According to an American political conspiracy theory, the deep state is a clandestine network of members of the federal government (especially within the FBI and CIA), working in conjunction with high-level financial and industrial entities and leaders, to exercise power alongside or within the elected United States government.[1]
The term deep state originated in the 1990s as a reference to an alleged longtime deep state in Turkey, but began to be used to refer to the American government as well, including during the Obama administration.[2] However, the theory reached mainstream recognition under the presidency of Donald Trump, who referenced an alleged "deep state" working against him and his administration's agenda. The use of Trump's Twitter account, combined with other elements of right-wing populist movements during his presidency, gave birth to numerous conspiracy theory groups, such as Qanon.[3][4]
The term has precedents since at least the 1950s,[5] including the concept of the military–industrial complex, which posits a cabal of generals and defense contractors who enrich themselves through pushing the country into endless wars.[6]
Opinion polling done in 2017 and 2018 suggests that approximately half of all Americans believe in the existence of a deep state.[7][8]
Prevalence
Although the term 'deep state' is thought to have originated in Turkey in the 1990s, belief in the concept of a deep state has been present in the United States since at least the 1950s.[9] A 1955 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, quotes Americans sharing their belief in the existence of a "dual state": a hidden national security hierarchy and shadow government that monitors and controls elected politicians.[10][11]
Criticism
Critics of Trump's use of the term 'deep state' maintain that it is a conspiracy theory with no basis in reality.[42]
UCLA School of Law professor Jon D. Michaels argued that compared with developing governments such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey, governmental power structures in the United States are "almost entirely transparent".[43][44][45] Michaels argues that the American 'deep state', which includes federal agencies responsible for regulation, welfare, crime prevention, and defense, and the employees who operate them, fundamentally differs from Trump's use of the term in five important respects:[43] Not Elitist – In the US, bureaucrats come from a diverse range of socio-economic backgrounds, especially when compared to those in the Middle East, and even Western Europe.
Not Shadowy – American agencies are generally "transparent and accessible", in comparison to those of the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.
Not Monolithic – the American deep state is "internally diverse and fragmented."
A Bulwark, Not a Battering Ram – actions of civil servants in the US are inherently defensive, not proactive.
Not an Extraconstitutional Force – the bureaucracy should be seen as part of the constitutional system of checks and balances in the US, which often serves as a final check on presidential or agency overreach.
Critics warned that use of the term in the United States could undermine public confidence in institutions and be used to justify suppression of dissent.[27][46]
Political commentator and former presidential adviser David Gergen said that the term had been appropriated by Steve Bannon, Breitbart News, and other supporters of the Trump administration in order to delegitimize the critics of the presidency.[32]
Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, argued that there is no deep state and that "to the extent that there is a bipartisan foreign-policy elite, it is hiding in plain sight".[47]
Anthropologist C. August Elliott likened military involvement in the Trump administration as a "shallow state" in which they were forced to guide the administration "away from a potential shipwreck".[48]
Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg said that deep state is an "elastic label" in that "its story conforms to the intricate grammar of those conspiracy narratives", referencing the transition of conservative rhetoric regarding "big government" from "meddlesome bunglers" to "conniving ideologues".[49]
Fox News panelist Charles Krauthammer called the idea ridiculous, arguing that bureaucracy exists in the United States government rather than a government-wide conspiracy.[50]
Closely related concepts
In his 2015 book The State: Past, Present, Future,[55] academic Bob Jessop comments on the similarity of three constructs: "Deep state", for which he cites Mike Lofgren's 2014 definition: "a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern ... without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process".[22]
"Dark state" – "networks of officials, private firms, media outlets, think tanks, foundations, NGOs, interest groups, and other forces that attend to the needs of capital, not of everyday life" while "concealed from public gaze" or "hidden in plain sight", citing political scientist Jason Lindsay's 2013 article.[verify][56]: 37–38
"The Fourth Branch' of U.S. government" – consisting of "an ever more unchecked and unaccountable centre ..., working behind a veil of secrecy", citing Tom Engelhardt's 2014 book.[57]
Deep state has been associated with the "military–industrial complex" by author Mike Lofgren, who has identified this complex as the private part of the deep state.[58] University professor and journalist Marc Ambinder has suggested that a myth about the deep state is that it functions as one entity; in reality, he states "the deep state contains multitudes, and they are often at odds with one another".[59]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_state_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_behind_the_throne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_government_(conspiracy_theory)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke-filled_room
A failed state is a state that has lost its effective ability to govern its populace. A failed state maintains legal sovereignty but experiences a breakdown in political power, law enforcement, and civil society, leading to a state of near-anarchy.
Common characteristics of a failing state include a government unable to tax and police its populace, control its territory, fill political or civil offices, or maintain its infrastructure. When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and military intervention from both within and without the state are much more likely to occur.[1]
Metrics have been developed to describe the level of governance of states. The precise level of government control required to avoid being considered a failed state varies considerably amongst authorities.[2] Furthermore, the declaration that a state has "failed" is generally controversial and, when made authoritatively, may carry significant geopolitical consequences.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state
Nonetheless, in situations in which a government is unable (or unwilling) to cooperate in the arrest or prosecution of a criminal, the offended state has few options for recourse".[39]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state
Mob rule or ochlocracy (Greek: ὀχλοκρατία, romanized: okhlokratía; Latin: ochlocratia) is the rule of government by a mob or mass of people and the intimidation of legitimate authorities. Insofar as it represents a pejorative for majoritarianism, it is akin to the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, meaning "the fickle crowd" from which the English term "mob" originally was derived in the 1680s, during the Glorious Revolution.
Ochlocracy is synonymous in meaning and usage to the modern informal term "mobocracy", which arose in the 18th century as a colloquial neologism. Likewise, the ruling mobs in ochlocracies may sometimes genuinely reflect the will of the majority in a manner approximating democracy, but ochlocracy is characterised by the absence or impairment of a procedurally civil and democratic process.[1]
An "ochlocrat" is one who is an advocate or partisan of ochlocracy. It also may be used as an adjective ("ochlocratic" or "ochlocratical").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_rule
State collapse is a sudden dissolution of a sovereign state.[1] It is often used to describe extreme situations in which state institutions dissolve rapidly.[2][1] When a new regime moves in, often led by the military, civil society typically fails to rally around the central government, and societal actors fend for themselves at the local level.[1] Neighboring states interfere politically, sometimes harboring dissidents within their borders, and the informal economy becomes dominant, operating beyond the control of the state and further undermining potential reconstruction.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_collapse
In politics, a mafia state is a state system where the government is tied with organized crime to the degree when government officials, the police, and/or military became a part of the criminal enterprise.[1][2] According to US diplomats, the expression "mafia state" was coined by Alexander Litvinenko.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_state
Kleptocracy (from Greek κλέπτης kléptēs, "thief", κλέπτω kléptō, "I steal", and -κρατία -kratía from κράτος krátos, "power, rule") is a government whose corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) use political power to expropriate the wealth of the people and land they govern, typically by embezzling or misappropriating government funds at the expense of the wider population.[1][2] Thievocracy means literally the rule by thievery and is a term used synonymously to kleptocracy.[3][4] One feature of political-based socioeconomic thievery is that there is often no public announcement explaining or apologizing for misappropriations, nor any legal charges or punishment levied against the offenders.[5]
Kleptocracy is different from plutocracy (rule by the richest) and oligarchy (rule by a small elite). In a kleptocracy, corrupt politicians enrich themselves secretly outside the rule of law, through kickbacks, bribes, and special favors from lobbyists and corporations, or they simply direct state funds to themselves and their associates. Also, kleptocrats often export much of their profits to foreign nations in anticipation of losing power.[6]
According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", the first use in English occurs in the publication "Indicator" of 1819: "Titular ornaments, common to Spanish kleptocracy."[citation needed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptocracy
State capture is a type of systemic political corruption in which private interests significantly influence a state's decision-making processes to their own advantage.
The term was first used by the World Bank, around the year 2000, to describe the situation in certain Central Asian countries making the transition from Soviet communism. Specifically, it was applied to situations where small corrupt groups used their influence over government officials to appropriate government decision-making in order to strengthen their own economic positions; these groups' members would later become known as oligarchs.[1]
Allegations of state capture have led to protests against the government in Bulgaria in 2013–2014 and in 2020–2021 and Romania in 2017,[2] and have caused an ongoing controversy in South Africa beginning in 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capture
A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations in which the personal interest of an individual or organization might adversely affect a duty owed to make decisions for the benefit of a third party.
An "interest" is a commitment, obligation, duty or goal associated with a particular social role or practice.[1] By definition, a "conflict of interest" occurs if, within a particular decision-making context, an individual is subject to two coexisting interests that are in direct conflict with each other. Such a matter is of importance because under such circumstances the decision-making process can be disrupted or compromised in a manner that affects the integrity or the reliability of the outcomes.
Typically, a conflict of interest arises when an individual finds themselves occupying two social roles simultaneously which generate opposing benefits or loyalties. The interests involved can be pecuniary or non-pecuniary. The existence of such conflicts is an objective fact, not a state of mind, and does not in itself indicate any lapse or moral error. However, especially where a decision is being taken in a fiduciary context, it is important that the contending interests be clearly identified and the process for separating them is rigorously established. Typically, this will involve the conflicted individual either giving up one of the conflicting roles or else recusing themselves from the particular decision-making process in question.
The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of inappropriateness. Therefore, a conflict of interest can be discovered and voluntarily defused before any corruption occurs. A conflict of interest exists if the circumstances are reasonably believed (on the basis of past experience and objective evidence) to create a risk that a decision may be unduly influenced by other, secondary interests, and not on whether a particular individual is actually influenced by a secondary interest.
A widely used definition is: "A conflict of interest is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgement or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest."[2] Primary interest refers to the principal goals of the profession or activity, such as the protection of clients, the health of patients, the integrity of research, and the duties of public officers. Secondary interest includes personal benefit and is not limited to only financial gain but also such motives as the desire for professional advancement, or the wish to do favours for family and friends. These secondary interests are not treated as wrong in and of themselves, but become objectionable when they are believed to have greater weight than the primary interests. Conflict of interest rules in the public sphere mainly focus on financial relationships since they are relatively more objective, fungible, and quantifiable, and usually involve the political, legal, and medical fields.
A conflict of interest is a set of conditions in which professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as a patient's welfare or the validity of research) tends to be unduly influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Conflict-of-interest rules [...] regulate the disclosure and avoidance of these conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest
Elite capture[1] is a form of corruption whereby public resources are biased for the benefit of a few individuals of superior social status in detriment to the welfare of the larger population. Elites are groups of individuals who, because of self-ratifying factors such as social class, asset ownership, religious affiliations, political power, historic discrimination among social groups, political party affiliation, or economic position, have decision-making power in processes of public concern. This specific form of corruption occurs when elites use public funds, originally intended to be invested in services that benefit the larger population, to fund projects that would only benefit them. This form of corruption is differentiated from outright criminal corruption such as embezzlement, misappropriation, or other diversion of funds by a public official.
Elite capture is related to information asymmetry, inefficient regulation or inefficient allocation of resources. This causes a siphoning of resources by elite middlemen through legal practices such as noncompetitive tender of contracts, excessive pricing and overcharging, which result in fewer and fewer proportion of a government project's budget being spent on the declared mission. This causes a biased distribution of a public good or a service, resulting a situation wherein certain segments of the population experience reduced access to these public goods. In this context, as long as there is elite capture, the welfare impact will not be Pareto Optimal nor equitable.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture
A kakistocracy (/kækɪˈstɒkrəsi/, /kækɪsˈtɒ-/) is a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.[1]: 54 [2][3] The word was coined as early as the seventeenth century.[4] Peter Bowler has noted in his book that there is no word for the government run by the best citizens,[a] and that the aristarchy may be the right term, but still, it could conceivably be a kakistocracy disguised as an aristocracy.[a]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy
See also
- Corporatocracy – A North American Society which is dominated by business interests and exploitation
- Idiocracy – 2006 film directed by Mike Judge
- Khakistocracy – Dictatorship ruled by the military
- Kleptocracy – Form of government
- Negative selection (politics) – Aversion to the success of one's subordinates
- Ochlocracy – Democracy spoiled by demagoguery and the rule of passion over reason
- Political ponerology – obsolete medical term
- Peter principle – Management concept by Laurence J. Peter
- Totalitarianism – Extreme form of authoritarianism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regulation over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism. In totalitarian states, political power is often held by autocrats, such as dictators (totalitarian dictatorship) and absolute monarchs, who employ all-encompassing campaigns in which propaganda is broadcast by state-controlled mass media in order to control the citizenry.[1]
As a political ideology in itself, totalitarianism is a distinctly modernist phenomenon, and it has very complex historical roots. Philosopher Karl Popper traced its roots to Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's conception of the state, and the political philosophy of Karl Marx,[2] although Popper's conception of totalitarianism has been criticized in academia, and remains highly controversial.[3][4] Other philosophers and historians such as Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer trace the origin of totalitarian doctrines to the Age of Enlightenment, especially to the anthropocentrist idea that "Man has become the master of the world, a master unbound by any links to nature, society, and history."[5] In the 20th century, the idea of absolute state power was first developed by Italian Fascists, and concurrently in Germany by a jurist and Nazi academic named Carl Schmitt during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s.
Scholars and historians have considered Vladimir Lenin,[6][7][8] founder of the Russian SFSR and later Soviet Union,[9][10][11] to be one of the first to attempt to establish a totalitarian state.[12][13][14][15][16] Benito Mussolini, the founder of Italian Fascism, called his regime the "Totalitarian State": "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."[17] Schmitt used the term Totalstaat (lit. 'Total state') in his influential 1927 work titled The Concept of the Political, which described the legal basis of an all-powerful state.[18] By 1950, the term and concept of totalitarianism entered mainstream Western political discourse. Furthermore this era also saw anti-communist and McCarthyist political movements intensify and use the concept of totalitarianism as a tool to convert pre-World War II anti-fascism into Cold War anti-communism.[19][20][21][22][23]
Totalitarian regimes are different from other authoritarian regimes, as the latter denotes a state in which the single power holder, usually an individual dictator, a committee, a military junta, or an otherwise small group of political elites, monopolizes political power.[24] A totalitarian regime may attempt to control virtually all aspects of social life, including the economy, the education system, arts, science, and the private lives and morals of citizens through the use of an elaborate ideology.[25] It can also mobilize the whole population in pursuit of its goals.[24]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
Definition
According to Yale professor Juan José Linz there are three main types of political regimes today: democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes (with hybrid regimes).[26][27] Totalitarian regimes are often characterized by extreme political repression and human rights violations to a greater extent than those of authoritarian regimes, an absolute lack of democratic ideals, widespread personality cultism around the person or the group which is in power, absolute control over the economy, large-scale censorship and mass surveillance systems, limited or non-existent freedom of movement (notably the freedom to leave the country), and the widespread usage of state terrorism. Other aspects of a totalitarian regime include the extensive use of violent prison camps, repressive secret police, practices of religious persecution or racism, the imposition of either theocratic rule or state atheism, the common use of death penalties and show trials, fraudulent elections (if elections are held), the possible possession of weapons of mass destruction, a potential for state-sponsored mass murders and genocides, and the possibility of engaging in a war or imperialism against other countries. Historian Robert Conquest describes a totalitarian state as a state which recognizes no limit on its authority in any sphere of public or private life and extends that authority to whatever length it considers feasible.[1]
Totalitarianism is contrasted with authoritarianism. According to Radu Cinpoes, an authoritarian state is "only concerned with political power, and as long as it is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty."[24] Cinpoes writes that authoritarianism "does not attempt to change the world and human nature."[24] In contrast, Richard Pipes stated that the officially proclaimed ideology "penetrating into the deepest reaches of societal structure, and the totalitarian government seeks to completely control the thoughts and actions of its citizens."[25] Carl Joachim Friedrich wrote that "[a] totalist ideology, a party reinforced by a secret police, and monopolistic control of industrial mass society are the three features of totalitarian regimes that distinguish them from other autocracies."[24]
Academia and historiography
The academic field of Sovietology after World War II and during the Cold War was dominated by the "totalitarian model" of the Soviet Union,[28] stressing the absolute nature of Joseph Stalin's power. The "totalitarian model" was first outlined in the 1950s by Carl Joachim Friedrich, who posited that the Soviet Union and other Communist states were "totalitarian" systems, with the personality cult and almost unlimited powers of the "great leader" such as Stalin.[29] The "revisionist school" beginning in the 1960s focused on relatively autonomous institutions which might influence policy at the higher level.[30] Matt Lenoe described the "revisionist school" as representing those who "insisted that the old image of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state bent on world domination was oversimplified or just plain wrong. They tended to be interested in social history and to argue that the Communist Party leadership had had to adjust to social forces."[31] These of "revisionist school" such as J. Arch Getty and Lynne Viola challenged the "totalitarian model" approach to Communist history, which was considered to be outdated by the 1980s and for the post-Stalinist era in particular,[32] and were most active in the former Communist states' archives, especially the State Archive of the Russian Federation related to the Soviet Union.[30][33]
According to John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, the historiography is characterized by a split between "traditionalists" and "revisionists." "Traditionalists" characterize themselves as objective reporters of an alleged totalitarian nature of communism and Communist states. They are criticized by their opponents as being anti-communist, even fascist, in their eagerness on continuing to focus on the issues of the Cold War. Alternative characterizations for traditionalists include "anti-communist", "conservative", "Draperite" (after Theodore Draper), "orthodox", and "right-wing."[34] Norman Markowitz,[35] a prominent "revisionist", referred to them as "reactionaries", "right-wing romantics", and "triumphalist" who belong to the "HUAC school of CPUSA scholarship."[34] "Revisionists", characterized by Haynes and Klehr as historical revisionists, are more numerous and dominate academic institutions and learned journals.[34] A suggested alternative formulation is "new historians of American communism", but that has not caught on because these historians describe themselves as unbiased and scholarly, contrasting their work to the work of anti-communist "traditionalists", whom they term biased and unscholarly.[34]
According to William Zimmerman in 1980, "the Soviet Union has changed substantially. Our knowledge of the Soviet Union has changed as well. We all know that the traditional paradigm no longer satisfies, despite several efforts, primarily in the early 1960s (the directed society, totalitarianism without terror, the mobilization system) to articulate an acceptable variant. We have come to realize that models which were, in effect, offshoots of totalitarian models do not provide good approximations of post-Stalinist reality."[32] According to Michael Scott Christofferson in 2019, "Arendt's reading of the post-Stalin USSR can be seen as an attempt to distance her work from 'the Cold War misuse of the concept.'"[36]
Historian John Connelly wrote that totalitarianism is a useful word but that the old 1950s theory about it is defunct among scholars. Connelly wrote: "The word is as functional now as it was 50 years ago. It means the kind of regime that existed in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Soviet satellites, Communist China, and maybe Fascist Italy, where the word originated. ... Who are we to tell Václav Havel or Adam Michnik that they were fooling themselves when they perceived their rulers as totalitarian? Or for that matter any of the millions of former subjects of Soviet-type rule who use the local equivalents of the Czech totalita to describe the systems they lived under before 1989? It is a useful word and everyone knows what it means as a general referent. Problems arise when people confuse the useful descriptive term with the old 'theory' from the 1950s."[37]
Politics
Early usage
The notion that totalitarianism is total political power which is exercised by the state was formulated in 1923 by Giovanni Amendola, who described Italian Fascism as a system which was fundamentally different from conventional dictatorships.[25] The term was later assigned a positive meaning in the writings of Giovanni Gentile, Italy's most prominent philosopher and leading theorist of fascism. He used the term totalitario to refer to the structure and goals of the new state which was to provide the "total representation of the nation and total guidance of national goals."[38] He described totalitarianism as a society in which the ideology of the state had influence, if not power, over most of its citizens.[39] According to Benito Mussolini, this system politicizes everything spiritual and human: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."[25][40]
One of the first people to use the term totalitarianism in the English language was the Austrian writer Franz Borkenau in his 1938 book The Communist International, in which he commented that it united the Soviet and German dictatorships more than it divided them.[41] The label totalitarian was twice affixed to Nazi Germany during Winston Churchill's speech of 5 October 1938, before the House of Commons in opposition to the Munich Agreement, by which France and Great Britain consented to Nazi Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland.[42] Churchill was then a backbencher MP representing the Epping constituency. In a radio address two weeks later, Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to "a Communist or a Nazi tyranny."[43]
José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones, the leader of the historic Spanish reactionary party called the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA),[44] declared his intention to "give Spain a true unity, a new spirit, a totalitarian polity" and went on to say: "Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it."[45] General Francisco Franco was determined not to have competing right-wing parties in Spain and CEDA was dissolved in April 1937. Later, Gil-Robles went into exile.[46]
George Orwell made frequent use of the word totalitarian and its cognates in multiple essays published in 1940, 1941 and 1942. In his essay "Why I Write", Orwell wrote: "The Spanish war and other events in 1936–37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." He feared that future totalitarian regimes could exploit technological advances in surveillance and mass media in order to establish a permanent and worldwide dictatorship which would be incapable of ever being overthrown, writing: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."[47]
During a 1945 lecture series entitled "The Soviet Impact on the Western World" and published as a book in 1946, the British historian E. H. Carr wrote: "The trend away from individualism and towards totalitarianism is everywhere unmistakable" and that Marxism–Leninism was by far the most successful type of totalitarianism as proved by Soviet industrial growth and the Red Army's role in defeating Germany. According to Carr, only the "blind and incurable" could ignore the trend towards totalitarianism.[48]
In The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) and The Poverty of Historicism (1961), Karl Popper articulated an influential critique of totalitarianism. In both works, Popper contrasted the "open society" of liberal democracy with totalitarianism and posited that the latter is grounded in the belief that history moves toward an immutable future in accordance with knowable laws.[citation needed]
Cold War
In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt posited that Nazi and Communist regimes were new forms of government and not merely updated versions of the old tyrannies. According to Arendt, the source of the mass appeal of totalitarian regimes is their ideology which provides a comforting and single answer to the mysteries of the past, present and future. For Nazism, all history is the history of race struggle and for Marxism–Leninism all history is the history of class struggle. Once that premise is accepted, all actions of the state can be justified by appeal to nature or the law of history, justifying their establishment of authoritarian state apparatus.[49]
In addition to Arendt, many scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds and ideological positions have closely examined totalitarianism. Among the most noted commentators on totalitarianism are Raymond Aron, Lawrence Aronsen, Franz Borkenau, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Conquest, Carl Joachim Friedrich, Eckhard Jesse, Leopold Labedz, Walter Laqueur, Claude Lefort, Juan Linz, Richard Löwenthal, Karl Popper, Richard Pipes, Leonard Schapiro and Adam Ulam. Each one of these described totalitarianism in slightly different ways, but they all agreed that totalitarianism seeks to mobilize entire populations in support of an official party ideology and is intolerant of activities that are not directed towards the goals of the party, entailing repression or state control of the business, labour unions, non-profit organizations, religious organizations and minor political parties. At the same time, many scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds and ideological positions criticized the theorists of totalitarianism. Among the most noted were Louis Althusser, Benjamin Barber, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. They thought that totalitarianism was connected to Western ideologies and associated with evaluation rather than analysis. The concept became prominent in the Western world's anti-communist political discourse during the Cold War era as a tool to convert pre-war anti-fascism into postwar anti-communism.[19][20][21][22][23]
In 1956, the political scientists Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski were primarily responsible for expanding the usage of the term in university social science and professional research, reformulating it as a paradigm for the Soviet Union as well as fascist regimes.[50] Friedrich and Brzezinski wrote that a totalitarian system has the following six mutually supportive and defining characteristics:[51]
- Elaborate guiding ideology.
- Single mass party, typically led by a dictator.
- System of terror, using such instruments as violence and secret police.
- Monopoly on weapons.
- Monopoly on the means of communication.
- Central direction and control of the economy through state planning.
In the book titled Democracy and Totalitarianism (1968), French analyst Raymond Aron outlined five criteria for a regime to be considered as totalitarian:[52]
- A one-party state where one party has a monopoly on all political activity.
- A state ideology upheld by the ruling party that is given status as the only authority.
- State information monopoly that controls mass media for distribution of official truth.
- State controlled economy with major economic entities under the control of the state.
- Ideological terror that turns economic or professional actions into crimes. Violators are exposed to prosecution and to ideological persecution.
According to this view, totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union had initial origins in the chaos that followed in the wake of World War I and allowed totalitarian movements to seize control of the government while the sophistication of modern weapons and communications enabled them to effectively establish what Friedrich and Brzezinski called a "totalitarian dictatorship."[56] Some social scientists have criticized Friedrich and Brzezinski's totalitarian approach, commenting that the Soviet system, both as a political and as a social entity, was in fact better understood in terms of interest groups, competing elites, or even in class terms, using the concept of the nomenklatura as a vehicle for a new ruling class (new class). These critics posit that there is evidence of the widespread dispersion of power, at least in the implementation of policy, among sectoral and regional authorities. For some followers of this pluralist approach, this was evidence of the ability of the regime to adapt to include new demands; however, proponents of the totalitarian model stated that the failure of the system to survive showed not only its inability to adapt but the mere formality of supposed popular participation.[57]
German historian Karl Dietrich Bracher, whose work is primarily concerned with Nazi Germany, posited that the "totalitarian typology" as developed by Friedrich and Brzezinski is an excessively inflexible model and failed to consider the "revolutionary dynamic" that for Bracher is at the heart of totalitarianism.[58] Bracher posited that the essence of totalitarianism is the total claim to control and remake all aspects of society combined with an all-embracing ideology, the value on authoritarian leadership and the pretence of the common identity of state and society which distinguished the totalitarian "closed" understanding of politics from the "open" democratic understanding.[58] Unlike the Friedrich and Brzezinski definition, Bracher said that totalitarian regimes did not require a single leader and could function with a collective leadership which led the American historian Walter Laqueur to posit that Bracher's definition seemed to fit reality better than the Friedrich–Brzezinski definition.[59] Bracher's typologies came under attack from Werner Conze and other historians, who felt that Bracher "lost sight of the historical material" and used "universal, ahistorical concepts."[60]
In his 1951 book The True Believer, Eric Hoffer posited that mass movements such as fascism, Nazism and Stalinism had a common trait in picturing Western democracies and their values as decadent, with people "too soft, too pleasure-loving and too selfish" to sacrifice for a higher cause, which for them implies an inner moral and biological decay. Hoffer added that those movements offered the prospect of a glorious future to frustrated people, enabling them to find a refuge from the lack of personal accomplishments in their individual existence. The individual is then assimilated into a compact collective body and "fact-proof screens from reality" are established.[61] This stance may be connected to a religious fear for Communists. Paul Hanebrink has posited that many European Christians started to fear Communist regimes after the rise of Hitler, commenting: "For many European Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, the new postwar 'culture war' crystallized as a struggle against communism. Across interwar Europe, Christians demonized the Communist regime in Russia as the apotheosis of secular materialism and a militarized threat to Christian social and moral order."[62] For Hanebrink, Christians saw Communist regimes as a threat to their moral order and hoped to lead European nations back to their Christian roots by creating an anti-totalitarian census, which defined Europe in the early Cold War.[63]
Post–Cold War
Laure Neumayer posited that "despite the disputes over its heuristic value and its normative assumptions, the concept of totalitarianism made a vigorous return to the political and academic fields at the end of the Cold War."[65] In the 1990s, François Furet made a comparative analysis[66] and used the term totalitarian twins to link Nazism and Stalinism.[67][68][69] Eric Hobsbawm criticized Furet for his temptation to stress the existence of a common ground between two systems with different ideological roots.[70]
In Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion, Žižek wrote that "[t]he liberating effect" of General Augusto Pinochet's arrest "was exceptional", as "the fear of Pinochet dissipated, the spell was broken, the taboo subjects of torture and disappearances became the daily grist of the news media; the people no longer just whispered, but openly spoke about prosecuting him in Chile itself."[71] Saladdin Ahmed cited Hannah Arendt as stating that "the Soviet Union can no longer be called totalitarian in the strict sense of the term after Stalin's death", writing that "this was the case in General August Pinochet's Chile, yet it would be absurd to exempt it from the class of totalitarian regimes for that reason alone." Saladdin posited that while Chile under Pinochet had no "official ideology", there was one man who ruled Chile from "behind the scenes", "none other than Milton Friedman, the godfather of neoliberalism and the most influential teacher of the Chicago Boys, was Pinochet's adviser." In this sense, Saladdin criticized the totalitarian concept because it was only being applied to "opposing ideologies" and it was not being applied to liberalism.[36]
In the early 2010s, Richard Shorten, Vladimir Tismăneanu, and Aviezer Tucker posited that totalitarian ideologies can take different forms in different political systems but all of them focus on utopianism, scientism, or political violence. They posit that Nazism and Stalinism both emphasized the role of specialization in modern societies and they also saw polymathy as a thing of the past, and they also stated that their claims were supported by statistics and science, which led them to impose strict ethical regulations on culture, use psychological violence, and persecute entire groups.[72][73][74] Their arguments have been criticized by other scholars due to their partiality and anachronism. Juan Francisco Fuentes treats totalitarianism as an "invented tradition" and he believes that the notion of "modern despotism" is a "reverse anachronism"; for Fuentes, "the anachronistic use of totalitarian/totalitarianism involves the will to reshape the past in the image and likeness of the present."[75]
Other studies try to link modern technological changes to totalitarianism. According to Shoshana Zuboff, the economic pressures of modern surveillance capitalism are driving the intensification of connection and monitoring online with spaces of social life becoming open to saturation by corporate actors, directed at the making of profit and/or the regulation of action.[77] Toby Ord believed that Orwell's fears of totalitarianism constituted a notable early precursor to modern notions of anthropogenic existential risk, the concept that a future catastrophe could permanently destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life due in part to technological changes, creating a permanent technological dystopia. Ord said that Orwell's writings show that his concern was genuine rather than just a throwaway part of the fictional plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 1949, Orwell wrote that "[a] ruling class which could guard against (four previously enumerated sources of risk) would remain in power permanently."[78] That same year, Bertrand Russell wrote that "modern techniques have made possible a new intensity of governmental control, and this possibility has been exploited very fully in totalitarian states."[79]
In the late 2010s, The Economist has described China's developed Social Credit System under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping's administration, to screen and rank its citizens based on their personal behavior, as totalitarian.[80] Opponents of China's ranking system say that it is intrusive and it is just another tool which a one-party state can use to control the population. The New York Times compared Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping's cult of personality and his ideology Xi Jinping Thought to that of Mao Zedong during the Cold War.[81] Supporters say that it will transform China into a more civilized and law-abiding society.[82] Shoshana Zuboff considers it instrumentarian rather than totalitarian.[83] Other emerging technologies that could empower future totalitarian regimes include brain-reading, contact tracing and various applications of artificial intelligence.[84][85][86][87] Philosopher Nick Bostrom said that there is a possible trade-off, namely that some existential risks might be mitigated by the establishment of a powerful and permanent world government, and in turn the establishment of such a government could enhance the existential risks which are associated with the rule of a permanent dictatorship.[88]
Religious totalitarianism
The Taliban is a totalitarian Sunni Islamist militant group and political movement in Afghanistan that emerged in the aftermath of the Soviet-Afghan War and the end of the Cold War. It governed most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and won full control of Afghanistan in 2021. Features of its totalitarian governance include the imposition of Pashtunwali culture of the plurality Pashtun ethnic group as religious law, the exclusion of minorities and non-Taliban members from the government, and extensive violations of women's rights.[89]
The Islamic State is a Salafi-Jihadist terrorist group founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999, which espouses a totalitarian ideology that is a fundamentalist hybrid of Global Jihadism, Wahhabism and Qutbism. In 2014, the group declared itself as a caliphate[a] that sought world domination and established what has been described as a "political-religious totalitarian regime". The quasi-state held significant territory in Iraq and Syria during the course of the War in Iraq and the Syrian civil war from 2013 to 2019 under the dictatorship of its first Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who imposed an extreme form of Sharia law.[93][94][95][96] The city of Geneva under John Calvin's leadership has been characterized as totalitarian by scholars.[97][98][99]
Views on totalitarianism by historians of the Soviet Union since the 1970s
Some recent historians of the Soviet Union now consider the concept of totalitarianism to be an oversimplification that does not accurately reflect the reality of life in the Soviet Union. The idea was first challenged by a generation of historians who came to prominence in the 1970s, and whose perspectives came to be known as the "revisionist school". Some of whose more prominent members were Sheila Fitzpatrick, J. Arch Getty, Jerry F. Hough, William McCagg, and Robert W. Thurston.[100] Although their individual interpretations differ, the revisionists say that the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was in many ways institutionally weak, and that terror reflected the weaknesses rather than the strengths of the Soviet state.[100] They argue that Soviet citizens were not totally devoid of agency or resources and atomised by ideology as the totalitarian perspective implies. Rather, they successfully developed practices that helped them to navigate everyday life at a time of considerable danger and multiple shortages.[101] For example, Arch Getty claims that "the Soviet political system was chaotic, that institutions often escaped the control of the centre, and that Stalin’s leadership consisted to a considerable extent in responding, on an ad hoc basis, to political crises as they arose.".[102] In addition, scholars such as Fitzpatrick have stressed that the regime relied on the popular support for legitimation as much as it did on terror. By purging society of groups deemed 'anti-Soviet', new job opportunities opened up for an entire cohort of young, working class citizens, who saw dramatic, upward social mobility that they could scarcely have dreamed of before the revolution. These "beneficiaries" of the violence became fiercely loyal to Stalin and the Soviet regime. To them, it appeared the promise of the revolution had been fulfilled. They became willing to defend and support Stalin not in spite of terror, but because of it.[103]
In the case of East Germany, Eli Rubin posited that East Germany was not a totalitarian state but rather a society shaped by the confluence of unique economic and political circumstances interacting with the concerns of ordinary citizens.[104]
Writing in 1987, Walter Laqueur posited that the revisionists in the field of Soviet history were guilty of confusing popularity with morality and of making highly embarrassing and not very convincing arguments against the concept of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state.[105] Laqueur stated that the revisionists' arguments with regard to Soviet history were highly similar to the arguments made by Ernst Nolte regarding German history.[105] For Laqueur, concepts such as modernization were inadequate tools for explaining Soviet history while totalitarianism was not.[106] Laqueur's argument has been criticized by modern "revisionist school" historians such as Paul Buhle, who said that Laqueur wrongly equates Cold War revisionism with the German revisionism; the latter reflected a "revanchist, military-minded conservative nationalism."[107] Moreover, Michael Parenti and James Petras have suggested that the totalitarianism concept has been politically employed and used for anti-communist purposes. Parenti has also analysed how "left anti-communism" attacked the Soviet Union during the Cold War.[108] For Petras, the CIA funded the Congress for Cultural Freedom in order to attack "Stalinist anti-totalitarianism."[109] Into the 21st century, Enzo Traverso has attacked the creators of the concept of totalitarianism as having invented it to designate the enemies of the West.[110]
According to some scholars, calling Joseph Stalin totalitarian instead of authoritarian has been asserted to be a high-sounding but specious excuse for Western self-interest, just as surely as the counterclaim that allegedly debunking the totalitarian concept may be a high-sounding but specious excuse for Russian self-interest. For Domenico Losurdo, totalitarianism is a polysemic concept with origins in Christian theology and applying it to the political sphere requires an operation of abstract schematism which makes use of isolated elements of historical reality to place fascist regimes and the Soviet Union in the dock together, serving the anti-communism of Cold War-era intellectuals rather than reflecting intellectual research.[111] Other scholars, among them F. William Engdahl, Sheldon Wolin, and Slavoj Žižek, have linked totalitarianism to capitalism and liberalism, and used concepts such as inverted totalitarianism,[112] totalitarian capitalism,[113] and totalitarian democracy.[114][115][116]
See also
- Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism
- Criticism of communist party rule
- Democratic backsliding
- List of authoritarian states
- List of cults of personality
- List of totalitarian regimes
- Totalitarian architecture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
Totalitarian architecture is a type of architecture or an architectural style approved by and often preferred by dictatorships and governments of totalitarian regimes,[1] intended to strengthen and spread their ideology.[2] The style of totalitarian architecture shows a preference for "classical symbolism and monumentality",[3] drawing on simplified neo-Classicism and realism.[1][4][5]
Many aspects of the culture in totalitarian countries have been described as supporting the leaders and the ideology of the regime. In 2009, Theodore Dalrymple criticized Le Corbusier as one of creators of totalitarian architecture. He described brutalist structures as an expression of totalitarianism given that their grand, concrete-based design involves destroying gentler, more-human places such as gardens.[6] In 1949, George Orwell described the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four as an "enormous, pyramidal structure of white concrete, soaring up terrace after terrace, three hundred metres into the air." The Times columnist Ben Macintyre wrote that it was "a prescient description of the sort of totalitarian architecture that would soon dominate the Communist bloc."[7] In contrast to these views, several authors have seen brutalism and socialist realism as modernist art forms which brought an ethos and sensibility in art.[8][9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarian_architecture
Democratic backsliding, also called autocratization,[1][2][a] is "a process of regime change towards autocracy that makes the exercise of political power more arbitrary and repressive and that restricts the space for public contestation and political participation in the process of government selection".[9][10] Democratic decline involves the weakening of democratic institutions, such as the peaceful transition of power or free and fair elections, or the violation of individual rights that underpin democracy, especially freedom of expression.[11][12]
Proposed causes of democratic backsliding include lack of public support for democracy, economic inequality, culturally conservative reactions to societal changes, populist or personalist politics, and external influence from great power politics. During crises, backsliding can occur when leaders impose autocratic rules during states of emergency that are either disproportionate to the severity of the crisis or remain in place after the situation has improved.[13]
While regime change through military coups has declined since the end of the Cold War, more subtle forms of backsliding have increased. During the third wave of democratization in the late twentieth century, many new, weakly institutionalized democracies were established; these regimes have been most vulnerable to democratic backsliding.[14][12] The third wave of autocratization has been ongoing since 2010, when the number of liberal democracies was at an all-time high.[15][16] One quarter of the world's population lives under democratically backsliding hybrid regimes as of 2021.[17]
Manifestations
Democratic backsliding occurs when essential components of democracy are threatened. Examples of democratic backsliding include:[18][19]
- Free and fair elections are degraded;[18]
- Liberal rights of freedom of speech, press[20] and association decline, impairing the ability of the political opposition to challenge the government, hold it to account, and propose alternatives to the current regime;[18][20]
- The rule of law (i.e., judicial and bureaucratic restraints on the government) is weakened,[18] such as when the independence of the judiciary is threatened, or when civil service tenure protections are weakened or eliminated.[21]
- An over-emphasis on national security as response to acts of terrorism or perceived antagonists.[21]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding
Some authors and historians have carried out comparisons of Nazism and Stalinism. They have considered the similarities and differences between the two ideologies and political systems, the relationship between the two regimes, and why both came to prominence simultaneously. During the 20th century, the comparison of Nazism and Stalinism was made on totalitarianism, ideology, and personality cult. Both regimes were seen in contrast to the liberal democratic Western world, emphasizing the similarities between the two.[1]
Political scientists Hannah Arendt, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Carl Joachim Friedrich, and historian Robert Conquest were prominent advocates of applying the totalitarian concept to compare Nazism and Stalinism.[2][3] Historians Sheila Fitzpatrick and Michael Geyer highlight the differences between Nazism and Stalinism, with Geyer saying that the idea of comparing the two regimes has achieved limited success.[4] Historian Henry Rousso defends the work of Friedrich et al., while saying that the concept is both useful and descriptive rather than analytical, and positing that the regimes described as totalitarian do not have a common origin and did not arise in similar ways.[5] Historians Philippe Burrin and Nicolas Werth take a middle position between one making the leader seem all-powerful and the other making him seem like a weak dictator.[5] Historians Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin take a longer historical perspective and regard Nazism and Stalinism not as examples of a new type of society but as historical anomalies and dispute whether grouping them as totalitarian is useful.[6]
Other historians and political scientists have made comparisons between Nazism and Stalinism as part of their work. The comparison has long provoked political controversy,[7][8] and in the 1980s led to the historians' dispute within Germany known as the Historikerstreit.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nazism_and_Stalinism
In political science, a political system means the type of political organization that can be recognized, observed or otherwise declared by a state.[1]
It defines the process for making official government decisions. It usually comprizes the governmental legal and economic system, social and cultural system, and other state and government specific systems. However, this is a very simplified view of a much more complex system of categories involving the questions of who should have authority and what the government influence on its people and economy should be.
The main types of political systems recognized are democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes with a variety of hybrid regimes.[2][3] Modern classification system also include monarchies as a standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three.[4][5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_system
Anarchy is a society without a government. It may also refer to a society or group of people that entirely rejects a set hierarchy.
In practical terms, anarchy can refer to the curtailment or abolition of traditional forms of government and institutions. It can also designate a nation or any inhabited place that has no system of government or central rule. Anarchy is primarily advocated by individual anarchists who propose replacing government with voluntary institutions. These institutions or free associations are generally modeled on nature since they can represent concepts such as community and economic self-reliance, interdependence, or individualism. Although anarchy is often negatively used as a synonym of chaos or societal collapse or anomie, this is not the meaning that anarchists attribute to anarchy, a society without hierarchies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, is a term used to describe the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships that were derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour. Although it is derived from the Latin word feodum or feudum (fief),[1] which was used during the Medieval period, the term feudalism and the system which it describes were not conceived of as a formal political system by the people who lived during the Middle Ages.[2] The classic definition, by François Louis Ganshof (1944),[3] describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations which existed among the warrior nobility and revolved around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs.[3]
A broader definition of feudalism, as described by Marc Bloch (1939), includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry, all of whom were bound by a system of manorialism; this is sometimes referred to as a "feudal society". Since the publication of Elizabeth A. R. Brown's "The Tyranny of a Construct" (1974) and Susan Reynolds's Fiefs and Vassals (1994), there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for understanding medieval society.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
Meritocracy (merit, from Latin mereō, and -cracy, from Ancient Greek κράτος kratos 'strength, power') is the notion of a political system in which economic goods or political power are vested in individual people based on ability and talent, rather than wealth or social class.[1] Advancement in such a system is based on performance, as measured through examination or demonstrated achievement. Although the concept of meritocracy has existed for centuries, the first known use of the term was by sociologist Alan Fox in the journal Socialist Commentary in 1956.[2] It was then popularized by sociologist Michael Dunlop Young, who used the term in his dystopian political and satirical book The Rise of the Meritocracy in 1958.[3][4] Today, the term is often utilised to refer to social systems, in which personal advancement and success are primarily attributed to an individual's capabilities and merits.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy
A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state for life or until abdication. The political legitimacy and authority of the monarch may vary from restricted and largely symbolic (constitutional monarchy), to fully autocratic (absolute monarchy), and can span across executive, legislative, and judicial domains.[1]
The succession of monarchs in many cases has been hereditical, often building dynastic periods. However, elective and self-proclaimed monarchies have also been established throughout history.[2] Aristocrats, though not inherent to monarchies, often serve as the pool of persons to draw the monarch from and fill the constituting institutions (e.g. diet and court), giving many monarchies oligarchic elements.
Monarchs can carry various titles such as emperor, empress, king, and queen. Monarchies can form federations, personal unions and realms with vassals through personal association with the monarch, which is a common reason for monarchs carrying several titles.
Monarchies were the most common form of government until the 20th century, by which time republics had replaced many monarchies. Today forty-three sovereign nations in the world have a monarch, including fifteen Commonwealth realms that share King Charles III as their head of state. Other than that, there is a range of sub-national monarchical entities. Most of the modern monarchies tend to be constitutional monarchies, retaining under a constitution unique legal and ceremonial roles for the monarch, exercising limited or no political power, similar to heads of state in a parliamentary republic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy
Theocracy is a form of government in which one or more deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries who manage the government's daily affairs.[2][3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theocracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Former_countries
Noble cause corruption is corruption caused by the adherence to a teleological ethical system, suggesting that people will use unethical or illegal means to attain desirable goals,[1] a result which appears to benefit the greater good. Where traditional corruption is defined by personal gain,[2] noble cause corruption forms when someone is convinced of their righteousness, and will do anything within their powers to achieve the desired result. An example of noble cause corruption is police misconduct "committed in the name of good ends"[3] or neglect of due process through "a moral commitment to make the world a safer place to live."[4]
Conditions for such corruption usually occur where individuals feel no administrative accountability, lack morale and leadership, and lose faith in the criminal justice system.[5] These conditions can be compounded by arrogance and weak supervision.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_cause_corruption
In politics, regulatory capture (also agency capture and client politics) is a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests of a minor constituency, such as a particular geographic area, industry, profession, or ideological group.[1][2]
When regulatory capture occurs, a special interest is prioritized over the general interests of the public, leading to a net loss for society. The theory of client politics is related to that of rent-seeking and political failure; client politics "occurs when most or all of the benefits of a program go to some single, reasonably small interest (e.g., industry, profession, or locality) but most or all of the costs will be borne by a large number of people (for example, all taxpayers)".[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Types_of_countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_and_Economic_Malpractice_Observatory
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