It is that lie used by those seated in power to make their own interests prevail over those of their voters. Political scientist John Mearsheimer wrote the book: "Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics" in 2011 (read the NPR review).
Politicians lie, and it good if they lie to other political leaders on our behalf. This is theory that John Mearsheimer poses in his book. But the idea itself is not new.
The political lie, also known as "noble lie", has been justified by Plato's political philosophy since Plato's "Republic" always considering the governed as idiots in front of their rulers and unable to know what the public interest is, many sometimes conceived as the interest of the state. So in Plato's "The Republic" (Book III) we can read "if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good" however "when intemperance and disease multiply in a State, halls of justice and medicine are always being opened; and the arts of the doctor and the lawyer give themselves airs, finding how keen is the interest which not only the slaves but the freemen of a city take about them." The justification for the noble lie continues its development with Machiavelli "for this reason a prudent Prince neither can nor ought to keep his word when to keep it is hurtful to him", Nietchzsche, Weber, Carl Schmitt and in the present stage with Leo Strauss, the spiritual father, the latter, of many of the current rulers in the United States.
An illustrative example of political lying is the philosophical contest promoted by Frederick II of Prussia in 1778 with the title of "Is it convenient to deceive the people, either by inducing them to new mistakes, or by keeping them in those already in?"
The political lie is systematically exercised through the use of mass media to constitute the social body or unify it as Sun Tzu said in the "Art of War" three centuries before Christ, and thus justify interest. The preferred technique, of this, to give body to a political lie is demagoguery, whether this demagoguery of equality or freedom, in addition to the political fiction.
The country, through the division of the powers of the state, the imperative mandate and the ability of the governed to depose their rulers, control the narrative of political lie.