Trumpism and the Future of Public Administration

Donald Trump saw the federal bureaucracy as the breeding ground of the 'deep state,' a powerful, unresponsive collection of bureaucratic experts determined to undermine the policies for which he was convinced he had a mandate. He translated that into a furious assault on the basic principles of both the theory and practice of public administration. One of the points of his genius was his incomparable skill in identifying issues that resonated with voters, and his attacks on public administration identified unarguable problems. But those attacks also eroded government's capacity to get work done and the strategies for accountability that had carefully grown since the founders wrote the Constitution. Transforming administration into instruments of political symbols and political power undermined the basic values of public administration – and created fundamental challenges to which the field must rise in charting a public administration for 2035 and beyond.