State within a state

State within a state (also imperium in imperio or status in statu) is a political situation in a country when an internal organ ("Deep State"), generally from the armed forces, intelligence agencies, or police, does not respond to the civilian leadership.

Sometimes, the term refers to state companies that, though formally under the command of the government, act de facto like private corporations. Sometimes, the term refers to companies that, though formally private, act de facto like "states within a state".

Certain political debates surrounding the separation of Church and State revolve around the perception that if left unchecked, the Church might turn into a kind of State within a State, an illegitimate outgrowth of the State's natural civil power.

Imperium in imperio was also the first state motto of Ohio, reflecting its great size and influence within the early United States.

Alleged cases of “state within a state”

 * Nazi Germany's Schutzstaffel
 * Weimar Republic's Reichswehr
 * German Empire's Deutsches Heer
 * Francoist Spain's military forces
 * Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
 * The Ottoman Empire's Janissaries
 * Safavid Persia's Qizilbash
 * Cameroon's Cameroon Development Corporation
 * British Guiana's Booker-McConnell
 * Lebanon's PLO (see PLO in Lebanon)
 * Lebanon's Hezbollah
 * Mamluks (Seljuk Turks, Ghaznavid Empire, Ayyubid Empire, Abbasid Empire)
 * The Zollverein within the German Confederation
 * Ivan the Terrible's Oprichnina
 * Islamic Emirate of Waziristan
 * Turkey's "Deep State"
 * South Vietnam's-ARVN
 * Iran's IRGC
 * Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces
 * USSR's KGB
 * PDVSA in pre-Chávez Venezuela
 * Algeria's Department of Intelligence and Security
 * United States Intelligence Community