The Trump Administration has decimated longstanding patterns of federally-funded, nonprofit-delivered services. But the system's many and mounting contradictions made it a pushover.
Just like Part 1, this is really insightful and helpful. I used to run a state agency that administers public safety federal grants to other state agencies, local governments, and nonprofits, and I’ve been working on federal grants ever since—which I’d argue is the most influential and under-thought aspect of American government and politics. What you've written in these pieces really resonates with me—especially your conclusion that this dysfunctional system has suffered a fatal blow from the Trump administration that it will not be able to recover from.
I’m left with two related questions/thoughts, though:1. Where do state governments fit into your account? 2. I wonder if part of what comes next—whether by choice, necessity, or a combination of both—is a rediscovery of state power.
Let me say a bit more: I don’t think it’d be possible—or a good thing if it were possible—to try to recover the exact same kind of power states had prior to the Johnson era or the New Deal. The world has changed—and there are some domestic policy issues—disaster relief, etc.—that require the resources and leadership of the federal government. But based on my experience, I’ve always thought state governments had far more influence and resources—particularly at the administrative level—than we tend to recognize. When people talk about Madisonian state power, they often talk as if it’s dead and buried—a casualty of the federal grant system. But maybe, like Hobbes’s conception of the people’s essential sovereignty under the power of the Leviathan they have authorized, it has actually fallen into a deep coma-like sleep.
Back in the mid-1980s, the first director of the agency I ran used to tell people he was mentoring: “Whatever you do, don’t go to work for the feds. It will make you stupid.” This is not entirely true or fair—but I think I understand what my predecessor meant. While the federal government can use grant programs to try to address domestic policy problems, it is often too far removed—and too convinced of its own superiority—to control, and in many ways to understand and learn from, what state and local governments and NGOs are doing to address them. This is the source not just of a ton of dysfunction and waste, but also of self-motivated reasoning and mystification—rhetoric and frameworks that allow everyone to hear what they want to hear—which has obscured not just how federal grants, but substantial aspects of American domestic policy, actually work. (An aside: I think a lot of recent discourse on state capacity suffers from this problem.)
If it’s only at the end of something that we can begin to understand it, then perhaps the collapse of this system will help us see the world it shaped—and that we’ve been living in—more clearly, so that something new can emerge. Or maybe we’ll rediscover something much older that we can wake up and give new life to.
Just like Part 1, this is really insightful and helpful. I used to run a state agency that administers public safety federal grants to other state agencies, local governments, and nonprofits, and I’ve been working on federal grants ever since—which I’d argue is the most influential and under-thought aspect of American government and politics. What you've written in these pieces really resonates with me—especially your conclusion that this dysfunctional system has suffered a fatal blow from the Trump administration that it will not be able to recover from.
I’m left with two related questions/thoughts, though:1. Where do state governments fit into your account? 2. I wonder if part of what comes next—whether by choice, necessity, or a combination of both—is a rediscovery of state power.
Let me say a bit more: I don’t think it’d be possible—or a good thing if it were possible—to try to recover the exact same kind of power states had prior to the Johnson era or the New Deal. The world has changed—and there are some domestic policy issues—disaster relief, etc.—that require the resources and leadership of the federal government. But based on my experience, I’ve always thought state governments had far more influence and resources—particularly at the administrative level—than we tend to recognize. When people talk about Madisonian state power, they often talk as if it’s dead and buried—a casualty of the federal grant system. But maybe, like Hobbes’s conception of the people’s essential sovereignty under the power of the Leviathan they have authorized, it has actually fallen into a deep coma-like sleep.
Back in the mid-1980s, the first director of the agency I ran used to tell people he was mentoring: “Whatever you do, don’t go to work for the feds. It will make you stupid.” This is not entirely true or fair—but I think I understand what my predecessor meant. While the federal government can use grant programs to try to address domestic policy problems, it is often too far removed—and too convinced of its own superiority—to control, and in many ways to understand and learn from, what state and local governments and NGOs are doing to address them. This is the source not just of a ton of dysfunction and waste, but also of self-motivated reasoning and mystification—rhetoric and frameworks that allow everyone to hear what they want to hear—which has obscured not just how federal grants, but substantial aspects of American domestic policy, actually work. (An aside: I think a lot of recent discourse on state capacity suffers from this problem.)
If it’s only at the end of something that we can begin to understand it, then perhaps the collapse of this system will help us see the world it shaped—and that we’ve been living in—more clearly, so that something new can emerge. Or maybe we’ll rediscover something much older that we can wake up and give new life to.