The Deconstruction Begins

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

By Michael R. Ford
December 9, 2024

I frequently share the late Christopher Pollitt’s insight that the future of Public Administration (PA) is to be defined by shocks to the system. The latest shock to the American system comes in the form of likely dramatic changes to the federal administrative state. The creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the assembly of a presidential cabinet made up of individuals skeptical of, and at times hostile to, the federal bureaucracy signals a dramatic sea change is afoot.

How do we as a field make sense of this latest shock, and move forward? I personally have been diving back into some readings that influenced by development as a PA scholar and practitioner. I found revisiting Richard Stillman’s work on the stateless origins of American PA particularly useful. It was a reminder that the United States was founded on a distrust of centralized state authority, and that the current efforts to deconstruct the federal bureaucracy can be interpreted, as Stillman wrote in that essay, as a “byproduct of America’s “stateless” heritage.”

I write “can” be interpreted, because I am not sure it “should” be interpreted that way. When the creation of DOGE was announced several PA folks noted on social media that an attempt to reform the federal bureaucracy is not exactly a new or radical notion. The Clinton administration, for example, launched the Gore commission to bring Reinventing Government ideas to the federal bureaucracy. But reform and deconstruction are different things with very different goals. Reform assumes that bureaucracy can be changed in ways that are more effective and more efficient. Deconstruction assumes that the federal bureaucracy is ineffective and inefficient to the point where it warrants elimination.

In other words, I think we are entering new territory where the hollowing out of the federal bureaucracy, something discussed by PA scholars for years, may finally occur. The implications of deconstruction are vast for the PA community. If administrative institutions are indeed eliminated at the federal level there will be a need for state and local government actors, as well as nonprofit and private sector organizations, to fill in the gaps. Filling in those gaps will pose a monumental challenge.

First, the deconstruction is not likely to happen in an organized way in which power is devolved to state and local governments. Perhaps the trajectory will change, but the fact that DOGE’s efforts kicked off with Elon Musk naming federal employees he thinks should be fired on social media does not suggest a serious well-planned process is in the offing. Meaning, filling in regulatory and service gaps will be a reactionary process informed, often I fear, by things going wrong. Second, the fragmentation of state and local governments will create inconsistencies in administrative policies and regulations across time and place. Eventually I would expect isomorphism and policy diffusion to rebuild the semblance of a decentralized administrative state, but it will be unwieldy, and will only exist after a period of chaos. Third, the ability of the nonprofit and private sectors to fill in gaps will require a level of collaboration and balancing of self vs. collective interest that will be difficult to achieve.

This is a long way of saying I think we will be in for a period of uncertainty as longstanding structures, however flawed, are eliminated without clear plans to replace their core functions. New administrative structures will emerge, but there is no guarantee that new structures will be effective, efficient or equitable. The priority task for PA scholars and practitioners is to focus on capacity building at the state and local level to ensure new structures can be created, or existing structures repurposed, in ways that preserve core democratic and administrative values. With all due respect to many of the top ranked PA programs focused on federal administration and policy, the moment demands a pivot towards state and local government, as well as civil society.

Returning to Pollitt, I cannot get one quote from his Advanced Introduction to Public Management and Administration out of my mind. Speaking specifically about the state of academic PA, he wrote, “[T]here is the tendency for some of the leading journals in the field to retreat into a form of scholasticism in which narrow questions, methodological purity and baroque conceptualization outrank accessibility and relevance.” It is a tendency we as a field cannot, at this moment, afford to continue.

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Author: Michael R. Ford is a professor of public administration at the University of Wisconsin  Oshkosh, where he teaches graduate courses in budgeting and research methods. He frequently publishes on the topics of public and nonprofit board governance, accountability and school choice. He is a former member of the Oshkosh, WI Common Council.

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