Everyone hates bureaucracy – especially the right. The second Trump administration has declared war on the federal bureaucracy with a renewed animus, establishing the Department of Government Efficiency to ostensibly root out wastefulness. On its surface, DOGE is a good idea. It is necessary, and should inspire broad sympathies from the American public. When people hear the words “government bureaucracy,” they think of the DMV, or – for a particular type of very online right-winger – homosexual state department officials. But in reality, DOGE has seemingly decided we don’t need a government bureaucracy at all, or simply that anyone who has ever said anything bad about Trump is unfit to serve. Never has a project with greater promise – or need – failed so spectacularly.
The animus towards bureaucracy extends to college campuses as well. University administrators have emerged as a convenient scapegoat (apart from suspect departments) for the right’s culture war. At Old Nassau, student opinion of the administration is seemingly at an all-time low; I certainly can’t remember the last time I’ve heard many fellow students say anything particularly positive about the administration.
There is a problem, that much is sure – it may be one of the few things widely agreed upon. But the slapdash strategy advocated by DOGE is not the answer. The facets of the right who want to tear down the federal bureaucracy and America’s research universities are in need of a history lesson. The origins of the bureaucratic state from the European Wars of Religion offer important insights into the purpose of bureaucracy – and why, in government and in higher education, blind destruction is a bad idea.
The explosion of information and religious pluralism caused by the Reformation grew into a series of horrifically destructive conflicts lasting over a century. In the Thirty Years War, perhaps the most famous and important of these conflicts, parts of central Europe saw half their population buried. The wars inaugurated a new order of international law (known as the Westphalian Peace) but caused a revolution in domestic political arrangements as well. The problem facing Europe during the Wars of Religion was disorder caused by religious pluralism; if people couldn’t agree on the most fundamental first-order principles, how could they live together in the same polity? The solution, for a number of political theorists, was absolutism. The absolutist state was constructed to transcend value-based disputes. In the words of historian Reinhart Koselleck, the absolutist state “developed a supra-religious, rationalistic field of action which…found its theoretical expression in the doctrine of raison d’état. What was made room for here was an area where politics could unfold regardless of moral considerations.” However, far from the tyrannical monsters feared by today’s liberals, the absolutist state was neutral. Removed from the passions of the masses and the conscience of civil society, the state was free to pursue its singular objective: providing order and security for its citizens.
The Leviathan was legitimate so long as it adhered to the principles of institutional neutrality! Administrative bureaucracies, born out of this revolution in political theory, were confined to their institutional mission. The state was absolute, but it was also institutionally neutral on matters of normative principle. These principles allowed for pluralism without the chaos and destruction of the Wars of Religion. If the state was no longer a legitimate domain for normative conflict, order could be created to accommodate, rather than suppress, pluralism. In order for the system to function, the bureaucracy needed to be powerful, but also truly nonpartisan, in which personal morals and political beliefs were set aside for the good of the singular mission of the bureaucracy.
This is not the situation we see today. The Right is right to criticize the naked partisanship of the administrative state. Government officials push blatantly political agendas, often still hotly debated in civil society, as if they were raison d’état. When the GOP targets controversial DEI initiatives in the State Department, for example, the concern is valid. Political partisans have captured the administrative state and pursued their own moral commitments without democratic accountability. But the solution isn’t to tear down the federal bureaucracy. The state needs bureaucracy – bureaucracy makes the state. Instead, the administrative state must rediscover the bureaucratic ethos, for it is precisely that neutrality that makes the administrative state legitimate. Without democratic accountability, the bureaucracy must be neutral.
Universities, too, face the same problem. Large research institutions with billions of dollars in their endowments need bureaucracies to function. And yet, with millions of federal dollars in their pockets, the American taxpayers are right to be concerned about the blatant political partisanship of higher education. However, as with the federal government, tearing it all down is never the answer. Instead, the present crisis presents an opportunity for universities to refocus on their core mission – the pursuit of truth – and rediscover the value of the bureaucratic ethos. Measures limiting collective institutional political speech are important steps in the right direction. It’s time for bureaucrats to put away their personal moral commitments. In a pluralistic society, a soulless monolith, when directed towards the proper goals, isn’t so bad. It’s necessary.
Published with permission of Princetonians for Free Speech.
Image Credit: Drawing of the frontispiece for Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, gifted as a manuscript to Charles II (1651), Abraham Bosse — Wikimedia Commons
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