In the course of time, the Egyptian army has developed a complicated network of economic interests as a privileged establishment, and independent from civilian oversight or political surveillance. This dissertation argues that; the well-established and long lasting independent economic interests may turn the military establishment to an independent stakeholder and closed, conservative group within the society seeks to preserve its own privileges by controlling over the political power and resist any external oversight including the democratic reforms that may create a threat to these privileges. Such military establishment is a direct threat to any democratic transition. In this case, the armies securitize the political sphere raising the democratic reforms as foreign conspiracy and an existential threat to its privileges and raise the nationalism and xenophobic rhetoric as it needs to create a political justification for their security practices that aim to crush the opposition and secure the political power. I suppose that the Egyptian case shows causal relations between the economic interests of the military establishment and the nationalism as a dominant ideology. Such military is leaning to not only control the political power, but it aims to militarize the societal values and control over the...

This dissertation seeks to explain the uncanny continuity of hegemonic US foreign policy across presidential administrations and the breakdown of the rule of law as evidenced by unadjudicated state and elite criminality. It finds that a nebulous deep state predominates over politics and society. This deep state is comprised of institutions that advance the interests of the politico-economic elite through nexuses connecting the overworld of the corporate rich, the underworld of organized crime, and mediating national security organizations. To investigate the evolution of the state, the tripartite state construct is elucidated. It is a synthesis and expansion of three extant approaches—dual state theory, theories of the power elite, and the deep politics framework which explores the impactful forces and institutions whose influence is typically repressed rather than acknowledged in mainstream discourse. The tripartite state is comprised of the democratic or public state, the security state, and the deep state. A key contention herein is that the deep state developed alongside postwar US exceptionism—the institutionalized abrogation of the rule of law, ostensibly on the basis of “national security.” Theories of hegemony and empire are analyzed and critiqued and refined. To wit: the post-World War II US empire has been sustained by hegemonic institutions which rely on various degrees of consent and coercion—both in a dyadic sense but increasingly through structural dominance following the collapse of Bretton Woods. Rival hypotheses related to the state and US foreign policy are analyzed and critiqued. To explore the concept of a deep state within a nominal democracy, open democratic modes of power are contrasted with top-down or dark power. Through process tracing, the historical evolution of the US state is delineated, charting the means by which US imperial hegemony was reproduced. Presidential administrations and the Watergate scandal serve as case studies of sorts, illustrating the deep state’s role in the general thrust of postwar US politics—imperial hegemony over the international system. Finally, various deep state institutions are examined along with a discussion of generalizability, applications, and implications of the foregoing scholarship. / Political Science

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Based on a historiographical, archival and media analysis, this doctoral thesis explores the phenomenon of parakratos (translated as deep state or parastate) in post-civil war Greece (1949-1967). Research perspectives are fourfold: Firstly, parakratos is discussed in the context of academic debates on parapolitics and the concepts of the dual state, the security state and the deep state; and presented as a Cold War parallel power mechanism, analogical to Italy and Turkey. Secondly, parakratos is analysed as part of domestic political reality through the prism of the historical events documented in Greek historiography. In this sense, the thesis concentrates on the emergence and operation of clandestine military groups and parastate ultra- nationalist organisations against the backdrop of the Greek political, legal and social environment. Both phenomena are elaborated on through the lens of the inefficient Greek political and administrative system, a deeply divided society, the politicisation of the public space, and the persistence of clientelist networks constructed upon political loyalties. Third, the parakratos is examined on an interpretative level as a term and concept employed in Greek historiography. Focusing on its presumed roots, actors, purposes and relations with the state, three...