In public debate, the federal bureaucracy is not typically praised for its democratic credentials. Consisting of a wide array of agencies staffed by a permanent civil service and governed by detailed regulations, the administrative state is more likely to be portrayed as a bastion of red tape and unelected power. To hear members of the Supreme Court tell it, for example, the administrative state’s “unaccountable bureaucrats” and  “vast power[s]” pose a dire threat to constitutional democracy that only expanded presidential control can solve. President Trump has offered an even darker view, attacking a “deep state” of entrenched government officials as seeking to undermine his agenda and the popular will.

Such concerns about the administrative state’s democratic legitimacy are mistaken. They rest on a simplistic chain-of-command model at odds with how accountability actually operates in administrative agencies. Even more worrying, their focus on the President as “the most democratic and politically accountable official in Government” ignores the multiple sources of democratic accountability in our constitutional system. After all, it is democratic lawmaking in Congress that gives the administrative state its powers and funding, with Congress also undertaking oversight and the Senate confirming top agency officials. Such a single-minded equating of the President with democratic government too easily justifies authoritarian abuse of executive power.

The second Trump Administration is proving the dangers of attacks on the federal bureaucracy as antidemocratic. In the name of political accountability, President Trump has reduced the federal workforce by hundreds of thousands, ended civil service protections for tens of thousands more, fired independent agency heads without cause and essentially dismantled agencies whose missions he doesn’t support. Trump has also weaponized administrative government to serve his personal retributive agenda, imposing loyalty tests and firing prosecutors who refuse to bend to his will.

These unprecedented actions are often at odds with statutory requirements and thus represent assertions of presidential power at the expense of Congress. Neither undermining the popularly elected legislative branch nor subverting government power to personal ends advances democracy. Instead, these moves remove important internal checks on the misuse of executive authority, making it harder for government officials to push back against presidential directives as factually unsupported, violations of professional norms, or simply unlawful. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that eroding administrative independence is one of the first items on an aspiring autocrat’s checklist. The second Trump Administration provides a cautionary tale about how the powers of administrative government can be abused. Yet an equally important lesson is that a well-functioning administrative state, with meaningful protections for decisional independence and expertise alongside political oversight, can guard against such abuse and mitigate the dangers of presidential unilateralism. Bureaucrats can push back on unlawful and arbitrary government actions from the inside, and also bring authoritarian moves to public attention when internal resistance fails.

The administrative state can serve democracy in other ways — by countering private domination, channeling ongoing conflict, and enabling direct participation in governance. Perhaps most importantly, the administrative state is essential for ensuring effective government. To be sure, it can and sometimes does fail at that task — and can overplay its claims to expertise with disastrous consequences. Worse, failures of government to deliver effective responses to public concerns help fuel the loss in faith in government institutions that represents a major challenge for democracy today. But the solution to this democracy challenge lies in expanding administrative capacity and competency, as well as reforming regulatory regimes, not undermining administration to enhance an elected President’s control.