the rise of oligarchy

Posted on February 28, 2025 by Peter

The public money and public liberty, intended to have been deposited with three branches of magistracy, but found inadvertently to be in the hands of one only, will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and dominion to those who hold them… They [the assembly] should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered (Thomas Jefferson, 1785)

In current parlance, I think, an “oligarch” is someone with great personal wealth who influences politics, whether directly or via media. Oligarchs are not publicly traded corporations, and the threat they pose to democracy is different. The rise of oligarchs is also different from income inequality. It’s not about whether the top one percent or the top 10 percent of a country has disproportionate influence but whether a few individuals are “wolves in the fold”–literally making political decisions without accountability.

In fact, wealth inequality may have declined globally since 1980, but we now have about 2,500 billionaires who collectively own about $15 trillion, which is equivalent to the GDP of China (population 1.4 billion people). Some are uninvolved with politics, but a fair number either derive their wealth from government or buy political influence. I count at least 17 countries that have been directly led by billionaires in the last decade (not including the UK, since Rishi Sunak is only worth about $850 million). There are many other countries in which billionaires wield influence without holding office.

Above all, the President of the United States is a billionaire. His sidekick is more than a third of his way to being a trillionaire. The owner of The Washington Post is about a quarter of the way there.

This situation is not exactly unprecedented. John D. Rockefeller was worth about $1.4 billion in 1937. Measured in current dollars, his fortune rivaled Musk’s today. And the Rockefeller wealth transmuted into political power. Three descendants became governors; one was also a vice-president.

However, there are distinctively 21st-century ways in which private individuals sway national politics, here and overseas. Both Musk and Trump are celebrities with massive popular influence. They have millions of followers who treat their wealth as evidence of brilliance and superiority to government. They purchase impunity from almost all forms of accountability. And they enrich themselves at the expense of the government. As Jefferson writes, they “make interested uses of every right and power which they possess, or may assume.”

Google’s NGram tool suggests that the frequency of the word “oligarch” in printed books has risen 13-fold since the millennium (see above). This is just one sign that we are living in an age of oligarchy.

Carlo Crivelli, Lamentation

Posted on February 27, 2025 by Peter

In every painting entitled “Lamentation” that I recall or can find with a Google image-search, Jesus lies prone, usually with a shroud behind him, and Mary looks downward at his limp body. She usually has companions: most often Mary Magdalen, because the relevant Gospel passages (e.g., Matt. 27:61) place the two women together from the Crucifixion to the empty tomb. (The specific moment of lamentation is not explicit in the Gospels.)

An exception is Carlo Crivelli’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ (1485) in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Crivelli shows Jesus’ body propped up so that he appears to look down at Mary with a gentle expression. Jesus’ hand has fallen so that it is on the same level as the hands of Mary and St. John and is intertwined with John’s in a rotationally symmetrical pattern. However, Jesus and John display opposite emotions: Jesus calm, John in anguish. Mary Magdalen’s hands help to support Jesus’ thigh so that his right foot appears to take a step.

To my eye, the color of Jesus’ body stands out more from the rest of the painting in the original than in the photo above (supplied by the MFA). Crivelli makes Jesus look animated and yet strikingly pallid.

The garland of fruit is a common motif in Crivelli’s work and seems to represent a local tradition in the region where he worked, the Marches, of hanging fruit above religious paintings during festivals. Crivelli–who favored trompe-l’oeil to the extent that Susan Sontag cited him as an example of “camp”–has incorporated this popular tradition into the painting. The garland includes a cucumber, which is so common in Crivelli’s work that it functions as a signature. The whole structure looks like a throne in the Netherlandish painting that Crivelli often imitated.

By making Jesus sit and appear to look down on Mary, and by intertwining his hands with the others’, Crivelli asks us to ponder the relationship between the living and the dead. In the Gospel account, Jesus will soon rise again. Nevertheless, he has died. It would be as much of a theological error to ignore the reality of his death as to deny his pending resurrection. I think that Mary Magdalen may be tempted by the former error as she tries to make his body move.

Katharine Bradley (1846-1914) and Edith Cooper (1862-1913) were partners in life and work who published joint poems under the pseudonym “Michael Field.” One of their poems describes a pietà by Carlo Crivelli–this one, if I am not mistaken. It is similar enough to the MFA’s Lamentation that some of their words apply to both paintings.

For instance, Michael Field writes: “His body, once blond, is soiled now and opaque / with the solemn ochres of the tomb.”

The poem implies that Mary Magdalen had found the living Jesus attractive. But now, “no beauty to desire / Is here–stiffened limb and angry vein.”

Yet there is such subtle intercourse between
   The hues and the passion is so frank
      One is soothed, one feels it good
      To be of this little group
      Of mourners close to the rank,
Deep wounds ...

apply for the 2025 Institute for Civically Engaged Research (ICER)

Posted on February 24, 2025 by Peter

The American Political Science Association (APSA) Institute for Civically Engaged Research (ICER) is a four-day, residential institute that provides political scientists with training to conduct ethical and rigorous civically engaged research. Up to 20 scholars will be selected as ICER Fellows and invited to attend the 2025 Summer Institute. ICER Fellows will network with other like-minded political scientists, and together, learn best practices for conducting academically robust, mutually beneficial scholarship in collaboration with communities, organizations, and agencies outside of academia.

ICER is organized in partnership with UCLA Social Sciences and the Center for Community Engagement (CCE) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The 2025 Institute will be held in person at UCLA in Los Angeles, CA on July 7-10.

To apply, please complete this form. Application deadline: April 20, 2025.

What is Civically Engaged Research?

Scholars in many disciplines are grappling with how to produce rigorous scholarship that addresses significant social challenges in collaboration with communities, organizations, and agencies. They strive to learn from those working outside of academia, to benefit from the insights of all kinds of groups and institutions, and to give back to communities rather than extract value from them. Civically Engaged Research (CER) is an approach to inquiry that involves political scientists collaborating in a mutually beneficial way with people and groups beyond the academy to co-produce, share, and apply knowledge related to power or politics that contributes to self- governance. Conducting robust community and civically engaged research entails a different set of practices than other kinds of political science research,

APSA’s Institute for Civically Engaged Research

ICER trains political scientists at all career stages in best practices for conducting academically rigorous, mutually beneficial CER. The Institute Directors are Peter Levine (Tufts University), Samantha Majic (John Jay College & The CUNY Graduate Center), and Adriano Udani (University of Minnesota). Together with practitioner experts and scholarly guest speakers, ICER Directors and fellows will explore key topics related to civically engaged research by discussing relevant readings, by analyzing specific examples of civically engaged research from political science and cognate disciplines, and by considering the research plans and ideas of institute participants. From 2019-2024, ICER was hosted by the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University.

Topics to be covered

Expertise: what do political scientists uniquely contribute? What are the limitations of scholarly expertise? What types of expertise do those outside of academia have?
The ethics of collaboration: sharing of credit, funds and overhead, navigating IRB, dealing with disagreements.
Communicating results: to partners, relevant communities, the press, and directly to the broader public.
How to navigate common social science values and norms while doing civically engaged work.
Career considerations: publication and credit, tenure and promotion, funding your research.
Mapping the different and varied ways that political scientists engage through research and beyond

2025 Summer Institute

The Institute will take place on campus at UCLA from July 7-10. Approximately twenty fellows will meet each day for intensive discussions and workshops. Thanks to generous support from the Haynes Foundation, participants will have access to complimentary housing on the UCLA campus alongside scholarships available to defray costs of meals and travel. Applicants are expected to seek financial support from their home institution, but admission to the Institute will not be affected by financial need.

How to Apply

ICER is intended for advanced graduate students in political science and political scientists at any stage of their careers who wish to learn more and shift to integrate Civically Engaged Research (CER). It is not meant for scholars who are already experienced CER practitioners. Scholars may apply with a current or planned project that involves CER, or without an ongoing research project. All scholars with an interest in topics or approaches to civically engaged scholarship are welcome to apply. To apply, please complete the form located here. Applications are due by April 20, 2025. Applicants to ICER will be notified of decisions by early May.

For more information about ICER, please visit our website: https://connect.apsanet.org/icer/. If you have further questions about the institute, please contact APSA’s Centennial Center at centennial@apsanet.org.

a generational call to rebuild

Posted on February 20, 2025 by Peter

In January 2024, I wrote a post entitled “calling youth to government service.” I noted that many talented young people would vote to expand government, but few were interested in working in government. I posited both demand- and supply-side explanations. Young people do not know enough about public-sector employment, nor do they sufficiently value it. At the same time, the federal government has been very bad at recruitment and retention.

Now, as someone who advises many talented and idealistic undergraduates, I cannot encourage them to apply for federal jobs.

We don’t know how long “now” will last. Bad-case scenarios envision an extended period of crisis and the kind of kleptocratic authoritarianism that will keep federal (and some state) agencies from functioning appropriately for years.

Nevertheless, it is important to begin envisioning a rebuilding phase, even while we also strive to defend current institutions. The opportunity to rebuild could begin as soon as two years from now. At least, that is when presidential campaigns will launch, and one of their core messages could be rebuilding the government. Meanwhile, today’s college students and recent graduates can be obtaining further education or experience in local government or the private sector with an eye to joining the federal civil service in 2028.

Besides, having a positive vision can change the political situation in the present. Optimism is important for morale. We should be struggling to make change, not just to block threats.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are already educating Americans about the value of the federal government. In the latest CNN poll, substantial majorities of Americans oppose “laying off large numbers of federal government workers,” “shutting down the agency that provides humanitarian aid in low-income countries,” and (by the widest margin) “blocking health agencies from communicating without approval from a Trump appointee.” Since foreign aid generally lacks public support, and the Trump/Musk layoffs have yet to affect many voters directly, I suspect that subsequent cuts will be even more unpopular.

Many of my recent predictions have been wrong. I thought that some of the Biden-era spending would be popular, and I thought that Musk’s layoffs at Twitter would break that platform. Nevertheless, I predict that mass federal layoffs will raise awareness of the value of the federal workforce. Meanwhile, the civil service already needs hundreds of thousands of new workers to replace retiring Baby Boomers, and Trump’s layoffs will create many additional vacancies.

Under these circumstances, how should the federal civil service be rebuilt? I would posit these principles:

1. We need an eloquent generational call. Today’s young people can reconstruct their government to address social and environmental challenges. This is their historical calling. Government service is an essential means to the ends that many of them care about, including saving the earth from climate change.

2. The paradigm of service should be a full-time, professional career in the government. I am not against social entrepreneurship or temporary community service, but the civil service is much larger and more important. We do not need alternatives to government careers nearly as much as we need more and better positions within the civil service (federal, state, and local).

3. The goal is not to return to 2024. The federal workforce had well-documented problems before Trump was inaugurated. Although we must tolerate some degree of sclerosis and waste in any large system–and although current federal workers deserve credit for much valuable work under difficult circumstances–there was already a need for change. Young people should be recruited to rejuvenate and reform federal systems, not just work in them.

4. But any changes should be scrupulously legal. Rule of law is a fundamental value, and nowhere is it more important than in the executive branch, which monopolizes the legitimate use of violence in our society. The federal government can kill, imprison, monitor, or financially ruin people. Its every action must be governed by statutory law. This means that rejuvenating the federal civil service must proceed within the clear statutory authority of the president, unless new legislation passes. (And I am not expert enough on this topic to recommend legislation.)

5. Federal agencies already do some work that I would label “civic”: collaborating with groups in civil society, convening citizens for important conversations, and educating (not propagandizing) the public. But they also (inevitably) play many roles that are bureaucratic, technocratic, and managerial. A rebuilding effort should emphasize the civic aspects of government, because these are valuable, they can appeal to younger people who are skeptical of bureaucracy, and they can reinforce the public legitimacy of the executive branch. If you want people to trust experts, give them opportunities to work with experts on common problems.

The overall message should acknowledge the value of the institutions that we have built so far–and the service of our current and past public sector workers–while envisioning new and better ways of governing.

nostalgia in the face of political crisis

Posted on February 19, 2025 by Peter

Amid the barrage of bad news about US politics, I frequently find myself nostalgic.

Sometimes, it’s for the recent past–for last summer, when we were on a family vacation and Kamala Harris seemed to be surging; or the eve of last fall’s election, when I spoke dispassionately about polarization at American and Colgate universities; or even last month, when we thought that Trump might prove more feckless than reckless.

Other times, my nostalgia reaches further back, to the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, when this white, male, college-educated, fairly moderate American felt that the republic was secure and the public’s values were evolving for the better with each new generation. That underlying optimism was one reason I spent most of the next 20 years focused on promoting youth civic engagement.

If I wish to return to when I felt better about politics, that means that I want to go back to being naive; and we shouldn’t want that for ourselves. Nor is nostalgia reliable. In the past, not everything was dappled sunlight on a late-afternoon lawn–certainly not for people less fortunate than me.

Near the beginning of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera’s narrator says that everything is bathed in nostalgia in the face of dissolution, even the guillotine. He’s discussing Nietzsche’s trope of the Eternal Return. If we believed that the French Revolutionary Terror would recur cyclically, we would fear it. Because we know that it has passed, we bathe it in nostalgia. Our deepest fear is the passage of time, because events do not recur endlessly for us. They move permanently into the past as our time runs out.

Nostalgia can be a way of grasping at the self, trying to trap that ghost in a display case. As such, it is better avoided, regardless of its cause. As for political nostalgia, it is a common ground of reactionary politics.

A related word is “envy.” In his Theses on the Philosophy of History (#2), Walter Benjamin notes that we never envy the future. He says that happiness that makes us envious is connected to our past. We seek redemption by wishing to recover (sometimes from other people) what we already experienced. A worthy redemption, however, requires a change for the better. Political progress brings a better future into the present and thereby imparts a new meaning to what happened in the past. “For every second of time [is] the strait gate through which Messiah might enter.”

This is a pretentious and roundabout way of saying that what matters is not what used to be but what we do now to improve the world that we are in.

the theory of the Biden environmental policy may be proven right

Posted on February 13, 2025 by Peter

The Washington Post mentions “Skylar Holden, a cattle farmer in eastern Missouri,” who is not receiving $240,000 in federal funding that he was awarded under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program because Trump froze it. The headline is: “Farmers [are] on the hook for millions after Trump freezes USDA funds,” In The New York Times, Michael W. Webber describes the broader pattern: “Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. rank and file might not let him choke off the money flowing to Republican districts; a majority of federal clean energy investments for wind, solar, batteries and clean tech factories are going to those regions.”

This was the design; the policy was built to survive political opposition. I believe the authors of the the $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act and related bills (provisions in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the $280+ billion CHIPS Act) held the mental model shown on the right side of the image that accompanies this post.

You could read the image by focusing first on the teal loop. By burning carbon, people cause both good and bad outcomes. The net result is bad; probably around $185 of damage per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions (Rennert et al 2022), which I think comes to about $6.8 trillion per year for the world.

Governmental policies could reduce that social cost. A big carbon tax is an example. However, virtually no governments do enough. The reason is that carbon produces a set of interest groups–some environmental ones, but many stronger groups that are committed to cheap carbon. Not all of these groups are elite. They include working people in carbon-intensive jobs and their elected representatives. The carbon economy also generates public opinion, including concerns about climate change as well as deep support for carbon-intensive jobs and products. The interest groups and public opinion influence governments to adopt the policies that they enact. For the most part, it is a vicious circle.

To create an alternative loop (shown in light green on the left side of the diagram), Biden and the Democratic Congress basically poured a lot of money into green industry. Their goal was to create new interest groups that would demand continued funding for green technologies as well as other supportive policies. Just as conventional car owners demand cheap gas, electric car owners will demand charging stations. Public opinion would also evolve so that more people would support environmental policies and recognize their economic benefits. Ultimately, once the green loop was bigger than the teal one, there would be political support for pushing carbon emissions down.

The Biden policy probably lowered carbon emissions substantially. But it had no positive effects on public opinion. As I have discussed before, vast expenditures received startlingly little attention. Proponents were either unwilling or unable to defend the policy. The president of the environmentalist Sierra Club, Ben Jealous, emphasized abortion when he advocated for Harris. Even the names of the Biden bills hid their purpose. For instance, the Inflation Reduction Act had nothing to do with reducing inflation and may even have raised it somewhat. In short, the pathway to policy through public opinion failed, either because the messengers barely tried or because no one could have persuaded voters about such matters.

However, the other path shown in green may still work. The Biden bills created hundred of thousands of post-carbon jobs and subsidized many farmers and business owners. Disproportionately–and by design–these people live in Republican states and districts. They are now a powerful interest group.

Clearly, the president and his team will try to wreck what they call the “Green New Deal.” But if the green loop holds, they will fail.

Source: Rennert, K., Errickson, F., Prest, B.C. et al. Comprehensive evidence implies a higher social cost of CO₂. Nature 610, 687–692 (2022). See also a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon, you’re talking real money; tracking the Biden climate investments; a different way in which the 2024 election is a failure for democracy etc.

did the first resistance work?

Posted on February 12, 2025 by Peter

Many people are skeptical that the grassroots resistance to Donald Trump in 2017-18 was successful. I have argued that it could have been considerably more potent if the grassroots groups had taken stronger and more durable forms.

That said, it is not true that resistance failed. As Theda Skocpol argues, grassroots efforts saved the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and began the Blue Wave that returned the House to Democratic control in 2018, thus freezing Trump’s agenda and preventing him from changing federal legislation very much at all.

I would distinguish between two forms of resistance, although some individuals worked on both.

One was a set of social movements that aimed to transform the US fairly radically. Black Lives Matter (BLM) was the largest, but there were also significant LGBTQ+, environmentalist, and pro-immigration movements. Of course, these had started before Trump’s election.

I aligned with most of these efforts, and I discuss BLM as a positive case in my most recent book. None of their struggles are over. However, these movements faced popular backlash and were defeated (for the time being) on most policy fronts. For example, my former student and two colleagues show that BLM protests were associated with increases in police budgets. If these movements contributed to Trump’s reelection, that is a disturbing fact about how the American people received them, but it may still help to explain our situation.

The other kind of resistance was what Skocpol refers to when she mentions “2,000 to 3,000 grassroots Resistance groups” that defended the ACA and then often helped Democratic candidates in the 2018 election. Their goal was not to change American society but to preserve its current institutions. And they largely succeeded during the first Trump Administration. Theirs could be described as a conservative movement in the sense that they intended to conserve what was most valuable in the status quo.

I have no interest in sidelining the radical movements. At least some of their goals are urgent, and their participants have the right to participate fully. Successful resistance will depend–in part–on them. But I do want to highlight Trump’s other kind of opponents because success will also depend on these Americans. I have lately been talking about “Alarmed Complete Newbies” (ACNs)–people who are activated by Trump’s outrages and want to hold them off. My current priority is to provide as much guidance and support as I can for the ACNs.

young people’s support for Trump

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Peter

The success of Trump’s revolution depends on its popularity. As long as he remains reasonably popular, he will retain the support of Republicans and business interests and assertive resistance will fizzle. If his support sinks badly, other politicians will want to abandon him and more people will join the opposition.

According to the latest CBS News/YouGov poll, somewhat more Americans approve than disapprove of Trump (53% versus 47%). That ratio is poor for a newly inaugurated president but far higher than it should be, and too high–for now–to enable a successful grassroots opposition.

Young people are especially supportive.* Fifty-five percent of respondents under 30 approve of “the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president.” That is the second-highest level among the age groups, just below ages 45-64 (56%). Young people are also least likely to strongly disapprove of Trump, at 32%–compared to 44% of those 65 and older.

Young people are the most likely to agree that Trump is “effective” (63%), “focused” (62%), “competent” (58%), “tough” (71%), and “energetic” (65%), although they are also the least likely to agree that he is “compassionate” (35%).

On policies: young people seem to approve of Trump’s cutting government. They are the most likely to think that Trump is appropriately focused on cutting taxes (45% think he is doing enough on that score and another 37% think he is not yet doing enough) and cutting spending (just 27% think he is cutting too much, the lowest of any age group).

According to the survey, Americans feel that Trump is not doing enough to combat inflation. But young people are slightly more likely than others to think that Trump is already doing enough on that score (although a majority of youth think he is not).

Deportations are quite popular in the sample as a whole, but not especially so among young people. And despite their relatively positive answers on most of the specific survey questions, a smaller majority of young people (56%) than other people say that they mostly like what Trump is doing.

As always, it’s important not to assume that people are seeing the same news that you see and reaching the opposite conclusions. Many Americans see very little political or policy news at all, and what they do see is a small sample of all the possible stories.

Young people are the least attentive to politics: according to the poll, just 34% are currently paying a lot of attention, in comparison to 64% of those 65 and older. The only “trending” video on TikTok right now that involves Trump shows him and Melania taking a “happy walk” together (and looking a lot younger than they do today). The level of attention to news rises steadily with age in this survey. Therefore, if young people see more news, that will probably lower Trump’s support.

It is not appropriate for schools and colleges to advocate opinions about Trump. (And this survey undermines the claim that schools have been turning young people “woke.” If any schools were trying to do so, their attempt backfired.) However, it is proper and important for leaders in politics and civil society to persuade youth to care more about democracy and the rule of law, and young advocates can be particularly persuasive. Their success may prove critical to preserving the rule of law.

[Important update, Feb. 13: YouGov’s latest polling shows a substantial (11-point) decrease in Trump’s support among young people. They are now opposed (57% hold a negative view), and this change is the main cause of a decline in Trump’s overall support. So maybe the critical news is beginning to break through.]

*Some of these comparisons fall within the margin of error (+/- 2.5% for the whole sample, and larger for subgroups). However, some of the differences exceed the margin, and even the smaller gaps reflect the best available information. We should act accordingly.

examples of resistance by the civil service

Posted on February 7, 2025 by Peter

Historical examples of resistance by the civil service suggest that resistance is much more successful when the public is convinced that the stakes are constitutional rather than budgetary.

Jeremy Pressman is tracking various forms of opposition to the illegal and illiberal actions of the Trump administration in this document. Some are actions by civil servants. For instance, on Feb. 1, “Two officials at the the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) refused to provide non-government, pro-Trump individuals (Musk et al) illegal access to USAID security systems, personnel files, and classified information.”

In this context, it is useful to browse historical examples of resistance by civil servants that are collected in the Global Nonviolent Action Database.

In 2010, the UK Public and Commercial Services Union struck in opposition to proposed job cuts and other changes mandated by the Labour Government. I don’t have grounds to assess the unions’ complaints. Job cuts are not necessarily illegal, undemocratic, or even unwise. My interest is the unions’ tactics. In addition to a 24-hour strike supported by less than half of the workforce, the unions also organized protests and a bus tour to gain public support. On the positive side, union membership grew, but the union lost in both the High Court and Parliament, and the job cuts went through.

In 1995, French public employees organized a much larger and longer strike against similar cuts. “While the strikes were having a devastating impact on the economy and on the lives of all ordinary French citizens, [the strikers] still enjoyed public approval.” The Chirac Government came to the negotiating table and offered concessions that particularly spared railroad workers, whose opposition abated. The government’s proposal “remained relatively untouched save for adjustments to placate the railroad workers,” and it passed.

In March 1920, German right-wingers began a coup against the republic, now known as the Kapp Putsch. Heavily armed insurgents arrived in Berlin, set up machine-gun posts and checkpoints, dropped leaflets from military aircraft, and seized the newsrooms of two newspapers.

The coup’s support among local garrisons was mixed. Waiters and other ordinary workers began stalling on the job. Trade unions and elected officials called for resistance. After some civilian protesters were killed in a clash with Putschists, Berliners stopped reporting for work–probably out of fear as well as an active desire to strike. The capacity of the German state withered, and Wolfgang Kapp “resigned” from his self-appointed position. The republic survived for 13 years.

Three examples cannot support general conclusions, but we know from other research that the scale of resistance matters. If a lot of people (not just civil servants but also contractors, grantees, and regular workers) stop contributing to the normal functions of the US government, it will be hard for Trump to proceed. Most Berliners stopped working because the coup was violent and it aimed to overthrow the regime, not just to cut government jobs. Paramilitary violence dramatized the threat and undercut the coup.

If most people see Trump’s civil-service layoffs as means to cut costs, then any resistance–even from those who disagree with him–will be routine and likely to be defeated. I could be wrong, but I see his cuts as unprecedented and unconstitutional attacks on the rule of law. If the public comes to see them that way, then resistance may be broad and effective.

See also: the current state of resistance, and what to do about it (Jan 22), strategizing for civil resistance in defense of democracy (November), tools people need to preserve and strengthen democracy; Why Civil Resistance Works (etc.). The image is from Wikipedia, where it is labeled “Demonstration in Berlin against the putsch.” The caption reads: “A quarter million participants”

was Weber wrong about bureaucracy?

Posted on February 6, 2025 by Peter

With the US civil service under attack, it’s worth revisiting classical ideas about bureaucracy. Max Weber begins his hugely influential discussion (Weber 1922/1968) with this paragraph:

Experience tends universally to show that the purely bureaucratic type of administrative organization—that is, the monocratic variety of bureaucracy—is, from a purely technical point of view, capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency and is in this sense formally the most rational known means of exercising authority over human beings. It is superior to any other form in precision, in stability, in the stringency of its discipline, and in its reliability. It thus makes possible a particularly high degree of calculability of results for the heads of the organization and for those acting in relation to it. It is finally superior both in intensive efficiency and in the scope of its operations, and is formally capable of application to all kinds of administrative tasks (223).

Weber seems to have a kind of Darwinian model in mind. Given a soup of different kinds of organizational forms, the bureaucratic ones will prevail thanks to their superior efficiency. Socialism requires bureaucracy, and Weber even lists soviets (communist workers’ councils) as one of the bureaucracies of his time. He also interprets modern capitalism not as a system of market exchanges but as a space in which corporate bureaucracies grow. “Capitalism in its modern stages of development requires the bureaucracy” (p. 224). In fact, state agencies and corporations use convergent methods. Today, the same Microsoft Office tools can generate similar-looking Key Performance Indicators or org charts for a company, a nonprofit, or a state agency, because these organizations work very similarly.

If you asked people to associate words with “bureaucracy,” I doubt that many would suggest “efficiency.” Quite the contrary: words like “bloat” and “waste” would come to mind. Few would worry that we are trapped in a world in which bureaucracies metastasize because they are so efficient. Their spread would be treated as a sign of declining efficiency and would be blamed on the self-interest of the bureaucrats.

Was Weber right about the bureaucracy of Wilhelmine Germany but wrong to generalize, because bureaucracies tend to become inefficient? In that case, was he wrong to see their growth as inevitable? Or was he right about bureaucracies, and critics mistake bureaucratic systems as inefficient when they actually maximize outputs? Are many people undervaluing bureaucratic work as a calling, in Weber’s sense? Do people dislike the means that bureaucracies use, or resent their inevitable costs, or disagree about their ends? Are bureaucracies efficient for their own goals but not for the public good?

Source: Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, 1922. The translation of this section is by Talcott Parsons (Bedminster Press, 1968). See also in defense of institutions as “garbage cans”; radical change needs institutional innovation; what to do about the guy behind the desk

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Monthly Archives: February 2025