Government Works Weekly #5
Welcome to your weekly roundup of opportunities, events, and information about how government works—and how government can work better—to improve the lives of individuals, families, and communities.
APPLY YOURSELF – jobs, internships, and other ways to get involved
[NEW] Global Manager, Finance & Grants Administration, Centre for Public Impact [Remote / USA]
[NEW] Senior Associate, Communications and Public Relations, Centre for Public Impact [Multiple / Europe]
[NEW] Executive Director, Basel Institute on Governance [Switzerland]
[NEW] Senior Advisor, Civic Engagement (and more), Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation [Hybrid]
[NEW] Vice President for State Network Strategy (and more), Center on Budget and Policy Priorities [Hybrid / Washington, D.C.]
Deputy Director, Center for Civic Design [Remote / U.S.]
Manager, Public Service Leadership Institute (and more), Partnership for Public Service [Washington, D.C.]
Research Manager, Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age [Remote]
Communications and Marketing Expert, Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age [Remote]
GAO Analyst Graduate Intern (Management and Program Analyst), Government Accountability Office [Washington, D.C.]
Associate Director, Special Projects, Elections & Voting (and more), Democracy Fund [Hybrid / Washington, D.C.]
Program Assistant, International Forum for Democratic Studies (and more), National Endowment for Democracy [Hybrid / Washington, D.C.]
Program Manager, Strengthening Democracy Initiative, SPLC [Washington, D.C.]
Senior Program Associate, Democracy Program (and more), The Carter Center [Hybrid / Atlanta]
UPCOMING EVENTS – webinars, conferences, and other human things
17 JUNE: American democracy is under threat. How do we protect it? [Brookings]
17 JUNE: Does evidence matter in policy making? [Niskanen Center]
18 JUNE: Policies to Expand Equity-Oriented Affordable Housing: Opportunities and Cautions from Recent Research [Urban Institute]
18-19 JUNE: Workshop Digital Government and Inclusion [Brazil's Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services + OECD]
18-21 JUNE: International Anti-Corruption Conference [IACC]
21 JUNE: Policy Lab: How to Reach Policy Decisionmakers [RAND]
25 JUNE: Coordinated Upstream Homelessness Prevention: Learnings from the City of Detroit's Centralized Access Model [Government Performance Lab]
26 JUNE: Sammies Summer Series: Part 1: Improving the Customer Experience [Partnership for Public Service]
EYES & EARS – reading, podcasts, and other good stuff
This section will be a bit shorter than usual, as I was a little busier than normal this week. Instead, I will experiment with a couple new sub-section formats.
[BEACH READS] When I get some time to read at length, I am really looking forward to flipping through a few recent magazine issues:
Revitalizing Political Leadership Symposium in Democracy Journal, Summer 2024, No. 73.
What Is the State For?, Boston Review, Spring 2024.
The Global Right, Dissent, Spring 2024.
[VIOLENCE+DEMOCRACY LINK DUMP] Occasionally, I see a cluster of articles around a theme that force me to question and adjust my mental schema around specific topics.1 Here are a few items that got me thinking about violence in democracies.
AG vows prosecution amid ‘unprecedented’ spike in threats against career civil servants, Government Executive, 5 June 2024.
Federal officials say 20 have been charged for threatening election workers, Washington Post, 25 March 2024.
Perceptions of violence in democracies: A PODS analytical brief, International IDEA, 22 May 2024.
Violence Targeting Local Officials: 2023 Annual Report, ACLED, 22 May 2024.
The elections next door: Mexico’s cartels pick candidates, kill rivals, Washington Post, 11 May 2024.
Finally, this last link is from Don Moynihan’s Substack, in which he considers the rise of political terror in the Trump era and offers eight lessons on “the implications for the future of terror becoming an ongoing feature of American political life, one that is especially targeted at public officials.”
The Future is Terror: Trumpism ushered in an era of threats, intimidation and retribution. It is getting worse. Can We Still Govern?, 10 June 2024.
An excerpt from one of those lessons—with direct implications for the thesis behind the work of this blog—follows:
“Lesson 7: Under Terror, The Quality Of Government Will Decline
Public sector work is a bundle of pluses and minuses. In its current format, it is attractive to people who favor stable work, and have high public service motivation. But in the context of politicization and terror, many of those people will leave. And who will replace them? In general people with less qualifications and dedication (since you are drawing from a narrower candidate pool), and in some cases, those people who believe in the conspiracy theories that has given rise to threats.
The quality of public services will decline. If you want to see a microcosm of this in action, look at Republican election officials who are being forced from their jobs for following the law and telling the truth.”
BONUS JOBS – political/elections jobs drop
I will generally strive to keep this space focused on policy rather than politics, but I noticed a recent spate of jobs worth highlighting that are focused on voter mobilization and protection of the fall elections in the US. If you are interested in working to get out voters, secure elections, and support candidates that might actually believe in the ability of government to improve lives, check out these orgs that seem like they are doing good work:
NextGen (e.g., organizing and field roles in multiple states);
States United Democracy Center (e.g., Project Assistant, Truth in Elections);
DNC (e.g., Civic Engagement and Voter Protection Program Manager);
Voter Participation Center (Deputy Director of Research and Innovation);
Movement Labs (e.g., Special Projects Director, Political Innovation);
Equis (e.g., Associate Program Manager, Democracy);
Center for Popular Democracy (e.g., Director of Advocacy and Mobilization);
The Outreach Team (tons of field positions); and
America Votes (e.g., GOTV Director).
While this newsletter is not necessarily partisan, some of the roles featured in this section are focused on turning out Democrats. Having a strong Democratic showing seems necessary but not sufficient for having a government that works, especially when the opposition party has historically wanted to shrink government to a drownable size, starve the beast, privatize social security, abolish the education department, deconstruct the administrative state, etc. Not to mention the very much alive Schedule F moves, which I hope to look at more closely in the coming weeks.2
As Jamelle Bouie reminds us today, writing3 about Supreme Court Justice Alito’s recent comments that “there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised,” the Republican party as currently constituted does not seek a government that works for the majority of Americans.
“Still, there is a fundamental conflict in this country. But it’s not the one Alito imagines. Instead, it is a conflict between those who hope to preserve and expand American democracy and those who aim to suffocate it. [...]
The effort to turn the national government against American democracy is mirrored, at the state level, by the effort to narrow the avenues of political dissent and electoral competition.
In states where Republicans have gerrymandered themselves into nearly impenetrable legislative majorities, they have also taken steps to try to close the paths the broad public might use to see its views honored in government.”
This process usually starts with a series of open questions to myself, such as:
Is political violence against politicians and bureaucrats actually increasing? Or is the seeming trend a product of a few sensational examples? What is causing the violence? Is it a transnational phenomenon or specific to the US? Is it specific to democratic countries? Is this independent of other levels of violence in the societies? How will this affect civil service recruitment and motivation? How will this affect trust in government or support for less democratic forms of government? Will we get even richer and less representative politicians if a prerequisite for running for public office is the ability to afford private security?
I am hoping to settle my schemas on some of these unsettling questions before long.
Here is a good primer on the Schedule F plans, also from Don Moynihan: Trump Has a Master Plan for Destroying the ‘Deep State’, New York Times Opinion, 27 Nov. 2023.
Justice Alito Is Right About One Thing, New York Times Opinion, 14 June 2024.