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A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as
murder or
treason
Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agreement
secret
Secrecy is the practice of hiding information from certain individuals or groups who do not have the "need to know", perhaps while sharing it with other individuals. That which is kept hidden is known as the secret.
Secrecy is often controvers ...
from the public or from other people affected by it. In a political sense, conspiracy refers to a group of people united in the goal of usurping, altering or overthrowing an established
political power
In social science and politics, power is the social production of an effect that determines the capacities, actions, beliefs, or conduct of actors. Power does not exclusively refer to the threat or use of force ( coercion) by one actor agains ...
. Depending on the circumstances, a conspiracy may also be a
crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...
, or a
civil wrong. The term generally implies wrongdoing or illegality on the part of the conspirators, as people would not need to conspire to engage in activities that were lawful and ethical, or to which no one would object.
There are some coordinated activities that people engage in with secrecy that are not generally thought of as conspiracies. For example, intelligence agencies such as the American
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
and the British
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
necessarily make plans in secret to spy on suspected enemies of their respective countries, but this kind of activity is generally not considered to be a conspiracy so long as their goal is to fulfill their official functions, and not something like improperly enriching themselves.
[Peter Knight, ''Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia'' (2003), p. 15-16.] Similarly, the coaches of competing sports teams routinely meet behind closed doors to plan game strategies and specific plays designed to defeat their opponents, but this activity is not considered a conspiracy because this is considered a legitimate part of the sport. Furthermore, a conspiracy must be engaged in knowingly. The continuation of social traditions that work to the advantage of certain groups and to the disadvantage of certain other groups, though possibly unethical, is not a conspiracy if participants in the practice are not carrying it forward for the purpose of perpetuating this advantage.
On the other hand, if the intent of carrying out a conspiracy exists, then there is a conspiracy even if the details are never agreed to aloud by the participants.
CIA
covert operations, for instance, are by their very nature hard to prove definitively but research into the agency's work, as well as revelations by former CIA employees, has suggested several cases where the agency tried to influence events. During the
Cold War, the United States tried to covertly change other nations' governments 66 times, succeeding in 26 cases.
A "
conspiracy theory" is a belief that a conspiracy has actually been decisive in producing a political event of which the theorists strongly disapprove. Political scientist
Michael Barkun
__NOTOC__
Michael Barkun (born April 8, 1938) is an American academic who serves as Professor Emeritus of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, specializing in political and religious ext ...
has described conspiracy theories as relying on the view that the universe is governed by design, and embody three principles: nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected. Another common feature is that conspiracy theories evolve to incorporate whatever evidence exists against them, so that they become, as Barkun writes, a closed system that is
unfalsifiable
Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses that was introduced by the Philosophy of science, philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book ''The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' (1934). He proposed it as t ...
, and therefore "a matter of faith rather than proof."
Etymology
''Conspiracy'' comes from the Latin word ''conspiratio''. While ''conspiratio'' can mean "plot" or "conspiracy", it can also translated as "unity" and "agreement", in the context of a group.
''Conspiratio'' comes from ''conspiro'' which, while still meaning "conspiracy" in the modern sense, also means "I sing in unison", as ''con''- means "with" or "together", and ''spiro'' means "I breathe", literally meaning "I breathe together with others".
Types of conspiracies
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Conspiracy (civil)
A civil conspiracy is a form of conspiracy involving an agreement between two or more parties to deprive a third party of legal rights or deceive a third party to obtain an illegal objective. , an agreement between people to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their legal rights or to gain an unfair advantage.
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Conspiracy (criminal)
In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime at some time in the future. Criminal law in some countries or for some conspiracies may require that at least one overt act be undertaken in furtherance ...
, an agreement between people to break the law in the future, in some cases having committed an act to further that agreement.
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Conspiracy (political)
This is a list of political conspiracies. In a political context, a conspiracy refers to a group of people united in the goal of damaging, usurping, or overthrowing an established political power. Typically, the final goal is to gain power throu ...
, an agreement between people with the goal of gaining political power or meeting a political objective.
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Hub-and-spoke conspiracy
A hub-and-spoke conspiracy (or hub-and-spokes conspiracy) is a legal construct or doctrine of United States antitrust and criminal law. In such a conspiracy, several parties ("spokes") enter into an unlawful agreement with a leading party ("hub"). ...
, a conspiracy in which one or more principal conspirators (the "hub") enter into several similar agreements with others (the "spokes") who know concerted action is contemplated, usually where the success of the concerted action depends on the participation of the other spokes.
References
External links
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