City Research Online

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of the shallow state to describe a configuration of governance that operates through infrastructural control. Against the Deep State imaginary–in which power is hidden and awaits exposure–the shallow state names power that functions in plain sight, at the level of interfaces, thresholds, and access controls, without requiring democratic legitimacy or justificatory repair. Drawing on Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion, Deleuze’s societies of control, and Dean’s communicative capitalism, we argue that suspicion has ceased to operate as a critical method, becoming an ambient condition within which governance persists. Extending DeLanda’s account of axiomatics, we show how in the shallow state, political contradictions are parameterized, allowing incompatible sovereignty imaginaries to coexist without reconciliation. Influential projects such as the Network State, the Technological Republic, and Urbit function as aspirational alibis that displace legitimacy with urgency. Through a comparative analysis of voter identification politics in the United States and resistance to digital identity systems in the United Kingdom, we demonstrate how governance proceeds across divergent political registers by recalibrating thresholds in the place of securing consent. Under conditions of generalized distrust, operability replaces legitimacy as the primary condition of continuation, and political constraint migrates from belief to infrastructural interruption.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2026, Northeastern Political Science Association. This is the accepted manuscript of an article published by The University of Chicago Press. Please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions for information on re-use.
Publisher Keywords:	shallow state, digital identity, conspiracization, axiomatics, sovereignty, infrastructure, Palantir
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform J Political Science > JK Political institutions (United States) J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) > JN101 Great Britain Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity School of Communication & Creativity > Department of Media, Culture & Creative Industries
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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