J. Benton Heath (Temple University Beasley School of Law) has posted The Chokepoint State on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper argues that the second Trump administration is crystallizing a new phase of U.S. state-building—the Chokepoint State. In the Chokepoint State, state capacity is directed toward creating and controlling key nodes in financial and data networks, with the aim of using that control to punish adversaries, reward allies, and set new rules of the road. This stage in American state-making builds on earlier legal and administrative innovations, but it operates according to its own logic. In the Chokepoint State, actors that control nodes in economic and information networks can use their power to impose new, quasi-legal norms that do not derive from any ordinary lawmaking process. The second Trump administration’s grab for power has depended heavily on the techniques of the Chokepoint State, but those techniques precede Trump and have been used by administrations from both major U.S. parties. The paper further argues that resistance in the Chokepoint State requires a combination of strategies to tame the state’s discretion from within, while using countervailing power to build zones of sanctuary that exist outside the state’s unbridled control.
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