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Three phenomena that undermine the U.S. administrative state were taken to extremes under President Trump, contributing to democratic backsliding. The first is delegitimization: a suspicion of the public sector that has curdled into claims that public officials are deep state enemies of the people. This undermines belief in the capacity of government to deliver on democratic promises. Second is deconstruction, which includes undermining administrative capacity and delivery of services, making it harder for institutions to deliver on democratic promises, or to do so in ways that are transparent or generative of conditions in which the public sees government helping. The third is political control, in which loyalty to the political leaders is a primary virtue: this weakens structural protections of public employees and the capacities of government agencies to pursue their statutory mission or respond to other sources of democratic control such as Congress.

President Obama assumed leadership of the state in an era of governance by performance management. While sometimes dismissed as a technocratic tool, performance management has profound implications for how the state is governed, impacting the distribution of administrative power, the capacity to exert control and accountability, and the means by which citizens experience their government. This article examines the transition of performance systems between the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, a transition marked by a mixture of continuity and change. Both presidents identified performance as the central organizing theme for their management initiatives. The enthusiastic adoption of performance techniques by any government results in a variety of responses, ranging through passive, political, perverse, and purposeful. Understanding why and when such responses occur, and their implications for politics and governance, should be a central aspect of the study of the permanent government.

President Obama assumed leadership of the state in an era of governance by performance management. While sometimes dismissed as a technocratic tool, performance management has profound implications for how the state is governed, impacting the distribution of administrative power, the capacity to exert control and accountability, and the means by which citizens experience their government. This article examines the transition of performance systems between the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, a transition marked by a mixture of continuity and change. Both presidents identified performance as the central organizing theme for their management initiatives. The enthusiastic adoption of performance techniques by any government results in a variety of responses, ranging through passive, political, perverse, and purposeful. Understanding why and when such responses occur, and their implications for politics and governance, should be a central aspect of the study of the permanent government. Adapted from the source document.

Alasdair Roberts's recent book The Collapse of Fortress Bush: The Crisis of Authority in American Government is an appraisal of the George W. Bush administration's response to the 9/11 attacks and its management of the global war on terrorism. This war, Roberts argues, is a neoliberal war designed to accommodate assumptions about the boundaries of governmental action that became prevalent after Ronald Reagan's election to the presidency in 1980. Concerns about the renaissance of the "imperial presidency" are simplistic and misplaced, Roberts proposes, because they largely ignore how executive authority in the United States has been weakened by political, economic, and institutional forces. President Bush's actions after 9/11 reflect the limitations of his power. His White House was unable to impose significant burdens on citizens or the economy, felt forced to expand power surreptitiously, and chose to act militarily because the armed services enjoyed a level of legitimacy that was absent from the rest of government.

Efficiency. Innovation. Results. Accountability. These, advocates claim, are the fruits of performance management. In recent decades government organizations have eagerly embraced the performance modelùbut the rush to reform has not delivered as promised. Drawing on research from state and federal levels, Moynihan illustrates how governments have emphasized some aspects of performance managementùsuch as building measurement systems to acquire more performance dataùbut have neglected wider organizational change that would facilitate the use of such information. In his analysis of why and how go

AbstractWhat is the purpose of the applied study of government? In this essay, I lay out one response—that scholars of this topic should help in the job of what I characterize as embedding institutions of public-sector change. Public institutions offer the key means to direct governance, but at the same time also risk becoming sclerotic, failing to adapt to public concerns. How can academics help resolve this duality, matching public values to contemporary challenges? First, we as scholars can play a role in purposeful problem framing. Second, we can study and document related behavior and empirical outcomes. Finally, we can design solutions. I illustrate these processes with examples from my own research, discussing performance management, administrative burdens, and public personnel systems.

AbstractFor over a century, the value of employee protections and limits on direct political control has been the sine qua non of a merit‐based bureaucracy for the US public service. Such assumptions are at odds with the desire of populist governments to exert control over institutions of governance. This tension emerged during the Trump administration. Trump's Schedule F Executive Order sought to transform much of the career public service into political appointees, allowing them to be removed if they were not performing according to the president's goals. In the chaotic last days of the Trump administration, the order was not implemented, but Schedule F offers both a glimpse of an alternative process for public management policymaking that excludes the field of public administration, as well as a potential harbinger for the future of the US civil service.