Secret policy

Secret politics (also arcane politics , from Latin Arcana Imperii , “secret of the rulers” or “secrets of rule”) is politics that takes place in secret, i.e. with exclusion of the public .

The term describes an action of the ruling sovereign , the extent or purpose of which is kept secret or veiled from society and the population and can serve to consolidate rule.

The constitutional term comes from the beginning of modern times , but its principles go back to ancient times. Originally here on the Roman historian Tacitus , who was taken up by Niccolò Machiavelli with his ratio status .

Examples

• Secret treaties like that
  • Secret additional protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
• Secret diplomacy
• The Globke Plan Adenauer
• Use of " Secret Reich Matters " by the leadership of the NSDAP in World War II against sections of the own population (Jews, institutional patients, Sinti and Roma and other discriminated sections of the population).

Thesis according to Norberto Bobbio

"The higher the degree of independence of the bureaucracy and the lower the institutional possibilities for representing and mediating social conflicts of interests and values ​​in the political system and for effective control of power practices by intermediary institutions (parties and other social organizations) or the political public (parliaments and media) are, the greater the sphere of activity of "invisible forces", i. H. the arcane domain "arcana imperii" of politics. In this room, in accordance with non-transparent (including illegal) conventions and procedures on the basis of sectoral and material criteria and informal relationship and contact structures, particular economic and political interests are conveyed. As a rule, this leads to the formation of amorphous substructures of political decision-making processes ("subgovernments" or "sottogoverno"), which undermine the prerogatives of parliamentary representative bodies as well as the separation of powers and the principle of publicity. "

- Maurizio Bach : European integration and the unfulfilled promises of democracy, in: Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Friedhelm Neidhardt (ed.), On the future of democracy. Challenges in the Age of Globalization, WZB Yearbook 2000, Berlin 2000, pp. 189f.

Situation in democratic societies

In democracies with a strong position of the press, secret policy is no longer to be found in the classical sense; it is more common in dictatorships without pronounced freedom of the press. In the case of democratic forms of government, on the other hand, civil rights activists use this term to refer to state-controlled processes, laws and institutions which - in their opinion - creep in to curtail civil rights under the guise of increasing internal security , in their details are not subject to public discussion, are not legitimized by parliament , but rather are bureaucratically arranged and thus undermine democracy.

See also

• Freedom of information
• Arcane Discipline
• Authority knowledge

literature

• Michael Stolleis : Arcana imperii and ratio status. Comments on the political theory of the early 17th century (= publication by the Joachim Jungius Society of Sciences, Hamburg, No. 39). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1980, ISBN 3-525-85565-6 .
• Norberto Bobbio : Il Futuro della Democrazia. Una difesa delle regole del gioco (= Nuovo politecnico. Vol. 141). Einaudi, Turin 1984, ISBN 88-06-05754-5 .
• Raimond Reiter: Hitler's Secret Policy. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-631-58146-9 .
• Arcana Imperii. The dark side of the state . In: Contradiction - Munich Journal of Philosophy , Issue 59, 2014, ISSN  0722-8104 .
• Konrad Göke: The Secret in Politics. The genesis of the arcane politics in Niccolò Machiavelli and Giovanni Botero . In: Rüdiger Voigt (Ed.): State Secrets. Arkanpolitik in the course of the times (= state - sovereignty - nation ), Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-658-16234-4 , pp. 33–52. Available online: https://www.academia.edu/31172016/Das_Geheimnis_in_der_Ppolitik._Die_Genese_der_Arkanpolitik_bei_Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli_und_Giovanni_Botero (last accessed: February 2, 2017).
• Scientific services of the German Bundestag : The core area of ​​executive personal responsibility (= elaboration WD 3 -383/06). German Bundestag, Berlin 2006 online .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ kas.de ( Memento of the original dated November 6, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF)  
2. ↑ See Bobbio: Il Futuro della Democrazia. Una difesa delle regole del gioco . 1984, pp. 75-100