In Praise of Bureaucracy

Jon D. Michaels, The American Deep State, Notre Dame L. Rev. (2018, forthcoming), available at SSRN. Jodi Short In The American Deep State, Jon D. Michaels pushes back against the increasingly shrill rhetoric charging that shadowy forces deeply embedded within the federal bureaucracy have commandeered the reins of government and are thwarting the President and undermining the democratically expressed will of the people. Michaels does not shrink from the “deep state” terminology, but rather seeks to co-opt it in an ode to what he calls “bureaucratic depth.” Michaels extols numerous advantages of bureaucratic depth. First, he notes that bureaucratic depth is, as a practical matter, what makes the state work. It is a measure of state capacity. The deep bench of civil servants in the United States “mak[e] and enforce[e] regulations, design[] and run[] welfare programs, combat[] crime and corruption, and provid[e] for national defense.”…

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