We have been watching this movie now for a while. Trump and his surrogates' "deep state" rhetoric has been pernicious over time in creating a mythology about the career bureaucracy as an organized cabal of bogeymen steering the ship of state in contravention to the will of the elected president. - ThreadSky

becingber.bsky.social • 16 days ago

We have been watching this movie now for a while. Trump and his surrogates' "deep state" rhetoric has been pernicious over time in creating a mythology about the career bureaucracy as an organized cabal of bogeymen steering the ship of state in contravention to the will of the elected president.

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becingber.bsky.social•16 days ago

Trump's critics compounded the myth by overly placing their hopes in a #Resistance-from-within, as if the disaggregated bureaucracy from the foreign service to military to air traffic controllers to FBI agents would band together and conspire to save the country from our own political choices.

becingber.bsky.social•16 days ago

Both of these mythologies miss how the career bureaucracy works as a practical matter--just take a look at any org chart to see how varied and disaggregated the components of the bureaucracy are, and each organizational pyramid comes together in a politically appointed head.

More importantly--

becingber.bsky.social•16 days ago

Both of these mythologies miss the legitimacy and authority that bureaucrats operate with when they *do* constrain presidential action. The bureaucracy may be housed in the executive, but it is created and protected by Congress, and serves as its eyes and ears in areas Congress cannot tread.

becingber.bsky.social•16 days ago

When an ambassador refuses to help the president seek political favors as a quid pro quo, when a civil servant refuses access to sensitive personnel files to an unauthorized private actor, when a solider refuses to commit a war crime--they act on legitimate authority from an elected body, Congress.

becingber.bsky.social•16 days ago

More often, bureaucratic resistance is a lot more mundane -- asking questions, crossing t's and dotting i's and just making sure the paperwork is filed. What I have called bureaucratic "neutral friction." But all of this might feel menacing to a president who views himself as above the law.

becingber.bsky.social•16 days ago

In any event, I once spent a lot of time thinking about the career bureaucracy versus the deep state mythology, and I could not be more disheartened that this work is now once again so relevant. Worse than relevant -- reaching a crisis point.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3186259

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