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In Austria, we used to have political hiring very far down the chain. This worked fine because every government was a coalition of the two major parties, so we didnt constantly turn them over. It changed eventually, but more so due to the bad optics of patronage and limited meritocracy. Today of course, we do actually change our government - though theres also a good chance well settle into something again in the medium term, and maybe that bit of chaos now would be worth it.
I dont think this flipping is viable long-term. It was fine in the days of Jackson, but today the civil service is much more of a career, and thats not compatible with flipping a coin every 4 years whether youll have a job. It would sooner lead to actually obedient bureaucrats.
But I also dont think the wilder swings in governing ideology are viable. The government just does too much for that. Spending is a third of GDP (plus more effectively commandeered by regulations), redirecting even just a good portion of that every 4-8 years is very destructive, and besides, theres no value in a border closed half the time, or a pension paying out half the time. Ive said this before in the context of election fraud or electoral college discussions, but if a 2% effect can make your government not just different, but really different and unacceptably bad, then you should reconsider whether the one without that small deviation is really legitimate.
So I think this scenario youre describing will be avoided, one way or another. Boringly, by continuation of the status quo pre-Trump. Or interestingly, by a stable orthodoxy that encompasses much more than bureaucrats.
Such is the problem with the federal civil service. Other than the Patent Office, there is little footing for most of such career positions.
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Trump’s core supporters are fine with declining state capacity, which is the end result here.
Are you sure about that? Theres clearly some things they want done as well, and its not like taxes would go down in proportion to the lesser output.
Considering how much state capacity gets used to harass me and mine, yes, we're fine with it declining.
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This claim is essentially incompatible with representative government. If the government rules basically the same even when the people want something different, you don't have a democracy or republic, you have some sort of oligarchy or aristocracy.
Did you just ignore the rest of the paragraph after that? Its fine to have a change like this, or maybe even a few back-and-forths, every few decades or so. And/or more gradual change all the time. But if you do it every 4-8 years, youre really not gonna like the results. Theres also the part where these swings come from relatively small changes in the electorate; unless this specific system is the only one that may ever count as representative, they are propably not too difficult to avoid.
My point is not that you cant change things, but that something will prevent the scenario OP outlines, and you should be afraid or not of those somethings instead.
It was giving reasons the swings aren't viable. The reasons don't matter; good reasons, bad reasons, if it's true that the swings are not viable, then representative government is not viable.
There is nothing in our system to allow for an "every few decades" change. If you've set up a system which is not responsive to elections, there is no reason it would be responsive to something slower which doesn't exist.
This is a demand for those opposed to the policies of the permanent government to not even try to get their way. It should be no surprise it often falls on deaf ears. Pre-Trump Republicans are often accused of following such a policy; it's how they lost the party.
I think youve somehow got the idea Im an enemy, and interpret me as arguing under that goal. I think Im on your side, but what Im saying here doesnt particularly help either.
It also says when they are not viable, and I dont think these situations are inescapable. Your incompatibility is true only if theres nothing that can reduce the frequency of flips, other than an unelected ruling ideology. Im open to critique of democracy, but I dont find this one convincing.
Look, theres been a few democracies in the world and as far as I know none of them ever had this problem where they ran the state into the ground because they flip-floped every election. It just doesnt happen, because people can see it coming and do something else instead. Now you can ask yourself what that something else could be in our case and if thats good or bad, but I didnt really go into that because it gets speculative quickly and my point is to not fixate on the shiny flip-flop scenario. Yes, you need to think about it a bit because the BATNA is relevant to what people do instead, but comments like OP where you assume that theres a decent chance it happens and wouldnt that suck for republicans are living entirely in lalaland.
I don't claim you're my enemy, but I do claim your thesis puts you in opposition to representative government.
If elections cannot change government policy, that there is an unelected ruling ideology seems inescapable. If they can, but do not because the people are not so fickle... well, we're clearly not in that situation.
Perhaps they all had unelected ruling ideologies. Or perhaps the state won't actually run into the ground just because the opposition gets to make policy when they're in charge.
It certainly seems possible that after seeing one or two back and forths, they are more willing to meet in the middle and make small changes. But your options arent exhaustive: going back to my first comment, parliamentary systems change less often, and the new coalition will generally share one party with the old. Obviously youre not going to adopt that so fast either, but it shows there are other options. Maybe MAD diplomacy between the parties can work... etc. Obviousy an unelected ideology (same or new) is also a possible outcome.
As @anti_dan points out, the most well-known parliamentary system is the source of "Yes, Minister". The parties change but the bureaucrats wield power regardless. A working parliamentary system can change power more often and more completely than the US system does, since there is no separate executive and elections can be called at any time.
Im saying that such a system wouldnt lose much stability from not having one. It can still have one anyway for any number of reasons. (I also think Britain is a bad example of a parliamentary system, it doesnt have coalitions often, propably because of FPTP - but thats not related to the deep state either.) @anti_dan
Elections can be called early when a majority of the current parliament wants to. Since votes are zero-sum, it doesnt happen often that a majority thinks theyll gain. So they can change more often, but I dont see why they actually would, including a working one.
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Britain, the most famous parliamentary system, has a huge unelected bureaucracy wholly unanswerable to the populace.
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That touches upon an interesting question, though - to what extent should democratically elected governments be able to constrain the actions of future ones? There is a sliding scale from saying "the previous government's decision to have this separate executive agency be untouchable by future administrations is null and void" to saying "we will not honour contracts or debts taken out by any past government", and each of them could be justified in the same way. If the People are sovereign, why can't they make a sovereign decision to renege on a contract? Of course, if you did that, the government would find it much harder to get anyone or anything to trust it and sign a contract with it in the future. Of course, you could then argue that a truly sovereign people should take the L and make it a learning experience (and maybe next time consider to vote for contracts made in their name to be honoured even if they have come to hate the guy who they empowered to make them). That might be fine philosophically, but in reality no major country's people may actually have sufficient collective executive function to learn that lesson. As a result, the perfect democracy, as philosophically appealing as it may be, would be outcompeted by other countries running a kayfabe democracy that somewhat insulates the people from their stupidity. Are you ready to make that experiment with your own country on the line?
In the US, the rule is very much closer to the latter. In law, this is the rule against "legislative entrenchment", often expressed as "the current legislature may not bind the future legislature". As far as I know, no one has seriously questioned whether the equivalent rule applies to the executive. The US Government may be bound by treaty or constitutional amendment, but not much else.
The alternative being that the bureaucracy runs the government, "Yes Minister" style? Yes.
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Quite a regional thing, in Switzerland there are essentially permanent coalitions that last for decades until the vote changes so much that things need to be renegotiated, which the parties do amongst themselves, then the new permanent government is established. The longest one was from 1959 to 2004.
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