Paradoxes of Complementarity in Public Administration: Part 4 – When Pursuing the Public Interest Requires Avoiding the Public

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

By Erik Devereux
February 28, 2025

This is the fourth column on paradoxes among theories of public administration that inhabit three distinct levels of analysis: constitutional/institutional, organizational and personnel (first column, second column, third column). Complementarity in this context refers to how our subject of scientific investigation—a public administration—can evidence contradictory properties simultaneously. The previous column looked at the “atoms” in the fabric of a public agency—the civil servants that the Trump Administration seems so focused on firing at the moment. While investigating the atomic level you can arrive at the mistaken conclusion that the individual workers in government are everything when it comes to the overall behavior of an agency. This simultaneously is true and false. Welcome back to complementarity.

Moving up to the next level of analysis we quickly encounter another related paradox. Regardless of who staffs an agency, one of the most important factors in its behavior is how insulated the bureaucracy is from the public. And by the public I mostly mean representatives of interest groups who are employed specifically to influence public policy. If we desire an agency to pursue the broad public interest then it may be necessary to prevent direct interactions with those lobbyists or anyone else other than the duly constituted political authorities above the agency. We also may need to build in safeguards to limit political control over the agency.

The canonical representative of agency insulation is the Federal Reserve. Recognizing the perils of allowing political pressures to set monetary policy, the federal government created a system of governance for the Fed that shields the agency from political influence. Consequently, America actually has two chief executives: the president, and the chair of the Fed. Everyone knows this including Mr. Trump. Hold onto your hat! Most seasoned observers expect that within a few months the Trump Administration will be in open conflict with the Fed regarding the management of inflation and economic growth. Some are predicting this may evolve into another version of the Army-McCarthy hearings. I leave it to the reader to consider the possibilities.

At this point we arrive at one of the more fundament tensions in the American system of governance: the autonomy of the state vs. the freedom of the marketplace. From the writing of the Constitution forward to today, much of the core political struggles in the United States have been conducted within that tension. When the New Deal pushed more in the direction of the state the “Reagan Revolution” and its lingering aftermath pushed back in the direction of the marketplace. The Trump administration is the next act in this ongoing drama.

Right now, the “tip of the spear” in this play consists of the independent agencies. These agencies specifically were created to regulate very powerful economic sectors such as banking and finance. When created, their governance was configured to limit the power of the president to hire or fire agency leaders. The Trump Administration is pushing cases forward toward the Supreme Court to rule that those governance structures inherently are unconstitutional. In other words, the Trump Administration is arguing that president cannot be restrained in determining who runs these agencies (with the advice and consent of the Senate, whatever that means at the moment).

Through a scientific lens, we can offer the following hypothesis: The greater the level of insulation a public agency has from outside political influence, the more the agency is likely to pursue the public interest over the private interest. When we shield the agency from politics, the “atoms” begin to reorient themselves in an alignment that favors the public interest regardless of which atoms are in the mix.

Where this takes us eventually is to rethink the principle of separating politics from administration. I have concluded that in many ways President Trump is completely within his rights as Chief Executive to pursue wholesale changes within the federal bureaucracy. I strongly disagree with the methods which are beyond hamfisted and boorish but behind all that is the simple fact that President Trump is the duly elected executive within the Executive Branch.

What the Trump Administration will achieve at least in the short run, with or without specific civil servants along for the ride, is a vast diminution in the capacity of the federal government to pursue the public interest. Instead, as evidenced by the rather extreme case of Mr. Musk, we will achieve a renewed dedication to using government on behalf of the private interest. If you very carefully study the philosophies and thinking of those who wrote the U.S. Constitution, you may find that they might not have much to criticize.

If our republic survives this moment (and I think all bets are off) then we may emerge into an opportunity to make some repairs to the Constitution itself. A national conversation now about what are the priorities to fix “under the hood” is in order. I’m getting verklempt. Talk among yourselves. I’ll give you a topic: How do we create a formal mechanism beyond elections for establishing the outlines of the public interest?

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Author: Erik Devereux is Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy, Management, and Analytics at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He has a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Political Science, 1985) and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin (Government, 1993). He is the author of Methods of Policy Analysis: Creating, Deploying, and Assessing Theories of Change (available for free here). Email: [email protected]. More content is available here.

 

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