Deep state
- Administrative state overreach
- Shadow government
Nature
The "administrative state" is a term used to describe the phenomenon of an entrenched bureaucracy comprising permanent officials and executive branch administrative agencies which exercise bureaucratic power to create, adjudicate and enforce their own rules. The "deep state" is an unelected, unaccountable, largely unknown group behind the facade of the visible government that wields power and works toward long-term agenda goals no matter which political party or puppet politician holds office. It consists of a vast and intricate network of elites in government, media, the corporate world, banking and finance, private foundations and global bureaucracies -- pockets of special interest -- all working outside normal government or legislative review. It is defined by mutual incentives — an alliance between bureaucracy and capital that thrives on complexity, notably the established “rules based order”. This makes it devilishly difficult to dismantle, because even modest proposals for reform can trigger widespread institutional rebellion.
Background
The term “deep state” itself is a translation of a Turkish phrase, derin devlet, that rose to prominence after the Susurluk incident exposed the Turkish secret government and its NATO/Gladio/drug running/terrorist associations.
Incidence
David Rothkopf's book Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making (2008) argues that about 6,000 individuals worldwide—heads of multinational corporations, political leaders, financiers and cultural icons—comprise a "superclass." These non-state actors transcend national boundaries, influence global policies, and disproportionately impact the economy, culture, and geopolitics.
In 2009, during a speech at the opening of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Washington, D.C. office, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: "We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future."
The World Bank blog qualifies the concept as something to be found in “newish democracies”, in foreign, backwards polities in “Latin America, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and so on,” i.e. not in the West.
Claim
The power apparatus of the nation state seeks immortality, a continuing life regardless of who happens to head it.
In the post-9/11, post-Iraq, post-bailout, post-Hope and Change world, it has become impossible to maintain the illusion that it is the political front men who are running the show. No one believes this lie anymore.
"Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude". (Mike Lofgren, Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State, February 21, 2014).