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Episode 4.7: Sovereign Are They Who Decide the Exception: The Power Elite and State Criminality – Aaron Good

Interviewer: MATTHEW BERKMAN. In the tradition of C. Wright Mill’s The Power Elite, author AARON GOOD argues that political science needs to bring power back in and seriously consider the links between social elites and the continuity of U.S. policy from one administration to the next. In his discussion with political scientist Matthew Berkman, Good proposes a tri-partite model of the state that builds on conceptions of a “dual state” comprised of the democratic government and the more shadowy security apparatuses that protect, but also often direct, it. To these, Good adds what he terms “deep political forces”: the ongoing ad hoc involvement in government of economic elites, who, in case after case, initiated for their own reasons ventures that would eventually become U.S. policy, overt and covert, legal and illegal. Good is author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State.