deep state is associated with Turkey,
a presumed secret network of military officers and their civilian
allies trying to preserve the secular order based on the ideas of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from 1923. Similar ideas are older. The Greek language κράτος ἐν κράτει, (kratos en kratei) was later adopted into Latin as imperium in imperio or status in statu).
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.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the deep state was also used to refer to government-owned corporations or private companies that act independently of regulatory or governmental control.
Scholarly understanding
Within social science in general and political science specifically, scholars distinguish between positivism ("what is") and normativism ("what should be").
Because political science deals with topics which are inherently
political and often controversial, this distinction between "what is"
(positive) and "what should be" (normative) is critical because it
allows diverse people with different preferred worlds to discuss the
causes, workings, and effects of policies and social structures.
Thus, while readers may disagree on the normative qualities of the
"deep state" (i.e. whether it is good or bad), it is still possible to
study the positive qualities (i.e. its origins and effects) without
requiring a normative judgement.
In the field of political science, the normative pop culture concept of the deep state is studied within the literature on the state. Current literature on the state generally traces a lineage to Bringing the State Back In (1985) and remains an active body of scholarly research as of 2020. Within this literature, the state is understood as both venue (a set of rules under which others act and interact) as well as actor
(with its own agenda). An example of a non-conspiratorial version of
the 'state as actor' from the empirical scholarly literature would be
"doing truth to power" (as a play on speaking truth to power, which is
what journalists often aspire to do) as studied by Todd La Porte.
Under this dual understanding, the conspiratorial version of the deep
state concept would be one version of the 'state as actor' while the
non-conspiratorial version would be another version of the 'state as
actor.'
The fundamental takeaway from the scholarly literature on the
dual nature of the state is that the 'state as actor' (deep state) is a
functional characteristic of all states which has effects that may be normatively judged as "good" or "bad" in different times, places, and contexts. From a positivist scientific
perspective, the state-as-venue, colloquially known as the "deep
state," simply "is" and should not be assumed to be "bad" by default.
Intellectual history of concept
While the state has been one of the longest-studied topics in political science, sociology, and economics, the rise of new institutionalism(s) in the 1970s brought to the forefront the dual nature of the state as both venue (a set of rules under which others act and interact) as well as actor (with its own agenda). This new institutionalism stands in contrast to the immediately prior behavioral revolution
which focused on society-centered explanations for political outcomes
where the state was primarily or solely seen as an arena where interest
groups vied for political power.
State-as-actor vs. state-as-venue
The normative pop culture concept of the deep state is distinguished from the classical concept of the state
within the scholarly literature on the state by the dual nature of the
state as both an actor (which pursues certain ends) and a venue (which
structures interaction between actors).
In this dyad, the "deep state" is called the state-as-actor while the
classical concept of the state is called the state-as-venue.
State-as-venue
To distinguish the traditional, formal processes of the state from the state-as-actor, the state-as-venue view reflects the state
serving as an arena in which actors act. Under this concept, the state
is seen as a passive organizational structure within which societal
actors (e.g. interest groups, classes) compete for power, influence, and resources.
State-as-actor
The state-as-actor concept subsumes the activities described by the pop culture
concept of the deep state by focusing on all forms of state goal
formation and pursuit which are independent of external societal actors
(e.g. interest groups, classes).
Positivist political science and sociology further break this concept down into state autonomy and state capacity. State autonomy refers to a state's ability to pursue interests insulated from external social and economic influence. State capacity
reflects the state's skills, knowledge, tools, equipment, and other
resources needed to do their jobs competently. Together, autonomy and
capacity are necessary for states to implement all policy including that
delegated by political leaders, court decisions, and agency or ministry programmatic as well as the subversive or clandestine ends suggested by the popular usage of the "deep state" concept.
Popular understanding
In the United States after the 2016 United States presidential election,
the term "deep state" has become much more widely used as pejorative
term with an overwhelmingly negative definition by both the new Donald Trump administration as well as the wider news media. In the United States news media and social media usage during the Donald Trump administration, the term deep state has come to be an all-purpose scapegoat for elements of the United States federal civil service which the administration opposes.
Differences from scholarly understanding
In the field of political science, the normative pop culture concept of the deep state is studied within the literature on the state. Within this literature, the state is understood as both venue (a set of rules under which others act and interact) as well as actor (with its own agenda).
Under this dual understanding, the conspiratorial version of the deep
state concept would be one version of the 'state as actor' while the
non-conspiratorial version would be another version of the 'state as
actor.' The fundamental takeaway from the scholarly literature on the
dual nature of the state is that the 'state as actor' (deep state) is a
functional characteristic of all states which has effects that may be normatively judged as "good" or "bad" in different times, places, and contexts. From a positivist scientific
perspective, the state-as-venue, colloquially known as the "deep
state," simply "is" and should not be assumed to be "bad" by default.
Cases
Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia
The Soviet secret police have been frequently described by 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.
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 the United States of America, the "deep state" is used to describe
"a hybrid association of government elements and parts of top-level
industry and finance that is effectively able to govern the United
States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process." Intelligence agencies such as the CIA have been accused by elements of the Donald Trump administration of attempting to thwart its policy goals. Writing for The New York Times,
the analyst Issandr El Amani warned against the "growing discord
between a president and his bureaucratic rank-and-file", while analysts
of the column The Interpreter wrote:
Though the deep state is sometimes discussed as a shadowy conspiracy, it helps to think of it instead as a political conflict between a nation’s leader and its governing institutions.
— Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, The Interpreter
According to David Gergen, quoted in Time magazine, the term has been appropriated by Steve Bannon and Breitbart News and other supporters of the Trump Administration in order to delegitimize the critics of the current presidency. The 'deep state' theory has been dismissed by authors for The New York Times and New York Observer.
Venezuela
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.
Italy
The most famous Italian case is Propaganda Due. 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, in the period of its management by the entrepreneur Licio Gelli
assumed deviated forms with respect to the statutes of the Freemasonry
and subversive towards the Italian legal order. The P2 was suspended by
the GOI on 26 July 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.
Israel
In May 2020, an article in Haaretz describes how people meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
"have heard lengthy speeches [...] that even though he has been elected
repeatedly, in reality, the country is controlled by a 'deep state.'"
