Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic is about the breakdown of settlements and the abiding vulnerabilities of a Constitution that gave scant attention to administrative power. Donald Trump and his supporters have spoken of a Deep State in America, undermining his presidency from within - a shadowy coalition of security and. Dearborn, and Desmond King trace the tensions between presidential power and the depth of the American state back through the decades and forward through the various settlements arrived at in previous eras. The former House speaker John Boehner: ‘The Deep State as a boogeyman is not an idea the Trump Republicans invented out of whole cloth. government that would always use their leverage in the federal bureaucracy to oppose change, either because the deep staters. Though this conflict reached a fever pitch during the Trump presidency, it is not new. It was the deep state, an unnamed group of officials within the U.S. Like phantom twins, they drew each other out and wrestled to light basic issues of governance long suppressed. The Deep State and the unitary executive framed every major contest of the Trump presidency. In his disturbing and timely political history of the Deep State in the Middle East, Jean-Pierre Filiu reveals how the autocracies of Syria, Egypt. On the other side was a raw personalization of presidential power, one that a theory of “the unitary executive” gussied up and allowed to run roughshod over reason and the rule of law. On one side was the specter of a “Deep State” conspiracy-administrators threatening to thwart the will of the people and undercut the constitutional authority of the president they elected to lead them. In the process, two once-obscure concepts came center stage in an eerie faceoff. A deep state is a type of governance made up of potentially secret and unauthorized networks of power operating independently of a states political. Some writers have argued the term is more psychological than political, saying more about people's sense of political impotence and paranoia about government than it does about the real workings of power.Ĭontributors include British intelligence expert Peter Hennessy, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufkis, FBI and CIA historian Tim Weiner, Turkish political scholar Esra Osyurek, former British diplomat and Iraq expert Carne Ross, Zimbabwean political commentator Miles Tendi, Soviet historian Daniel Beer, political writer Thomas Frank and Chris Mullin, author of 'A Very British Coup'.Ī Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4.A powerful dissection of one of the fundamental problems in American governance today: the clash between presidents determined to redirect the nation through ever-tighter control of administration and an executive branch still organized to promote shared interests in steady hands, due deliberation, and expertise.Īs the nation’s chief executive, Donald Trump pitted himself repeatedly against the institutions and personnel of the executive branch. It was a contentious weekend at the FDA after attacks from President Donald Trump and his allies, whove claimed deep state employees within the agency are. This programme draws on both recent and historic cases, from Eisenhower's military-industrial complex and Harold Wilson's concerns about MI5 in the 1960s and 70s to the reppearance of the term around the deposition of Robert Mugabe and in Donald Trump's public rhetoric, railing against what he calls the 'criminal Deep State'. The term Deep State may well be at the more respectable end of conspiracy theory but the question why it keeps resurfacing is an interesting one. But what does the idea of a Deep State really mean - where did it come from, what would it consist of, who uses it and for what political purpose? Is the Deep State just another example of conspiracy theory in politics, or is it a more serious concern than that - and does it exist here in Britain?ĭrawing on expertise from a range of countries and political contexts, from the USA to the UK, from Russia and Turkey to Zimbabwe and Greece, journalist and writer David Aaronovitch goes in search of this most elusive idea. The term has caught on, becoming part of political folklore.

Donald Trump and his supporters have spoken of a Deep State in America, undermining his presidency from within - a shadowy coalition of security and intelligence services, hidden from plain sight, bent on sabotaging an elected government.

Deep state