Dr Theo Kindynis, Department of Sociology and Criminology, City St George’s, University of London
Deep politics refers to ‘all those political practices and arrangements, deliberate or not, which are usually repressed rather than acknowledged’ (Scott, 1996: 7). Deep politics, then, encompasses parapolitics: covert action, disinformation operations and dirty tricks by security and intelligence agencies and their plausibly deniable fronts. However, deep politics can also evolve out of parapolitics, such as when ‘covert forces are no longer securely under the control of their creator’ (Scott, 2003: 236).
Let us consider two examples. Discussing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s covert wars in Afghanistan, Burma and Laos – in which the agency became ‘enmeshed’ in narcotics traffic – McCoy reflects that ‘there is a striking contrast between their short-term operational gains and long-term political costs’ (2003: 16). Through its covert operations, the CIA supplied ‘arms, logistics and political protection to major drug lords, expanding local opium production and shipping heroin to international markets’ (ibid). Crucially, once the CIA’s involvement in these regional conflicts ended, these covert war zones’ ‘market linkages and warlord power’ endured, ensuring the regions remained major drug suppliers for decades to come (ibid). ‘Their battlegrounds became covert war wastelands… with a lasting dependence on drug trafficking’ (ibid, emphasis added).
Another example of deep political consequences evolving out of parapolitics is found in “blowback” – a CIA coinage, referring to the unintended outcomes of covert operations against foreign nations and governments – from intelligence agencies’ collusion with, sponsorship and support for violent terrorist networks (see, for example, Johnson, 2002; Coll, 2004; Curtis, 2010): both the September 11 2001 attacks in the US and the 7 July 2005 bombings in London were, in part, the result of American and British covert operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Johnson, 2002; Coll, 2004; Meacher, 2005; Curtis, 2010).
Beyond the unintended consequences of covert action, deep politics also encompasses all manner of unacknowledged, clandestine, and informal political practices and arrangements: from private members clubs (see, e.g., Gentleman, 2024) and old boy networks, to invitation-only foreign policy forums such as Le Cercle: a highly secretive ‘international coalition of rightwing intelligence veterans’, diplomats and politicians working behind the scenes to promote conservative election candidates and denigrate their opponents (Teacher, 2011: 4). Also included under this rubric would be so-called ‘corporate interlock’, whereby corporations share members of their boards of directors, as well as the revolving door that exists, for example between the security state and big oil and gas companies.[1]
Deep political arrangements include the ‘mechanics of accommodation’ between law enforcement authorities and the criminal underworld (Scott, 1996: xii). Whereas from the viewpoint of conventional criminology, the state and its agencies are opposed to and continually struggle to gain control over organized crime, a deep political analysis acknowledges that in practice, efforts at control often result in arrangements ranging from tolerance and accommodation to corruption and police-crime symbioses (ibid). Another example of deep politics is what some commentators have described as ‘managed democracy’, whereby elites focus on manipulating rather than engaging the public in order to achieve the desired outcomes from elections (Wolin, 2017).
Therefore, in contrast to conventional conspiracy theory, which presupposes ‘conscious secret collaborations towards shared ends’, deep political analysis posits ‘an open system with divergent power centers and goals’ (Scott, 1996: xi). Rather than the ‘omnipotent-cabal interpretation’ of politics and history, the claim is that, ‘on the contrary… a multitude of conspiracies contend in the night’ (Oglesby, 1976: 27).
References
Coll, S. (2004) Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin.
Curtis, M. (2010) Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam. London: Serpent’s Tail.
Gentleman, A. (2024) ‘Garrick Club’s men-only members list reveals roll-call of British establishment’, The Guardian, 18 March. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/18/garrick-club-men-only-members-list-roll-call-british-establishment (Accessed: 3 October 2025).
Johnson, C. (2002) ‘American Militarism and Blowback: The Costs of Letting the Pentagon Dominate Foreign Policy’, New Political Science, 24(1), pp. 21–38.
McCoy, A. (2003) The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. 2nd revised edn. Brooklyn, NY: Lawrence Hill Books.
Meacher, M. (2005) ‘Britain now faces its own blowback’, The Guardian, 10 September. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/10/terrorism.politics (Accessed: 3 October 2025).
Oglesby, C. (1976) The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate and Beyond. New York, NY: Berkley Medallion Books.
Scott, P. D. (1996) Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Scott, P. D. (2003) Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.
Teacher, D. (2011) Rogue Agents: Habsburg, Pinay and the Private Cold War 1951 – 1991. 3rd edn. Available online at: https://wikispooks.com/w/images/3/37/Rogue_Agents_(3rd_edition%2C_2011%2C_full).pdf. Accessed 3 October, 2025.
Wolin, S. (2017) Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[1] For example, all three of the most recent heads of the UK’s foreign Secret Intelligence Service (also known as MI6) have gone on to work for multinational oil and gas companies immediately after leaving the agency.