The "Parallel State" is a term coined by American historian Robert Paxton to describe a collection of organizations or institutions that are state-like in their organization, management and structure, though they are not officially part of the legitimate state or government. They serve primarily to promote the prevailing political and social ideology of the state.
The Parallel State differs from the more commonly used "state within a state" in that they are usually endorsed by the prevailing political elite of a country, while the "state within a state" is a pejorative term to describe state-like institutions that operate without the consent of, and even to the detriment to, the authority of an established state (e.g. Churches and religious institutions or secret societies with their owns laws and court systems).
Parallel States are common in societies, such as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union, Iran and North Korea, and comprise of youth organizations, leisure organizations, work/labor collectives, unions and militias.
Famous quotes containing the words parallel and/or state:
“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)