A corporate group or group of companies is a collection of parent and subsidiary corporations that function as a single economic entity through a common source of control. The concept of a group is frequently used in tax law, accounting
and (less frequently) company law to attribute the rights and duties of
one member of the group to another or the whole. If the corporations
are engaged in entirely different businesses, the group is called a conglomerate. The forming of corporate groups usually involves consolidation via mergers and acquisitions,
although the group concept focuses on the instances in which the merged
and acquired corporate entities remain in existence rather than the
instances in which they are dissolved by the parent. The group may be
owned by a holding company which may have no actual operations.
In Germany, where a sophisticated law of the "concern" has been developed, the law of corporate groups is a fundamental aspect of its corporate law. Many other European jurisdictions also have a similar approach, while Commonwealth countries and the United States adhere to a formalistic doctrine that refuses to "pierce the corporate veil": corporations are treated outside tax and accounting as wholly separate legal entities.
Legal independence
A corporate group is composed of companies. The general rule is that a
company is a separate legal entity from its shareholders, that is the
shareholder's liability for the subsidiary's debts is limited to the
value of the shares, and the shareholders cannot be required to perform the company's obligations.
However, some jurisdictions create exceptions to this rule. For example, Germany has created affiliated enterprise law
which provides situations in which one company is liable for the debts
of another company. In New Zealand, the Companies Act provides that the
assets of related companies may be pooled to pay the creditors if one of
the companies is liquidated. However, the circumstances in which this
power will be exercised are very narrow.
Leff defines business group
as a group of companies that does business in different markets under
common administrative or financial control whose members are linked by
relations of interpersonal trust on the basis of similar personal ethnic
or commercial background. One method of defining a group is as a
cluster of legally distinct firms with a managerial relationship. The relationship between the firms in a group may be formal or informal. A keiretsu is one type of business group. A concern is another.
Encarnation refers to Indian business houses, emphasizing multiple forms of ties among group members. Powell and Smith-Doerr state that a business group is a network of firms that regularly collaborate over a long time period. Granovetter
argues that business groups refers to an intermediate level of binding,
excluding on the one hand a set of firms bound merely by short-term
alliances and on the other a set of firms legally consolidated into a
single unit. Williamson claims that business groups lie between markets and hierarchies; this is further worked out by Douma & Schreuder. Khanna and Rivkin
suggest that business groups are typically not legal constructs though
some regulatory bodies have attempted to codify a definition. In the United Arab Emirates, a business group can also be known as a trade association. Typical examples are Adidas Group or Icelandair Group.
Headquarters of the Rhenish-Westphalian Coal Syndicate, Germany (at times the best known cartel in the world), around 1910
A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude
with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the
market. Cartels are usually associations in the same sphere of business,
and thus an alliance of rivals. Most jurisdictions consider it
anti-competitive behavior. Cartel behavior includes price fixing, bid rigging, and reductions in output. The doctrine in economics that analyzes cartels is cartel theory. Cartels are distinguished from other forms of collusion or anti-competitive organization such as corporate mergers.
Etymology
The word cartel comes from the Italian word cartello, which means a "leaf of paper" or "placard". The Italian word became cartel in Middle French,
which was borrowed into English. It’s current use in Mexican and
Colombian drug-trafficking world comes from Spanish ‘’cartel’’. In
English, the word was originally used for a written agreement between
warring nations to regulate the treatment and exchange of prisoners.
History
Cartels have existed since ancient times. Guilds in the European Middle Ages, associations of craftsmen or merchants of the same trade, have been regarded as cartel-like. Tightly organized sales cartels in the mining industry of the late Middle Ages, like the 1301 salt syndicate in France and Naples, or the Alaun cartel of 1470 between the Papal State and Naples. Both unions had common sales organizations for overall production called the Societas Communis Vendicionis [Common Sales Society].
Laissez-faire
(liberal) economic conditions dominated Europe and North America in the
18th and 19th centuries. Around 1870, cartels first appeared in
industries formerly under free-market conditions.
Although cartels existed in all economically developed countries, the
core area of cartel activities was in central Europe. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary were nicknamed the "lands of the cartels". Cartels were also widespread in the United States during the period of robber barons and industrial trusts.
The creation of cartels increased globally after World War I. They became the leading form of market organization, particularly in Europe and Japan. In the 1930s, authoritarian regimes such as Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, and Spain under Franco used cartels to organize their planned economies.
Between the late 19th century and around 1945, the United States was
ambivalent about cartels and trusts. There were periods of both
opposition to market concentration and relative tolerance of cartels. During World War II, the United States strictly turned away from cartels. After 1945, American-promoted market liberalism led to a worldwide cartel ban, where cartels continue to be obstructed in an increasing number of countries and circumstances.
Types
Cartels have many structures and functions. Typologies have emerged to distinguish distinct forms of cartels:
Selling or buying cartels unite against the cartel's customers
or suppliers, respectively. The former type is more frequent than the
latter.
Domestic cartels only have members from one country, whereas international cartels have members from more than one country.
There have been full-fledged international cartels that have comprised
the whole world, such as the international steel cartel of the period
between World War I and II.
Price cartels engage in price fixing, normally to raise prices for a commodity above the competitive price level. The loosest form of a price cartel can be recognized in tacit collusion, wherein smaller enterprises follow the actions of a market leader.
Quota cartels distribute proportional shares of the market to their members.
Common sales cartels sell their joint output through a central selling agency (in French: comptoir). They are also known as syndicates (French: syndicat industriel).
Territorial cartels distribute districts of the market to be used only by individual participants, which act as monopolists.
Submission cartels control offers given to public tenders. They use bid rigging:
bidders for a tender agree on a bid price. They then do not bid in
unison, or share the return from the winning bid among themselves.
Technology and patent
cartels share knowledge about technology or science within themselves
while they limit the information from outside individuals.
Standardization
cartels implement common standards for sold or purchased products. If
the members of a cartel produce different sorts or grades of a good,
conversion factors are applied to calculate the value of the respective
output.
Compulsory cartels,
also called "forced cartels", are established or maintained by external
pressure. Voluntary cartels are formed by the free will of their
participants.
Effects
A
survey of hundreds of published economic studies and legal decisions of
antitrust authorities found that the median price increase achieved by
cartels in the last 200 years is about 23 percent. Private international
cartels (those with participants from two or more nations) had an
average price increase of 28 percent, whereas domestic cartels averaged
18 percent. Less than 10 percent of all cartels in the sample failed to
raise market prices.
In general, cartel agreements are economically unstable in that there is an incentive
for members to cheat by selling at below the cartel's agreed price or
selling more than the cartel's production quotas. Many cartels that
attempt to set product prices are unsuccessful in the long term.
Empirical studies of 20th-century cartels have determined that the mean
duration of discovered cartels is from 5 to 8 years.
Once a cartel is broken, the incentives to form a new cartel return,
and the cartel may be re-formed. Publicly known cartels that do not
follow this business cycle include, by some accounts, OPEC.
Cartels often practice price fixing internationally. When the
agreement to control prices is sanctioned by a multilateral treaty or
protected by national sovereignty, no antitrust actions may be
initiated. OPEC countries partially control the price of oil, and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) fixes prices for international airline tickets while the organization is excepted from antitrust law.
Organization
Drawing
upon research on organizational misconduct, scholars in economics,
sociology and management have studied the organization of cartels.
They have paid attention to the way cartel participants work together
to conceal their activities from antitrust authorities. Even more than
reaching efficiency, participating firms need to ensure that their
collective secret is maintained.
It has also been argued that the diversity of the participants (e.g.,
age and size of the firms) influences their ability to coordinate to
avoid being detected.
Cartel theory versus antitrust concept
The scientific analysis of cartels is based on cartel theory. It was pioneered in 1883 by the Austrian economist Friedrich Kleinwächter and in its early stages was developed mainly by German-speaking scholars.
These scholars tended to regard cartels as an acceptable part of the
economy. At the same time, American lawyers increasingly turned against trade restrictions, including all cartels. The Sherman act,
which impeded the formation and activities of cartels, was passed in
the United States in 1890. The American viewpoint, supported by
activists like Thurman Arnold and Harley M. Kilgore, eventually prevailed when governmental policy in Washington could have a larger impact in World War II.
Legislation
Because cartels are likely to have an impact on market positions, they are subjected to competition law, which is executed by governmental competition regulators. Very similar regulations apply to corporate mergers. A single entity that holds a monopoly is not considered a cartel but can be sanctioned through other abuses of its monopoly.
Prior to World War II, members of cartels could sign contracts that were
enforceable in courts of law except in the United States. Before 1945,
cartels were tolerated in Europe and specifically promoted as a business
practice in German-speaking countries. In U.S. v. National Lead Co. et al., the Supreme Court of the United States noted the testimony of individuals who cited that a cartel, in its versatile form, is
a
combination of producers for the purpose of regulating production and,
frequently, prices, and an association by agreement of companies or
sections of companies having common interests so as to prevent extreme
or unfair competition.
Today, price fixing by private entities is illegal under the
antitrust laws of more than 140 countries. The commodities of prosecuted
international cartels include lysine, citric acid, graphiteelectrodes, and bulk vitamins.
In many countries, the predominant belief is that cartels are contrary
to free and fair competition, considered the backbone of political
democracy.
Maintaining cartels continues to become harder for cartels. Even if
international cartels cannot be regulated as a whole by individual
nations, their individual activities in domestic markets are affected.
Unlike other cartels, export cartels are legal in virtually all
jurisdictions, despite their harmful effects on affected markets.
Examples
The printing equipment company American Type Founders (ATF) explicitly states in its 1923 manual that its goal is to "discourage unhealthy competition" in the printing industry.
OPEC:
As its name suggests, OPEC is organised by sovereign states. Under
traditional legal views, it cannot be held to antitrust enforcement in
other jurisdictions under the doctrine of state immunity under public international law.
Swiss Cheese Union: Many trade associations,
especially in industries dominated by only a few major companies, have
been accused of being fronts for cartels or facilitating secret meetings
among cartel members. The now-defunct Swiss Cheese Union discouraged competition throughout the dairy industry in 20th century Switzerland.
Trade unions: Although cartels are usually thought of as a group of corporations, the free-market economist Charles W. Baird considers trade unions to be cartels because they seek to raise the price of labor (wages) by preventing competition. Negotiated cartelism is a labor arrangement in which labor prices are held above the market-clearing level through union leverage over employers.
Collusion is a secret cooperation or deceitful agreement in order to deceive others, although not necessarily illegal, as is a conspiracy. A secret agreement between two or more parties to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law
typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage is an
example of collusion. It is an agreement among firms or individuals to
divide a market, set prices, limit production or limit opportunities.
It can involve "unions, wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the
independence of the relationship between the colluding parties". In legal terms, all acts effected by collusion are considered void.
Definition
In the study of economics and market competition, collusion takes place within an industry when rival companies cooperate for their mutual benefit. Collusion most often takes place within the market structure of oligopoly,
where the decision of a few firms to collude can significantly impact
the market as a whole. Collusion which is covert, on the other hand, is
known as tacit collusion, and is legal. Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations
explains that since the masters (business owners) are fewer in numbers,
it becomes much easier for them to collude in order to serve common
interests among them, such as keeping the wages of workers low, while it
is much more difficult for the labor to coordinate in order to protect
their own interests due to their vast numbers. Therefore, business
owners have a bigger advantage over the working class. Nevertheless,
according to Adam Smith, people rarely hear about the coordination and
collaboration that happens between business owners as it happens in an
informal way.
Variations
According to neoclassical price-determination theory and game theory, the independence of suppliers forces prices to their minimum, increasing efficiency and decreasing the price determining ability of each individual firm.
However, if firms collude to all increase prices, loss of sales is
minimized, as consumers lack alternative choices at lower prices. This benefits the colluding firms at the cost of efficiency to society.
One variation of this traditional theory is the theory of kinked demand.
Firms face a kinked demand curve if, when one firm decreases its price,
other firms are expected to follow suit in order to maintain sales;
when one firm increases its price, however, its rivals are unlikely to
follow, as they would lose the sales' gains that they would otherwise
get by holding prices at the previous level. Kinked demand potentially
fosters supra-competitive prices
because any one firm would receive a reduced benefit from cutting
price, as opposed to the benefits accruing under neoclassical theory and
certain game theoretic models such as Bertrand competition.
Collusion may occur also in auction markets, where independent firms coordinate their bids (bid rigging).
Antecedents
Scholars
in economics and management have tried to identify factors explaining
why some firms are more or less likely to be involved in collusion. Some
have noted the role of the regulatory environment and the existence of leniency programs.
Others, drawing upon the literature in criminology and misconduct, have
suggested that firms conduct a costs/benefits analysis to assess their
participation in collusion.
Indicators
Practices that suggest possible collusion include:
Collusion is illegal in the United States, Canada and most of the EU due to antitrust laws, but implicit collusion in the form of price leadership and tacit understandings still takes place. Several examples of collusion in the United States include:
Market division and price-fixing among manufacturers of heavy electrical equipment in the 1960s, including General Electric.
The sharing of potential contract terms by NBA free agents in an effort to help a targeted franchise circumvent the salary cap.
Price fixing within food manufacturers providing cafeteria food to schools and the military in 1993.
Market division and output determination of livestock feed additive, called lysine, by companies in the US, Japan and South Korea in 1996, Archer Daniels Midland being the most notable of these.
Ben and Jerry's and Häagen-Dazs
collusion of products in 2013: Ben and Jerry's makes chunkier flavors
with more treats in them, while Häagen-Dazs sticks to smoother flavors.
The Google and Apple against employee poaching collusion case in
2015, in which it was revealed that both companies agreed not to hire
employees from one another in order to halt the rise of wages.
In the EU:
The illegal collusion between the giant German automakers BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen, discovered by the European Commission
in 2019, to hinder technological progress in improving the quality of
vehicle emissions in order to reduce the cost of production and maximize
profits.
There are many ways that implicit collusion tends to develop:
The practice of stock analyst conference calls and meetings of
industry participants almost necessarily results in tremendous amounts
of strategic and price transparency. This allows each firm to see how
and why every other firm is pricing their products.
If the practice of the industry causes more complicated pricing, which is hard for the consumer to understand (such as risk-based pricing,
hidden taxes and fees in the wireless industry, negotiable pricing),
this can cause competition based on price to be meaningless (because it
would be too complicated to explain to the customer in a short
advertisement). This causes industries to have essentially the same
prices and compete on advertising and image, something theoretically as
damaging to consumers as normal price fixing.
Barriers
There can be significant barriers to collusion. In any given industry, these may include:
The number of firms: As the number of firms in an industry increases, it is more difficult to successfully organize, collude and communicate.
Cost and demand differences between firms: If costs vary
significantly between firms, it may be impossible to establish a price
at which to fix output.
Cheating: There is considerable incentive to cheat on collusion agreements; although lowering prices might trigger price wars, in the short term the defecting firm may gain considerably. This phenomenon is frequently referred to as "chiseling".
Potential entry: New firms may enter the industry, establishing a
new baseline price and eliminating collusion (though anti-dumping laws
and tariffs can prevent foreign companies entering the market).
Economic recession: An increase in average total cost or a decrease
in revenue provides incentive to compete with rival firms in order to
secure a larger market share and increased demand.
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 positivistscientific
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 normativepop 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).
Positivistpolitical 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.
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 positivistscientific
perspective, the state-as-venue, colloquially known as the "deep
state," simply "is" and should not be assumed to be "bad" by default.
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.
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.'"
In George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Thought Police (Thinkpol) are the secret police of the superstate Oceania, who discover and punish thoughtcrime, personal and political thoughts unapproved by the government. The Thinkpol use criminal psychology and omnipresent surveillance via informers, telescreens, cameras, and microphones, to search for and find, monitor and arrest all citizens of Oceania who would commit thoughtcrime in challenge to the status quo authority of the Party and the regime of Big Brother.
In the story, the Thinkpol conduct false-flag operations (e.g. The Brotherhood) to lure non-conformist members of the Party to expose themselves as politically subversive of Oceania.
Orwell's concept of "policing thought" derived from the intellectual
self-honesty shown by a person's "power of facing unpleasant facts";
thus, criticising the dominant ideology of British society often placed Orwell in conflict with ideologues, people advocating "smelly little orthodoxies".
In Nineteen Eighty-Four
In the year 1984, the government of Oceania, dominated by the Inner Party, use the Newspeak language to control the speech, actions, and thought of the population, by defining "unapproved thoughts" as crimes, thoughtcrime or crimethink; for such actions, the Thinkpol
arrest Winston Smith, the protagonist of the story, and Julia, his
girlfriend, as enemies of the state. Among the means for maintaining
social control, the Thought Police are said by O'Brien, an inner Party member and agent of the Thinkpol, to operate a false flag resistance movement, the Brotherhood, to lure ideologically disloyal members of the Party to identify themselves for arrest.
As an agent provocateur, O'Brien gives Winston a copy of the forbidden book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, authored by the enemy of the state Emmanuel Goldstein; yet the factual reality of The Brotherhood
in Oceania remains uncertain, because O'Brien refuses to reveal to
Winston whether it does, in fact, exist. Every member of the Outer Party
has a two-way telescreen
in their quarters, by which the Thinkpol audio-visually police the
behaviour of the populace; listening for unorthodox opinions and spying
for visible indications of mental stress indicating that the observed person is suffering an inner struggle (ownlife),
such as the words spoken whilst asleep. The Thinkpol also spy upon and
eliminate intelligent people, such as the Newspeak lexicographer Syme, who is disappeared and rendered an unperson, despite being an Ingsoc true-believer of fierce loyalty to Big Brother and the Party.
To eliminate possible martyrs, men and women of whom popular memory might provoke anti–Party resistance, at the Miniluv (Ministry of Love), the Thinkpol break thought-criminals with conversation, degradation (moral and physical), and torture in Room 101. Breaking the prisoner coerces him or her to sincerely accept the Ingsoc worldview, and so love Big Brother
without reservation, conscious or unconscious. Afterwards, the Thinkpol
release the politically rehabilitated prisoners to the social
mainstream of Oceania, for a while, before re-arresting them to reprise
torture and interrogation that conclude with execution and cremation into an unperson (they are not only executed, but outright denied existence even in history or memory).
Every member of the Inner Party and of the Outer Party who ever knew, was acquainted with, or knew of the political prisoners must forget them, lest they commit the thoughtcrime of remembering the existence of an unperson. Such ideological self-discipline, of not thinking such thoughts, is crimestop, an indication of the cultural success of Newspeak as a means of social control. Moreover, at Minitru (the Ministry of Truth), the unpersons' true records are destroyed and replaced with false records.
The Thinkpol usually do not interfere with the lives of the Proles, the working classes of Oceania, although they do deploy agents provocateur who continually operate amongst them, planting rumours to identify and attempt to eliminate any prole who shows intelligence and the capacity for independent thought, which might lead to rebellion against the Party's cultural hegemony.
In other usages
In the early twentieth century, before the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Empire of Japan (1868–1947), in 1911, established the Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu ('Special Higher Police'), a political police force also known as Shisō Keisatsu, the Thought Police, who investigated and controlled native political-groups whose ideologies were considered a threat to the public order of the countries colonised by Japan. In contemporary usage, the term Thought Police often refers to the actual or perceived enforcement of ideological orthodoxy in the political life of a society.
Medical torture describes the involvement of, or sometimes instigation by, medical personnel in acts of torture,
either to judge what victims can endure, to apply treatments which will
enhance torture, or as torturers in their own right. Medical torture
overlaps with medical interrogation if it involves the use of professional medical expertise to facilitate interrogation or corporal punishment, in the conduct of torturous human experimentation
or in providing professional medical sanction and approval for the
torture of prisoners. Medical torture also covers torturous scientific
(or pseudo-scientific) experimentation upon unwilling human subjects.
Medical ethics and international law
It is generally accepted that medical torture fundamentally violates medical ethics, which all medical practitioners are expected to adhere to.
The Hippocratic Oath
makes explicit statements against deliberate harm not in the patient's
best interests. These statements are often translated as "I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment" and "to never deliberately do harm to anyone, for anyone else's interest." (Note: these statements are formulations of the ethical principles of beneficence and non-maleficence.)
In response to the Nazi human experimentation on prisoners during World War II, which were declared at the post-World War II Nuremberg Trials to be "crimes against humanity", the World Medical Association developed the Declaration of Geneva
to supplant the dated Hippocratic Oath. The Declaration of Geneva
requires medical practitioners to state "[I, the medical practitioner]
will maintain the utmost respect for human life from its beginning even
under threat and I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the
laws of humanity."
The Nuremberg Trials also led to the emergence of the Nuremberg code which explicitly outlines the boundaries of acceptable medical experimentation.
The World Medical AssociationDeclaration of Tokyo (1975) makes a number of specific statements against torture, including "The doctor shall not countenance, condone or participate in the practice of torture".
The UN Principles of Medical Ethics relevant to the Role of Health
Personnel, particularly Physicians, in the Protection of Prisoners and
Detainees against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment (UN.1982) applies specifically to medical and
other health workers but it has no implementation mechanism to ensure
enforcement. It is up to state, provincial, and national bodies to
enforce the standards in the document.
There remain gaps in regulation relating to medical torture in many countries:
A higher standard of behaviour is expected of health professionals yet the UN Principles of Medical Ethics
are not enforceable when governments are complicit in violations. This
higher standard is reflected in the principles of beneficence,
non-maleficence (above all do no harm), autonomy, justice, dignity and
informed consent and these are not covered comprehensively by the UN Convention Against Torture.
Examples
Between 1937 and 1945, Japanese medical personnel who were part of Unit 731
participated in the torture killings of as many as 10,000 Korean,
Chinese, Russian, American and other prisoners as well as Allied POWs
during the second Sino-Japanese War.
During World War II, the Nazi regime in Germany conducted human medical experimentation on large numbers of people held in its concentration camps. In particular, Josef Mengele's experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz earned him the nicknames "the Angel of Death" and "Dr. Death".
During World War II, the Nazi
regime in Germany regularly executed prisoners and opponents of the
regime. According to some accounts, medical staff was involved in
torture during executions. One account of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's death states that, as doctor at Flossenbürg concentration camp,
"Fischer-Hüllstrung had the job of reviving political prisoners after
they had been hanged until they were almost dead, in order to prolong
the agony of their dying."
Japanese surgeons also performed vivisection and other medical experiments to torture American prisoners of war in several islands of the Pacific.
Between 1970 and 1971, mentally disorienting interrogation techniques were used against interned prisoners captured in Northern Ireland, including white noise. The Irish government complained to the European Commission for Human Rights, who found Britain guilty of torture; however the higher European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British government's actions were "inhuman and degrading but did not constitute torture".
In Soviet mental hospitals used to hold political prisoners,
very unpleasant medications were given to these "patients" as a means
of punishment. A psychiatric diagnosis was devised to describe people
who oppose government policies.
There have been numerous claims that electroconvulsive therapy and prefrontal lobotomies
and similar psychiatric treatments have sometimes been performed not in
the patient's best interests, but rather as punishment for misbehaviour
or to otherwise make the patient easier to manage. A classic example of
this is the Lake Alice, New Zealand atrocity which occurred in the
early 1970s. Children admitted to the Lake Alice Hospital's open child and adolescent unit were routinely punished with unmodified ECT (that is, ECT without anesthesia). Some governments (e.g. Norway and New Zealand) have since begun paying reparations to patients who suffered such treatments. The World Health Organization has called for a ban on unmodified ECT, and states no form of it should be used on children.
In 2016, a group consisting of 71 British medical doctors urged that Israel's membership in the World Medical Association should be revoked because Israeli doctors allegedly perform state-endorsed "medical torture" on Palestinians.
Purported medical or professional complicity
According to the Center for Constitutional Rights' When Healers Harm campaign, health professionals were complicit in the torture and abuse of detainees during U.S. President George W. Bush's "war on terror".
Health professionals, including medical doctors, psychiatrists,
medical examiners, psychologists, and nurses, have been implicated in
the torture and abuse of prisoners in CIA secret prisons and military detention centers, such as those in Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Among other things, health professionals are accused of:
crafting abusive tactics and falsely legitimizing their use;
advised interrogators on methods of abuse that would exploit prisoners’ vulnerabilities;
using medical procedures to harm prisoners;
gauging pain and monitoring interrogations that risked leaving prisoners in need of treatment;
checking prisoners to certify that they were capable of surviving additional abuse;
conditioning medical or mental health treatment on cooperation with interrogation;
sharing confidential patient information that was used to harm patients;
covering up evidence of torture and abuse; and
turning a blind eye to cruel treatment.
To date, no state licensing boards or professional associations have
investigated – or recognized, in some cases – abusive conduct by
individual members of their professions. In 2009, after years of
denial, the American Psychological Association
finally recognized that psychologists had engaged in torture. However,
the American Psychological Association has not recognized that
psychologists were involved in the Bush Administration’s torture policy.
Some criticize the APA
for failing to respond to allegations of “collusion between APA
officials and the national security apparatus in providing ethical cover
for psychologists’ participation in detainee abuse."
Although the American Medical Association
has made clear that physicians should not be involved in interrogations
of any kind, it continues to insist that it has “no specific knowledge
of doctors being involved in abuse or torture,” despite evidence to the
contrary, including government documents and Office of Legal Counsel memos, a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross and multiple accounts by survivors.
Some other accounts of medical or professional complicity in torture include:
The SERE ("Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape")
program's chief psychologist, Col. Morgan Banks, issued guidance in
early 2003 for the "behavioral science consultants" who helped to devise
Guantánamo's
interrogation strategy although he has emphatically denied that he had
advocated the use of SERE counter-resistance techniques to break down
detainees. The New Yorker notes that in November, 2001 Banks was detailed to Afghanistan, where he spent four months at Bagram Air Base, "supporting combat operations against Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters".
Confidential medical records of Guantánamo prisoners were used to identify physical and psychological weaknesses that could be exploited during abusive interrogation.
A 2005 report by Human Rights Watch suggested that torture was routine under the appointed Iraqi government.
Dr. J.C. Carothers, British colonial Kenyan psychiatrist, has been implicated by some recent academic historians in designing interrogation of Mau Mau prisoners. His advice was published by the Kenya Government as The Psychology of Mau Mau, in 1954.
Similarly, it has been implied that Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Dr. Ayad Allawi violated his obligation to medical ethics whilst serving as Western European chief of secret police for the Baathist government of Saddam Hussein.
However, the same sources allege that Allawi had abandoned his medical
education at that point and his medical degree "was conferred upon him
by the Baath party."
In the popular series, 24,
various forms of medical torture (including hallucinogens and
injections) are utilized to obtain confessions and information from
high-threat terrorists being interrogated in the fictional
Counter-Terrorist Unit (CTU) of the United States.
In Anthony Burgess' book A Clockwork Orange,
Alex, the anti-hero of the book, undergoes a fictional medical torture
program called 'The Ludovico Technique', in which he is given a
nausea-inducing drug, strapped to a chair with his eyelids forced open
and forced to watch hours of films of extreme violence and rape to
condition him to associate feelings of nausea with rape and violence.
The theme of the 2009 horror film The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
is that of a sadistic, psychopathic retired surgeon torturing three
people by surgically connecting them mouth to rectum, forcing the last
two to swallow the excrement of the person in front of them and
physically beating all three of them if they try to rebel or escape.
The 2008 horror film Autopsy
focused on an insane doctor who runs a hospital where victims are lured
in and experimented with, so that the doctor can find a cure for his
wife's terminal disease.
In the book Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
the central antagonist is a character nicknamed 'Dr. Danco' who
surgically removes all body parts not necessary for life from his
victims as what is revealed to be forfeits in a twisted game of hangman, carrying out the operations with the victim conscious and watching the procedures in a mirror.
The multi-perspective novel The Sea and Poison (Shusaku Endo,
1957; translated by Michael Gallagher) depicts the vivisection
experiments performed by Japanese doctors on American soldiers during
World War II. Kei Kumai's 1986 drama film The Sea and Poison is based on this book (original film title "Umi to dokuyaku").
Dr. Jane Payne, a character in the children's book Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger, is a sadistic dentist who pulls more teeth than is necessary in order to get extra money.
In the Ajin
manga, the Ajins are immortal humans who are captured and tracked by
the government in order to become test subjects for medical torture, and
many experiments which implies amputations without anesthesia, repeated
murdering and torture for studying their immortality.
