How Bureaucrats Deal with Political Chaos Above

The Science of Politics

With the prospect of a second emboldened Trump administration on offer, the administrative state is under attack. How well did the bureaucracy deal with Trump appointees? Was there really a resistance in a "deep state"? And how much are career civil servants affected by chaos and turnover in the political class that sit above them? Jaime Kucinskas finds limited and ineffectual resistance of administrators under Trump, even among those alarmed by his actions, with employees still highly committed to the goals of their agencies. Amanda Rutherford finds that upper-level bureaucrats actually report higher satisfaction when they face political vacancies and they are less likely to want to leave. That suggests chaos at the top may not lead to wholesale degradation.