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2021 | Buch

American Administrative Capacity

Decline, Decay, and Resilience

verfasst von: M. Ernita Joaquin, Thomas J. Greitens

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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This volume proposes a capacity-centered approach for understanding American bureaucracy. The administrative institutions that made the country a superpower turned out to be fragile under Donald Trump’s presidency. Laboring beneath systematic accusations of deep statism, combined with a market oriented federal administration, bureaucratic capacity manifested its decay in the public health and constitutional cataclysms of 2020, denting America’s global leadership and contributing to its own people’s suffering.

The authors combine interviews with a historical examination of federal administrative reforms in the backdrop of the recent pandemic and electoral tumult to craft a developmental framework of the ebb and flow of capacity. While reforms, large and small, brought about professionalization and other benefits to federal administration, they also camouflaged a gradual erosion when anti-bureaucratic approaches became entrenched. A sclerotic, brittle condition in the government’s capacity to work efficiently and accountably arose over time, even as administrative power consolidated around the executive. That co-evolutionary dynamic made federal government ripe for the capacity bifurcation, delegitimization, and disinvestment witnessed over the last four years.

As the system works out the long-term impacts of such a deconstruction, it also prompts a rethinking of capacity in more durable terms. Calling attention to a more comprehensive appreciation of the dynamics around administrative capacity, this volume argues for Congress, citizens, and the good government community to promote capacity rebuilding initiatives that have resilience at the core. As such, the book will be of interest to citizens, public reformers, civic leaders, scholars and students of public administration, policy, and public affairs.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction
Abstract
This book is premised on the assumption that the decayed administrative capacity witnessed recently in American government has its roots within the reforms that shaped the administrative state over a hundred years. In exploring this idea, we discover that capacity must be conceptualized beyond budget and staffing to provide a fuller grasp of its ebb and flow. History indicates that administrative capacity is not an administrative problem; it is a political one mediated by the president and Congress. Leaders, driven by the political system’s incentives, often addressed national problems by passing reforms that prioritized bureaucratic control, rather than capacity for the long term. Such reforms propelled the unitary executive, whose command of the bureaucracy coincided with capacity’s gradual decline. In the aftermath of the biggest dislocation in modern American government history, understanding these dynamics is necessary to rebuild and get to resilient capacity.
M. Ernita Joaquin, Thomas J. Greitens
Chapter 2. The Mask Is Off
Abstract
In how many ways could a government fail in anticipating and mitigating a public health crisis? The coronavirus pandemic that emerged from a continent away made 2020 the deadliest year in American history. When future historians look back to the devastation the pandemic wrought on the land and its long-term social, political, and economic fallout, they will find a frayed capacity behind the federal government’s response. In this chapter, the chaos and debility are shown belying the notion of a government led by an accountable and energetic executive. Instead, a superpower’s failures in several dimensions prevented it from heading off the pandemic’s most brutal effects, even as its unitary executive commanded tremendous influence on the stage. Bureaucratic, democratic, and civic resilience were all at once put to the test.
M. Ernita Joaquin, Thomas J. Greitens
Chapter 3. The Concept of Capacity Capacities
Abstract
The recent stress test of American governance raises questions of administrative capacity, a concept that runs the risk of oversimplification. Capacity has induced wide-ranging studies in organization, public administration, and political science. Synthesizing the ideas from the literature and anchoring them in the knowledge of American political development let us arrive at a definition that captures the complex challenges of modern administration. In this chapter's theoretical foray, the core dimensions of capacity and resilience as the goal of capacity building are identified and set against the backdrop of political change.
M. Ernita Joaquin, Thomas J. Greitens
Chapter 4. Capacity Capacities and Reform MovementsReform movements
Abstract
In the previous chapter, we examined the literature to arrive at a definition of capacity consisting of five core dimensions that reconcile politics with administration. Conflicts in history dominated by presidential politics generated imbalance among those dimensions, weakening capacity overall. In this chapter, we develop our framework further by explaining capacity’s movement within the dynamics of administrative reform. We describe how the literature of American political development provides insights in understanding the coevolutionary dynamics of presidential dominance and capacity decay.
M. Ernita Joaquin, Thomas J. Greitens
Chapter 5. Traditional Approaches to Controlling Administrative CapacityAdministrative capacities
Abstract
An overview of federal administrative history begins in this chapter and shows how initial ideas of administrative capacity were based on constitutional concerns about executive power. Such ideas were later shaped by successive trends in politics and continual tensions between the presidency and Congress. Due to the influence of politics and long-term debates between presidents and Congress in regard to which branch controlled federal administration, later reforms embraced the concept of a nonpartisan bureaucracy that helped build capacity. However, such capacity building also possessed political undertones and set the stage for late twentieth-century reforms that helped influence the decay and decline of administrative capacity recently witnessed.
M. Ernita Joaquin, Thomas J. Greitens
Chapter 6. Transactional Approaches to Controlling Administrative CapacityAdministrative capacities
Abstract
Continuing with an overview of federal administrative history, this chapter shows how political concerns over the modern administrative state, with all its requisite capacities, led to new reforms being passed that gradually diminished administrative capacity over time. In this era after the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, presidents increasingly embraced such transactional reforms to ensure greater short-term control over federal administration at the expense of long-term capacity. The deinstitutionalization of congressional control and greater partisan influence over the administrative state had begun. The approach taken by these reforms, when considered in their totality, helped influence the current state of federal administrative capacity and set in motion some of the dysfunctions observed during the presidency of Donald Trump.
M. Ernita Joaquin, Thomas J. Greitens
Chapter 7. Decay and the Battle to Redefine Capacity Capacities
Abstract
The book opened with a narrative of capacity failures in five dimensions to confront a public health crisis. Subsequently, we framed the ebb and flow of capacity based on an understanding of reform movements, identifying the seeds of decline as capacity in the federal government was established and controlled throughout history. This chapter describes the deconstructive forces of the Trump era that accelerated the decline of capacity toward decay, judging by the chaos of the pandemic response. But beyond the pandemic, the deconstruction movement should be seen as intricately tied to the efforts to redefine capacity for the future through the most radical reform initiatives since Nixon’s time. Even as those reforms fizzled out, they are consistent with the unitary executive’s rise in appropriating sole command of the bureaucracy and defining capacity accordingly.
M. Ernita Joaquin, Thomas J. Greitens
Chapter 8. ResilienceResilience: Reconstituting Capacity Capacities Resilience
Abstract
Hamilton’s ideals of the accountable, energetic executive must be brought forward to the twenty-first century, tempered by the realpolitik of the unitary executive, and layered with the post-pandemic imperative of resilience. This chapter sums up and reflects on the dynamics of power that have coevolved with administrative capacity and what the recent executive initiatives and political developments imply for rebuilding efforts. A reconstitution of capacity in all its core dimensions is urgently needed. Beyond repairing the government’s human capital management capacity, building for resilient capacity involves revitalizing Congress, promoting administrative engagement, rethinking strategies for advocating reform, and renewing the democratic bargain  that involves the public's sense of a shared fate with one another and with a capacitated government.
M. Ernita Joaquin, Thomas J. Greitens
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
American Administrative Capacity
verfasst von
M. Ernita Joaquin
Thomas J. Greitens
Copyright-Jahr
2021
Electronic ISBN
978-3-030-80564-7
Print ISBN
978-3-030-80563-0
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80564-7

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