[Repost +] An uncontrolled Administrative State throws the separation of powers out of kilter
Prepare for a more correct balance of power within the executive branch..
[Originally posted May 31, 2023, now reposted in The Plops]
The short paragraphs below were drafted as a prologue to next week’s post on Rome. But today I read an article by James Bacon who refreshingly advises the next President of the US to execute an immediate well-planned assault on the administrative state. I have coupled my little Rome prologue with excerpts from Mr Bacon’s article.
Rome prologue
Rome did not have a written ‘constitution’. Anyone who follows US and UK politics closely will be aware that neither written nor unwritten constitutions eliminate the natural tensions and continual evolution that characterise settlements about the sharing and distribution of powers.
The natural competitive tensions of a separation of powers usually reflect natural tensions in society itself.
Unnatural tensions can develop, however, when one or both of the judicial and administrative branches becomes internally competitive along party lines. These are branches of state where parties have no constitutional right of influence.
The legislature should by its functional purpose be as divided as it possibly can be in order that there will be distinguishable voting majorities on legislation. The legislature is where the parties do belong.
If legitimate preferences and actions of the office of chief executive (or of the legitimately elected person of the President) are systematically undermined along party lines by its own administrative agencies, then very unnatural tensions are clearly present.
The cause of politicisation in the judiciary and the executive is likely to be cause and consequence of political polarisation in society. The obvious potential candidates for ‘ultimate cause’ in both cases may be classified both as under-governance or over-governance.
In the case of loss of control in the executive branch a most likely cause is that the administrative agencies have become too numerous and too large. The state is overloaded with functions.
An outsize executive branch puts the separation of powers out of kilter.
If the state is doing too much, the legislature and the judiciary will lose power relative to the executive agencies, and it will be easier for politics to permeate the administrative branch.
When discussing governance in Rome it helps to keep in mind that all separations of power in the governance of a single society require an achievement of delicate balance to maintain natural tensions in equilibrium.
I will regularly be reminding myself of the purpose of my history of society, which is to understand present and future in the context of lessons learned through past human social experience over the course of 40 thousand years.
And today I read a short article that reminded me of that purpose.
See below:
2024 Presidential Candidates Against the Administrative State
by James Bacon
Wall Street Journal, May 31, 2023 12:35 pm ET
… What was once obscure has become obvious: Presidents today exercise a fraction of the executive-agency control that Franklin D. Roosevelt did when he and Congress created our modern government. …
That bureaucrats pursued their own agenda while Mr. Trump ostensibly had control over them proves that until you fix the administrative state, there’s no guarantee that executive-branch policy will reflect the president’s views.
The problem is that few politicians on the right have more than a surface-level understanding of this issue. … Most appointees who have served in Republican administrations have been content to get along with the administrative state—tinkering on the margins of policy without trying to change the system. Their dearth of knowledge has led to reform proposals that are often vague, unfeasible and half-baked.
In the modern era, only two teams have attempted to curb the administrative state’s power: Ronald Reagan’s Office of Personnel Management, led by Donald Devine, and Mr. Trump’s Office of Presidential Personnel, led by John McEntee. Both men installed political loyalists among the presidents’ appointees and took major steps to curtail career bureaucrats’ power. Mr. Devine used reduction-in-force exercises—government-speak for layoffs—when employees’ work wasn’t up to snuff. Mr. McEntee began eliminating civil-service protections for policy-making bureaucrats, among other measures. Both men moved the bureaucracy’s culture in the right direction, but because of limited time in office they weren’t able to finish the structural reforms for lasting changes.
The only way the next president can solve the problem for good is to assemble the right team from the beginning. It is necessary but insufficient to fill the executive branch’s roughly 4,000 political positions with appointees committed to the president’s agenda. He needs a White House made up of people with firsthand knowledge of how bureaucratic politics operate and the will to use that knowledge for a system overhaul. It isn’t enough to have competent conservatives. As president you need people who can outsmart the bureaucrats by devising unconventional ways around the obstacles they’ll erect.
There are things these operatives need to know. The first is which positions are critical choke points and which are mostly ceremonial. One must recognize when an agency is a lost cause that should be gutted vs. when it should be restaffed. One must also know which positions require a subject-matter expert vs. a politically aligned appointee who may lack expertise.
Staff must be well-versed in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which can be used to rein in bureaucracy without congressional action. It’s also essential to know how to restructure the management of the White House, which has become its own sprawling bureaucracy of career officials. …
Update post-election November 13, 2024
Meanwhile every day there are more interesting articles to recommend at the World’s Sensible Journal. I banned myself from posting current affairs … but just this once…
Today’s edition:
Did Trump Just Save Women’s Sports?
Trump Draft Executive Order Would Create Board to Purge Generals
Economy or Culture Wars? Our Writers Spar Over Why Harris Lost
My thanks to the Wall Street Journal and conservative Condorito
Dr Michael G. Heller
And, please don’t forget to read yesterday’s uncompromising post on ‘rules’ before it is automatically paywalled (I must eventually work ‘DEI’ mob rule into the ‘rules’ too).
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Natura Morta, by Giorgio Morandi [date unknown]