What Is a Deep State?

This series is to explain American politics, both domestic and international. To certain extent they apply also to other democracies. Since I do not have a lot of time, this series will be concise. The goal of these writeups is to give you directions to search and read. If you use Wiki, Google, the results may be inaccurate or even wrong because the contents are more or less new, at least their meanings are relatively new. 

First, please read A.C. Grayling’s Democracy and Its Crisis [1] (the first two or three chapters will do). Many philosophers, led by the great philosopher Plato, do not favor democracy. No one denies that a democracy can work (everyone knows ancient Athens); when it works, it is great, perhaps better than all other political systems. The problem is that when it breaks down, democracy could descend into some worst tyrannies. Democracy had been mostly a dirty word until recent centuries. Only after democracy had succeeded in America, democracy began gaining a good reputation. An excellent book on the history of democracies [2] (pay attention to the timeline of events) largely supports this assertion. 

Then why is democracy so popular now? It is partially due to the example of American democracy [2,3]. [2] explains that most American Founding Fathers did not want Athenian-style democracy. They favored Rome’s republic. (Many Mainland Chinese cannot tell the differences between democracies and republics. Please study basic courses about these.)  Democracy gained favor in America due to two factors: Tocqueville’s book, Democracy in America [3] and President Andrew Jackson. These two changed the trajectory of American politics. American present elites often do not mention Jackson’s name because Jackson would be politically incorrect by today’s standard (except guess who? D.J. Trump). You should study Steven Smith’s book Political Philosophy carefully [4]. It is an excellent textbook for Yale undergraduate students (probably sophomore or junior level). I study it from cover to cover at least 3 times. It gives introductory coverage of all great philosophers. (I have written in Chinese one short commentary of this book [5]). [4] describes the development of political philosophy while [2] is about democratic practices and histories. 

Many think that American democracy follows Athens’ example. This is wrong;  Athens’ example will never work in a modern nation-state. (I have written two short articles on this [7,8], which may be useful to some readers. However, they need to be revised and expanded.) Not only are most Chinese wrong on this but even some reporters and commentaries appearing in top-rate newspapers, such as the Washington Post, are also wrong. Here I just point out that Athenian’s model has two fatal problems concerning modern nation-states. First, most Athenian citizens had time for politics because Athens’s economy was supported primarily by slaves, women, and non-citizen residents. Second, Aristotle studied several hundred poleis (city-states) at that time and concluded that the population of a polis should not exceed 30,000(?), too small for a modern nation-state, not even a city-state such as Singapore.   

Suppose we have a reasonably large nation-state. Such a state needs institutions and competent manpower (mostly bureaucrats) to run the institutions. This is a perennial problem existing in a not-too-small polity, whether a kingdom, an empire or a nation-state. Fukuyama’s two volumes on political order are good textbooks on states of major civilizations [9,10]. Fukuyama’s books are mainly for overview but not for studying structures (e.g. relevant facts are scattered in different chapters). To appreciate how the American democratic government runs you might want to study relevant chapters of [2] carefully. This is where the concept of deep state appears. Deep state is one of several problems in American politics. I say more on this in a future writeup. [11] is a link to an interview with  (probably shortest) former British PM Liz Truss. It illustrates some symptoms of deep state and democracy. Current problems of American politics are more severe but England’s problems [11] also appear in American democracy. [12] explains what the deep state did.

References: 

1. A. C. Grayling, Democracy and Its Crisis,  Oneworld Publications, 2017.

2. James Miller, Can Democracy Work? Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.  

3. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

4. Steven B. Smith, "Political Philosophy," Yale University Press, 2012.  

5. 韩家亮：政治哲学发展一览 http://hx.cnd.org/?p=186764

6. Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Beacon Press; Reprint edition, 1993. 

7. 韩家亮：现代民主与雅典民主的不同   http://hx.cnd.org/?p=151214 

8. 韩家亮：代表型民主的历史与现在   http://hx.cnd.org/?p=172290

9. Francis Fukuyama, "The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution,"Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. 

10. Francis Fukuyama, "Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy," Farrar, Straus and Giroux,  2014. 

11. Liz Truss: Do We Really Still Have a Democracy? (6-23)  

12. How The Deep State Took Down Trump (7-12)