Attacking Career Civil Servants: Diverting Attention From Deregulation and Political Reform

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Jos C. N. Raadschelders
June 23, 2025

The attack on federal career civil servants has gone full throttle since January 2025, with many of them summarily dismissed and some recalled after consideration. Upon what grounds are people being fired and suspected of subversion, and why does this happen? The answer to the first question is: we do not know, but it is clear that layoffs are not carefully thought through when, days or weeks later, an earlier decision is rescinded. As for the second question, I think we know why this happens: a deep-seated distrust of bureaucracy.

The distrust of bureaucracy is not new. People in the American colonies were increasingly distrustful of the English King and Parliament as they saw fit to impose taxes without consultation, let alone participation, of the people in the colonies. The anonymous author of two letters in The Anti-Federalist Papers, Brutus, expressed the belief of some colonists (we do not know how many) that government grows because of budget-maximizing civil servants (letters October 18 and November 19, 1787). That sentiment lives on and is very persistent even though the empirical evidence shows the opposite.

One example of that view having a life of its own is Senator Joseph McCarthy’s claim in the early 1950s that, among other institutions, universities were sheltering communist sentiments. Another example of rhetoric can be found in the infamous Malek Manual written in 1971 by President Nixon’s personnel chief, Frederic Malek, who argued that political control of bureaucracy was needed to achieve the policies of the administration. In his words, active political control was “the difference between ruling and reigning.” Malek had the top career civil servants in his crosshairs; it seems that currently some political officeholders (as well as several non-elected folks) are throwing a much wider net and are doing so without considering (via, e.g., cost-benefit analysis) whether firings and discontinuation of specific services result in higher efficiencies.

To be sure, the empirical evidence since colonial times, and especially since the late nineteenth century, is unequivocal: government and its civil service grow because people request, even demand, more and better public policies, services and tasks. The distrust of bureaucracy is grounded in the historical experience of a bureaucracy that supported those with political and economic power. By contrast, the bureaucracies of modern democracies are loyal to and serve (a) the people, (b) the Constitution and (c) those elected to political office (in that order). But that collective memory of a bureaucracy loyal to and serving the powerful is so deeply engrained that any facts about the contrary are simply ignored. Why is there so much misinformation about what bureaucracies do? The answer is simple: we very seldom hear what bureaucracies do right but see reported immediately what goes wrong. And what goes wrong is then generalized into the assumption that many other things must go wrong as well. Nothing is further from the truth. What is true is that when people are asked about whether they trust government in general, the answer is frequently negative. However, as Charles Goodsell showed nicely, when asked about specific public services and policies, people are mostly happy as peaches.

Having been engaged in the development and teaching of tailor-made programs for mid-career and upper-level civil servants (uniformed and non-uniformed) since the mid-1980s, I know that career civil servants not just do their job, they do it because they find it important. Of course, there are rotten apples in any organization, public, nonprofit and private. But the rotten apples are not the standard in the public sector. What is standard, and what my co-author Ron Sanders and I argued on these pages (August 12, 2024), is that career civil servants are appointed based on merit, because of relevant educational and/or experiential background. The career civil service is not characterized by kakistocracy and kleptocracy but by high-quality work and deep-felt commitment by experts. Even when they may not understand why, citizens do not want to go back to the spoils of the nineteenth century. If anything, democracy thrives with the kind of merit-based bureaucracy that was established by the Pendleton Act of 1883 and became the norm in the twentieth century.

What does it mean to have a bureaucracy that is merit-based?

First, it means that laws and regulations are written by people who have knowledge about the issue at hand. It is true that many regulations with the force of law are written by administrative departments and agencies, but that is because they require expert input. Do we want the content of full milk, 2% milk, 1% milk and skimmed milk determined by someone who studied architecture, theology or history, or do we want someone versed in dietary or nutritional science or something similar? Government regulates a lot, and many of these regulations rely upon the expert knowledge that career civil servants acquired during their (under)graduate studies.

Second, in 1968, Frederick Mosher predicted at the end of his small volume on public service in democracy that the time would come when those who had entered the career civil service based on their expert education would need a second degree in public administration. That is, once climbing the ranks, the expertise of an (under)graduate degree will become less important and knowledge about budgeting and finance, personnel management, program evaluation, policy analysis etc. becomes more important. Indeed, the study of public administration has boomed since then and has become an important element in many public careers at all levels of government.

Third, people have little knowledge of the positions and roles of citizens, elected officeholders, career civil servants and government in a democracy. It is said that some people are stupid, deplorable even, but I think many people are generally ill-informed, if at all, about civics. How many people know what it means that in a mature democracy people are citizens and not mere subjects? What we need is a K-12 curriculum that addresses civics at the appropriate age levels, so that by the time students graduate from high school they not only know about the three branches of government, about political parties and elections, and about how a bill becomes law, but also about their position and role in a democracy, about what career civil servants do day in, day out, and about what they should expect from political officeholders. In other words, they should be informed enough to rise beyond the blind partisan followership that some political officeholders hope for. The Educating for American Democracy project has developed such a curriculum (2021).

Lacking education in civics and government, people cannot recognize what is happening. One thing that is happening now is that those who hold political majorities at the federal level are supported by a small number of influential (tech) companies. American federal government is not effectively regulating AI, leaving regulation to the states and local governments and, thus, making for a very fragmented and disjointed response to fast-moving AI development. Check AI Legislation in the US: A 2025 to see how patchy AI laws and policies are. Tech companies try to assure that they are almost entirely outside of public control. Without government oversight and regulation, there is no cybersecurity. More in general, current efforts to deregulate are massive (Coral Davenport in New York Times, April 15, 2025) and will certainly benefit tech companies. This means that economic power is no longer tested in terms of its societal desirability and kept out of the reach of political assessment and judgment. While I am convinced that education has a role to play, I also realize that those who lust for power do not care about substantive arguments supporting education for civics nor for why we need government regulation. How much power, influence and corrective mechanisms do we, the people, wish to abdicate?

Attacking career civil servants is cheap and easy, simply tapping into historical circumstances and experiences that no longer exist. To be sure, we can and should investigate what in the career civil service can be reformed and how to proceed with that. Just slashing jobs as if it is a private company will not cut it. We should look at, e.g., shortening hiring and firing procedures, into performance and accountability mechanisms, and into the balance between civil service expertise and political platforms. Furthermore, what political officeholders should do is focus on how they can improve upon the democratic political system, not how they can manipulate it for their own advantage. Instead of pointing the finger to career civil servants, they should turn introspective and have the courage to address deficiencies in the political system and address the harm that deregulation does to society at large. They could start with reading Casey Burgat’s book on myths in American politics (2025) and how these can be dealt with.

Do not believe the rhetoric flying around you, career civil servants, because many academics (and certainly those teaching PA) and those working in professional development programs know what unbelievably good work you do. Hang in there and do not succumb to despair. Stigmatizing and traumatizing the career civil service is the weapon that some folks use. Remember that there is ample evidence that government oversight and regulation and bureaucratic expertise are the guardrails of large-scale democracy in imagined communities of people. We will continue to counter populist rhetoric, present facts and trust upon the rule of law.

This piece reflects the personal opinion of the author and does not represent the views of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, of ASPA, and that of the editorial team of Public Administration Review.

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading...