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:
“The parallel between antifeminism and race prejudice is striking. The same underlying motives appear to be at work, namely fear, jealousy, feelings of insecurity, fear of economic competition, guilt feelings, and the like. Many of the leaders of the feminist movement in the nineteenth-century United States clearly understood the similarity of the motives at work in antifeminism and race discrimination and associated themselves with the anti slavery movement.”
—Ashley Montagu (b. 1905)
“The present war having so long cut off all communication with Great-Britain, we are not able to make a fair estimate of the state of science in that country. The spirit in which she wages war is the only sample before our eyes, and that does not seem the legitimate offspring either of science or of civilization.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)