The Rise of the Shallow State

On the loss of state capacity and institutional memory in the federal government.

The picture above was taken in the Abbey Library at St. Gallen, Switzerland, where the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World resided last month while teaching an exquisitely well-timed short course on Economic Power in Theory and Practice. The history of the town, the abbey, and the library of St. Gallen date back well over a millennium. One exhibition focused on the abbey’s remarkable collection of medieval manuscripts, gorgeous books that pre-dated Guttenberg’s printing press.

One theme of the Abbey’s museum was the periodic danger the monks faced from the abbey’s myriad geopolitical threats.¹ The monks and librarians took considerable efforts to preserve their reservoir of knowledge from external threats — including, at times, moving the texts out of St. Gallen to other locations. They were pretty successful! The most serious threat to the abbey came from… well…

As a professor, let me just say that have all had that kind of student. But I digress.

It was impossible to take in St. Gallen’s history without thinking about the Trump administration’s efforts to erase, eliminate, or weaponize data held by the federal government. This destruction of knowledge will obviously have serious long-term effects on U.S. state capacity — but in many cases the private sector will also be hit hard. That is because the provision of public goods often incentivizes the provision of private goods — which means the elimination of public goods puts a crimp in the ability of some markets to function. For example, the elimination of NOAA positions will make insurance more difficult to issue.

This leads me to my latest for World Politics Review, on how MAGA’s war on the “deep state” will succeed in creating a shallow state that does no one much good — including, ironically enough, the current MAGA occupants of the executive branch:

As the Trump administration’s efforts to winnow the bureaucracy have made inroads, one might expect to see a more docile bureaucracy that keeps its head down and tries to accomplish its assigned tasks. In actuality, however, the political science literature offers multiple cautionary tales against assuming that life is that simple.

The most obvious and direct problem is that the ways n which the Trump administration has attacked the bureaucracy have weakened the state’s capacity to perform any essential tasks. One can complain about unnecessary red tape all day long, but Americans like knowing that nuclear weapons will not accidentally explode, airplanes will land safely and extreme weather events will be detected and responded to. Despite its loud denials, however, the Trump administration’s myriad staffing cuts at the National Nuclear Security Administration, Federal Aviation Administration and Federal Emergency Management Administration have put all of these essential government functions at risk….

Even in areas where the administration has not cut staff to the bone, the shallow state is implementing Trump’s preferred policies in a shallow manner. Consider the efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and deport undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States. Trump and his subordinates initially signaled that criminals and gang members would be the priority for these deportations. Over the past four months, however, the shallow state has implemented deportations in ways that expose myriad bureaucratic shortcuts, badly warping the process….

Trump might very well succeed in eviscerating his fantasized deep state. The result will not be a more efficient bureaucracy, however, but a shallow state that is unable to perform its vital functions—including carrying out the directives of the president of the United States.

You’ll have to read the whole thing to see the rest of the argument. I would also note that in the Atlantic, Thomas Wright recently applied a similar kind of analysis to the recent culling of the National Security Council staff:

Trump, of course, could use his NSC to advance very different goals than Biden did. That’s as it should be. But he has opted instead to divest himself of this tool. He has a few senior directors left—an unspecified number were fired on Friday, and others have been let go over the past couple of months—and each oversees a massive portfolio. The Europe directorate alone covers about 50 countries, including Russia and Turkey. These senior directors are now largely on their own. They have hardly anyone to draft policy guidance, review speeches, or be the first point of contact for embassies.

Those who oppose Trump may welcome these cuts, precisely because they reduce the ability of this president to destroy and remake U.S. foreign policy. Decimating the NSC removes a layer of White House oversight from the departments engaged in foreign affairs, which could mean strengthening them relative to Trump: If Rubio is truly a temporary national security adviser, there for just six months, the gutting of the NSC will weaken his successor and strengthen his influence as secretary of state. The Pentagon, Treasury Department, Department of Homeland Security, Central Intelligence Agency, and other agencies could likewise set up their own mini–foreign policies, each based on the Cabinet secretary’s interpretation of what they heard from the president, whether in a meeting, a side conversation, or a Truth Social post.

Not only would this produce a chaotic and likely ineffective U.S. foreign policy, but the administration could run into some serious trouble with contingency planning….

The kind of coordination the NSC provides, whether in anticipating crises or responding to them, does not happen automatically, even when Cabinet officials get along with one another. And no single department or agency can replace the NSC’s role, because none has a sufficient overview of the whole field, or of all the tools the U.S. government can bring to bear. If one department did take the lead over all the others, it would likely be biased in favor of using the tools it controls and advancing its institutional interests.

Trump seems to think that he doesn’t need any of this, that he knows what to do in any circumstance and doesn’t need “options” and “recommendations” served up to him. In his mind, he just needs a small team to carry out his orders. But if China makes a move against Taiwan, especially if it is novel and unexpected, Trump may find himself asking what choices he has. If the plans have not been prepared, he will not be able to choose among them. Instead, the country will be dangerously exposed, relying solely on the president’s gut instinct on a subject he knows little about.

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World hopes there will be no need for contingency planning at the NSC. No matter what you misheard watching Andor, however, policy planning is not built on hope.

1. In historical order, those threats came from the Hungarians, the Protestant Reformation, the Revolutionary French, and the Nazis.