ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some sociological observations on that part of the executive apparatus that, in some countries, occupies itself with the deterrence and intimidation of the citizenry: what sort of contradictions control its effectiveness, what sort of dependencies develop between the political leadership and the leadership of such a secret service, and between the top and the low level executives. Point of departure is the observation that government services for terror and intimidation are bureaucracies, quite similar to other governmental bureaucracies, such as the postal services or the educational system. Governments seem to believe that they can move more easily in the traffic among states if they can exercise some degree of moral authority. Services for surveillance and intimidation are probably better understood as particular examples of government bureaucracies webbed in by a network of exchange and dependency relations, themselves closely woven from similar relations among the members of the apparatus.
