Trump and the Bureaucrats: The Fate of Neutral Competence

137 Pages·2023·2.096 MB·English

by  Stuart Shapiro

Stuart Shapiro
Trump and
the Bureaucrats
The Fate of Neutral Competence
Trump and the Bureaucrats
Stuart Shapiro
Trump and the Bureaucrats
The Fate of Neutral Competence
Stuart Shapiro
Bloustein School of Planning and Policy
Rutgers
New Brunswick, NJ, USA
ISBN 978-3-031-22078-4 ISBN 978-3-031-22079-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22079-1
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Acknowledgments
A book like this is impossible to write without a great deal of help. I am indebted to
James Pfiffner and several anonymous reviewers who reviewed portions of this
work. Seth Shapiro and Obiageli Agbu provided valuable research and writing
assistance. And of course, my family was endlessly patient as I retreated to a private
room and asked them to be quiet while I conducted interviews via Zoom.
Most importantly, I owe an incalculable debt to the 50 individuals who took time
out of their busy days to speak with me. Many of them also overcame an initial
reluctance to speak with me and were forthright and open. There wasn’t an inter-
view that I conducted where I didn’t learn something new. I constantly felt the need
to broaden my lens of inquiry, as the civil servants I spoke with offered insights that
I had not previously considered. The book evolved considerably during the research
process (as good research should) and the credit for that goes to the people I
spoke with.
v
Contents
1 The Appeal of Neutral Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Politics and Administration: Neutrality and Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Neutrality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Non-academic Perspectives on Bureaucratic Neutrality
(and Competence) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
What Has Changed? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2 Where to Find Neutral Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
OMB, CBO, and GAO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
The Office of Management and Budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
The Congressional Budget Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
The Government Accountability Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Other Executive Branch Agencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Talking to Agency Officials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3 The Office of Management and Budget: When Responsive
Competence Isn’t Enough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
The History of BoB/OMB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
OMB’s Structure and People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
The Perspective of OMB Employees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Competence at OMB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Neutrality at OMB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
OMB Under Trump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Ukraine, Schedule F, and Neutral Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4 Congressional Budget Office: Wonks Protected by Congressional
Committees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
A Brief History of Neutral Competence at CBO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
CBO’s Nature, Structure, and People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
vii
viii Contents
The Perspective of CBO Employees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Competence at CBO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Neutrality at CBO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Challenges of Polarization and the Trump Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5 The Government Accountability Office: Redefining
But Maintaining Neutral Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
The History of GAO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
GAO’s Structure and People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
The Perspective of GAO Employees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Competence at GAO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Neutrality at GAO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Challenges of Polarization and the Trump Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6 The Economic Research Service: Attacking Neutral Competence
by Going Around the Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
The History of the ERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
The Move to Kansas City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Neutral Competence at ERS and the Move to Kansas City . . . . . . . . . . 94
Neutrality and Competence at ERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Perspectives on the Move to Kansas City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
7 The Four Ps of Protecting Neutral Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
People Who Create and Lead Neutral Competent Agencies . . . . . . . . . . 100
Procedural Protections for Neutral Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Political Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
The Paradox of Proximity to Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
OMB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
ERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
CBO and GAO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
8 The State and Fate of Neutral Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
The State of Neutral Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
The Fate of Neutral Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Appendix: Interview Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
About the Author
Stuart Shapiro is a professor and Interim Dean at Bloustein School of Planning and
Policy at Rutgers University (USA). Dr. Shapiro received his PhD in public policy
from Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government. Prior to joining Rutgers,
he worked at the Office of Management and Budget under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush. Dr. Shapiro teaches classes in economics, public policy, and poli-
tics. He has written three books and published numerous articles in law reviews,
political science journals, public administration journals, and several others. He
writes op-eds for The Hill and occasionally other news sites and has been quoted in
the popular press extensively.
ix
Chapter 1
The Appeal of Neutral Competence
What do we want from our federal bureaucracy? On the one hand, we want them to
have the knowledge to do their jobs and serve elected leaders effectively. We also
want them to do so in a way that their personal biases don’t influence the decisions
those leaders make. But that sounds like an almost impossible combination to real-
ize in practice. Deciding which information to present to leaders, how to frame that
information, and what to recommend could all easily be affected by personal prefer-
ences. And as the questions involved in governance have become increasingly com-
plex, political leaders simply depend more than ever on the career officials
underneath them.
The question of how to structure the relationship between high-level bureaucrats
and their political bosses is far from a new one. Scholars of public administration in
the United States have struggled with it for more than a century. Before becoming
president, Woodrow Wilson wrote what would become one of the most famous
articles in the field of public administration. Entitled “The Study of Administration”
and written in 1887, the article has been subject to many interpretations regarding
the relative roles of politics and administration within government. More recent
work has focused on the “public service bargains” (Hood and Lodge 2006) that
political leaders and administrators make to arrange the provision of expertise and
the exercise of influence.
Never have these questions in the United States been framed as loudly and pub-
licly as they were during the presidency of Donald Trump. While numerous presi-
dential candidates have run for office as “outsiders” or pledging to clean up
Washington DC, none have done so with the ferocity of Trump. Saying he would
“drain the swamp,” he pledged to bring a businessman’s perspective to the executive
branch of government. But while serving as president he was continually frustrated
by agencies such as the FBI and the State Department. Trump clearly came into
office expecting the executive branch to bend to his will. And when it didn’t, his
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1
S. Shapiro, Trump and the Bureaucrats,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22079-1_1
2 1 The Appeal of Neutral Competence
supporters continually bemoaned the “deep state.” Even after leaving office, he has
pledged that should he return he will purge the federal bureaucracy.1
There is a persistent gap between the public understanding of the role of the
federal bureaucracy and the scholarly literature on it. That gap has only grown larger
in recent years and will likely continue to do so in the wake of Trump’s presidency.
Much of the debate over Wilson’s early work has focused on the politics-
administration dichotomy, the idea that it is the job of political leaders to set the
direction of policy and the job of administrators to figure out the most efficient way
to carry out this policy. Most (but not all; see Overeem (2008)) recent scholarship
argues that this is not what Wilson (or other early public administration scholars)
meant and that he simply wanted to divorce partisanship, not policy-making from
administration (Svara 2001).
But political rhetoric, and, to a large degree, public perception, surrounding the
bureaucracy hews much closer to an older interpretation of Wilson’s work. The
public believes that bureaucrats are there to carry out the decisions made by elected
officials. Anything beyond that is an usurpation of the democratic process.2 In that
sense, the public seems to agree with the idea of “neutral competence.” Bureaucrats
should be good at their jobs but should be neutral with regard to policy. That bureau-
crats should exhibit neutral competence has been described as the “corollary” of the
politics-administration dichotomy (Skelley 2008).
Meanwhile, while there have been extensive theoretical debates in the public
administration literature, there has been significantly less work on how bureaucrats
view their own role particularly as it pertains to neutral competence. What does
competence mean to them? Do they see themselves as “neutral,” and if so, what
does neutral mean to them? How have these views changed during the Trump era
when their role has been attacked as never before? Understanding how bureaucrats
in Washington view themselves is a crucial component to understanding their role
and its relationship to policy-making.
This book is an attempt to begin to address these questions. How do the ideas of
neutrality and competence (and in a sense the politics-administration dichotomy)
hold up in a unique era? How do members of agencies typically seen as the most
neutral see their role, and how have they seen it change over the past decades? In
particular, was the Trump Administration a continuation of longstanding trends or a
dramatic change? Have we moved toward the public’s view of neutral competence
or the academic view? After spending the first 2 chapters of this book discussing the
idea of neutral competence, I will turn to 50 interviews with federal officials con-
ducted in 2021 and 2022 to try better understand where the idea of neutral compe-
tence stands in post-Trump America.
1 See https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2022/03/trump-threatening-return-and-expansion-
schedule-f/363145/ (last viewed March 18, 2022) and https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-
2025-radical-plan-second-term (last viewed July 25, 2022).
2 See https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-are-skeptical-of-the-government-exceptwhen-
theres-a-crisis/  (last viewed July 25, 2022)