The shadow government, also referred to as cryptocracy, secret government, or invisible government, is a family of theories based on the notion that real and actual political power resides not only with publicly elected representatives but with private individuals who are exercising power behind the scenes, beyond the scrutiny of democratic institutions. According to this belief, the official elected government is subservient to the shadow government, which is the true executive power.
Some of the groups proposed by these theories as constituting the shadow government include central banks, Freemasons, communists, Nazis, the Rothschilds, intelligence agencies, think tanks, organized Jewry, the Vatican, Jesuits, or Catholics in general, as well as secret societies, moneyed interests, extraterrestrials and globalist elites and supranational organizations who seek to manipulate policy in their own interest or in order to serve a larger agenda that is hidden from the general public.