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From: eurasiareview.com

The ‘Deep State’ May Not Be As Bad – OpEd

By Luis Fleischman

The term “deep state” has been repeatedly heard since Donald Trump was first elected president in 2016. In this view, the “deep state” has been interpreted to mean the federal agencies of the executive branch composed of unelected bureaucrats standing in the way of presidential policies. 

In other words, the president represents the general will. The “deep state” is the set of government agencies and entities with a voice and power accumulated throughout the years that is self-referential. It does not reflect the people’s will. The “deep state” also refers to the old class of politicians that are part of an establishment that seeks its own power and even the system of justice that stands in the way of certain policies and legislation.

The use of the term has an international echo. Most recently, the Israeli Prime Minister referred to the “deep state” on two occasions. In one instance he spoke about the deep state as a sort of left-wing conspiracy to remove him as the Israeli premier against the people’s will. Again, delivering a speech at the Hungarian University in Budapest, he launched an attack against the deep state, which he defined as a “rule of bureaucrats” seeking to prosecute him and resist his policies.

There is no question that bureaucracies or state structures present problems that often prevent elected leaders from implementing their policies. It is also true that bureaucracies tend to expand their power and become rigid and resistant to change. Max Weber regarded bureaucracy as a mechanism to implement political decisions. A bureaucracy should be a body that would conduct such implementation most efficiently and rationally. Bureaucrats have expertise; there is a division of labor based on professional knowledge. Likewise, rules and regulations guide their actions.

Conversely, politicians are elected based on campaign promises, personal charisma, specific interests, or other attributes. The politician is an innovator, and the bureaucrat is used to performing his job following a routine that could clash with the new and creative energy of the politician. The politician is a man of ideas. The bureaucrat is a man of mundane habits who tends to resist change or the unknown. It is what Robert Merton called “the bureaucratic personality.”

Hence, in this sense, the deep state concept is an undeniable sociological and political reality. I would say it applies also to politicians who have been holding office for a long time and feel uncomfortable with changes and innovations.

Yet, there are differences between deep states with authoritarian traditions and those with democratic traditions. In states characterized by an authoritarian tradition, there is fear that a coup d’etat that overthrew a democracy would be justifiable. Suppose the authoritarian state built a cast of military officers and other bureaucrats that benefitted under such a regime. In that case, they will resist the new habits of a young democracy and the loss of privilege. In countries such as Argentina, there were several attempts at coup d’etat after the government began a transition to democracy. In Türkiye, where the concept of “deep state” originated, the armed forces were the state institution that protected the legacy of secularism initiated by Kemal Ataturk. Consequently, the military engaged in several coups d’etat in the country, undermining any attempt to democratize. The same applies to Putin‘s Russia despite the post-totalitarian transition, the legacy of the KGB enables Putin’s authoritarian rule.

In countries with a democratic tradition, the deep state takes a different form. In countries with a legacy of democracy, the separation of powers and the rule of law prevails. Bureaucracies could hold a great deal of power and display all the illnesses that bureaucracies are usually accused of, including corruption, abuse of power, oligarchical tendencies, rigidity of thought, and resistance to change. Yet, the best antidote to such bureaucratic negative inclination is more democracy rather than more executive prerogatives, as neo-populist leaders wish. As Max Weber has pointed out, an absolute monarch depends solely on a group of bureaucrats who manage the affairs of the state. By contrast, a democracy can counteract the power of those bureaucrats and oligarchical politicians.

However, the most precious bureaucratic assets that a democratic country possesses’ are the lawyers and the legal system. In democracies, these entities constitute the backbone of this deep state. The U.S. Department of Justice is an independent body that has historically followed the law and the Constitution.

A good example would be during the George W. Bush presidency when generalized surveillance measures were rejected by John Ashcroft, the president’s attorney general, and his FBI Director, claiming it could inflict upon civil rights and privacy. The system also worked during the investigation of President Richard Nixon over the Watergate case, which ended with the president’s resignation. The same applies to the Israeli legal system that is currently prosecuting Prime Minister Netanyahu over bribery and fraud charges, and investigating some of his aides suspected of having worked for the government of Qatar. Likewise, the PM faces the declarations of the head of the Internal Security Services (Shin Beth), who claimed Netanyahu asked him on two occasions to act against the law.

As Fareed Zakariah has pointed out, such protective behavior of government agencies not only derives from the personal character of the individuals involved but is also the result of a culture that is a product of legal training. In other words, the legal institutions develop a practice to maintain the balance of powers and the rule of law.

When leaders equate democracy with the will of the people, they fail to recognize what political philosophers such as James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill saw as one of the dangers to democracy: the tyranny of the majority, which, by being majority may turn oppressive against a political minority and infringe the civil and political rights of a minority. But the reality is that even the concept of tyranny of the majority is doubtful in contemporary illiberal regimes because even if the majority elected a populist leader, it may not always agree with the leader and may even be affected by his policies. Here, I make a distinction between initial electoral legitimacy and post-electoral legitimacy. A considerable gap may exist between the two, particularly as the leader begins to feel more entitled and less connected from society’s needs and aspirations.

Furthermore, even bureaucracies that are not directly part of the professional legal system provide an institutional setting that enables an orderly implementation of policies, which provides a dose of stability and predictability.

When leaders popularly elected dismantle agencies because they see them as a focus of resistance to their policies, they give up the element of order. If the executive branch eliminates a department or replaces its personnel with loyalists, there is an enormous risk of chaos, anarchy, and mismanagement. There is no better example than countries such as Venezuela, where the then-populist leader Hugo Chavez dismissed all the professional workers at the Oil-giant PDVSA, replacing them with loyalists, and eventually running the company into the ground.

Democracy necessarily leads to bureaucracy because agencies are often the result of responding to social needs or resolving a social problem. (e.g., Roosevelt’s New Deal; regulation of certain sectors of the economy, social programs, etc.). Indeed, government agencies could clash with the political class when the latter intends to implement change. Such a situation could indeed affect the democratic interest of the people. However, dialogue, gradual change, and reform are the best answers to such a situation. Otherwise, the alternative is to eliminate the administrative system arbitrarily, which may lead to anarchy and tyranny. In Venezuela, the government has lost all legitimacy and finds itself in total economic bankruptcy. Other countries with populist, illiberal regimes, such as Türkiye, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia, are facing massive protests because of policies that affect the interests and rights of their people. Executive abuse of powers, weakening of the judiciary, crackdowns on the media, and favoritism toward those who are loyal to the regime undermine the foundations of the state. It is precisely this element that those who oversee the Trump Administration Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) need to take into consideration.

As Plato observed thousands of years ago, tyranny can result from democracy, as democracy can give rise to a demagogue who exploits mass support to accumulate power.

Plato proposed a rule of philosophers, kings, and a group of people who knew better than anyone else what was good and how to rule. They are men of wisdom and knowledge, driven by a commitment to the good of society and not by personal ambition.

We are aware of the utopian and impractical dimension of Plato’s solution, as it may lead to abuse of power and even tyranny. Given the circumstances, the “deep state” is the best of all evils. Despite its imperfections, it still secures an element of order and stability while enabling gradual reform.

Luis Fleischman, Ph.D., is a professor of Sociology at Palm Beach State College, co-presdient of the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research and the author of the book “The Middle East Riddle: The Peace Process and Israeli-Arab Relations in a Changing Times.”