Double government
| Double government link | |
|---|---|
| Michael J. Glennon's account of a split between public Madisonian institutions and a largely insulated Trumanite national-security network. |
Double government is a term popularised by legal scholar Michael J. Glennon in National Security and Double Government (Oxford University Press, 2014). Glennon argues that formal constitutional offices—the presidency, Congress, and the courts—coexist with a more continuous managerial network of military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law-enforcement officials that he calls the Trumanite network.
The thesis is claim-level and contested: Glennon presents continuity of national-security policy across otherwise opposed administrations as evidence of structural insulation rather than simple partisan agreement. Primary sourcing for the concept should rest on Glennon's book, contemporaneous reviews, and the public documentary record of the agencies he discusses—not on fringe narratives.
Core claim
Glennon's "double government" frames two overlapping systems:
- Madisonian institutions — the dignified, publicly accountable constitutional branches.
- Trumanite network — career managers of national-security agencies whose incentives favour continuity, secrecy, and operational autonomy.
He traces the second network's growth to the national-security state built after World War II under President Harry Truman, including the National Security Act of 1947 and the early Central Intelligence Agency.
Sources
- Michael J. Glennon, National Security and Double Government (Oxford University Press, 2014).
- National Security Act of 1947, Pub. L. 80-253 (public statute).
- Reviews and academic discussion of Glennon's thesis in mainstream legal and foreign-policy journals (claim-level; cite specific reviews when expanding).