Government Works Weekly #8
Jobs, events, and the empowerment and disempowerment of bureaucrats
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] Director, Global Programmes, International IDEA [Sweden / Belgium / deadline 31 July]
[NEW] Senior Associate, Research & Policy, Managing Fiscal Risks (and more), Pew Charitable Trusts [Washington, D.C.]
[NEW] Director, Economic Analysis, Center for American Progress [Washington, D.C.]
Civic Designer, (and more on the Innovation Team in the Governor’s Office), State of Maryland [Maryland / deadline 12 July]
Senior Program Manager (SAVES), North America, Centre for Public Impact [Remote / USA / deadline 7 July]
Policy Analyst, Directorate for Public Governance, OECD [Paris / deadline 14 July]
Research Analyst, Fairvote [Maryland]
Research Assistant, AI for Public Services, Alan Turing Institute [London / deadline 14 JULY]
Digital Democracy Intern, Democracy Reporting International [Berlin / deadline 9 July]
Policy Analyst / Project Lead, Open Government and Citizen Participation, OECD [Paris / deadline 7 July]
Policy Analyst, Open Government and Citizen Participation, OECD [Paris / deadline 7 July]
Director of Democratic Institutions (and more), Roosevelt Institute [Remote]
Director of Government Affairs and Senior Strategist (and more), Groundwork Collaborative [Washington, D.C.]
Fall Internships (various), Ballotpedia [Remote / U.S.]
Voting Rights Program Associate (and more), Common Cause [California / U.S.]
Executive Director, Basel Institute on Governance [Switzerland / deadline 12 July]
Research Data Analyst (and more), Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation [Hybrid]
Vice President for State Network Strategy (and more), Center on Budget and Policy Priorities [Hybrid / Washington, D.C.]
Director of Curriculum and Design, Public Service Leadership Institute (and more), Partnership for Public Service [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]
Social Media Officer (and more), International Association for Democracy [Remote]
Program Analyst, Democracy, Rights, and Governance Initiative, Packard Foundation [Berkeley, California]
Finally, the leaders of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University recently announced their pending departures. See the announcement for more information on the transition and how to make recommendations for these important vacancies. CIRCLE does truly excellent work on youth voting and civic engagement.
UPCOMING EVENTS – webinars, conferences, and other human things
9 JULY: Project 2025: Exposing the Far-Right Assault on America [Center for American Progress]
9 JULY: AI Governance: A critical consideration of what’s needed and who leads [National Academy of Public Administration]
9 JULY: Strengthening Security Through Democratic Resilience [USIP]
10 JULY: Biden Harris-PMA: Driving Results for All [Performance[.]gov]
10 JULY: Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions - 2024 Results [OECD]
11-12 JULY: Liberalism for the 21st Century [ISMA]
15 JULY: Putting technology to work for inclusive prosperity: Challenges for public policy [Brookings]
16 JULY: 2024 Future of the Federal Workforce Summit [Government Executive]
17 JULY: Government Innovation Summit: Modernization & Collaboration in New York’s Government [City & State New York]
17 JULY: Ridiculous at first futures: from probability to possibility [Centre for Public Impact Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand]
17-18 JULY: 13th Annual Municipal Finance Conference [Brookings]
EYES & EARS – reading, podcasts, and other good stuff
[LOOKING FORWARD] Honig’s New Book on Empowering Bureaucrats
On 3 July, OUP released Dan Honig’s new book, Mission Driven Bureaucrats: Empowering People To Help Government Do Better, which I am really looking forward to reading.
Honig is a professor of public policy at UCL and Georgetown whose work focuses, among other things, on government's role in enhancing citizens' welfare. While waiting for a copy of the book, here is a great conversation between Honig and Alice Evans, a senior lecturer at King's College London, on her Rocking Our Priors podcast:
Podcast: "Mission-Driven Bureaucrats": Dan Honig [Rocking Our Priors]
YouTube: "Mission-Driven Bureaucrats": Conversation with Dan Honig
[GOOD QUOTES] Starmer on Politics as a Force for Good
I don’t follow European politics very closely,1 but I was heartened to see the giant victory of UK’s Labour party yesterday, especially some of the messaging coming from the new prime minister, Keir Starmer:
"The fight for trust is the battle that defines our age. It is why we've campaigned so hard on demonstrating we are fit for public service.”
"We have to return politics to public service. Show that politics can be a force for good."
Source: “UK's Starmer: fight for trust is the battle of our age,” Reuters, 4 July 2024.
[SUPREME COURT] How Recent Decisions Will Affect How Government Works
Finally, I want to wrap up with a roundup of recent coverage of the Supreme Court. It is fair to say that I am no fan of the current majority on the Supreme Court,2 but the latest round of decisions should concern you if you care about a functioning government, regardless of your political preferences. Here are some useful Substack takes—on the Chevron deference and executive immunity decisions primarily—dealing with how these decisions will affect how government works:
Paul Musgrave: “Expansions of the executive’s political power coupled with shrinking regulatory agencies have sapped the institutionalized defenses of the New Deal and Great Society.” [Faith in Trying Times, Systematic Hatreds]
Thomas Zimmer: “It was a disastrous week for all those who would prefer to live in a multiracial, pluralistic democracy with a functional government able to handle the challenges of modern life.” [The Rogue Court vs Modern Democracy, Democracy Americana]
Ben Raderstorf: “Coincidentally, if you were planning a project to dramatically reshape the federal government into a tool for the president to wield against his enemies, it’s hard to imagine a better setup than this week.” [The fifth of July, If you can keep it]
Dan Drezner: “With the ruling, courts took a shiv to the administrative state and declared that the courts alone now had the power previously delegated to regulatory agencies.” [The Rant of an Institutionalist, Drezner’s World]
Don Moynihan: “Days before acceding to Trump’s demands, the court released a series of decisions, most obviously Loper-Bright, that significantly weakened the executive, removing power from state actors as part of a long-sought goal of dismantling the administrative state. In the space of a week, the court reshaped American governance, prioritizing corporate power over the ability of the state to regulate, and prioritizing presidential power over the rule of law. In their decisions, we can discern the future of American governance: strongman, weak state.” [Strongman, Weak State, Can We Still Govern?]
Or how about this from Sean Wilentz writing in The New York Review:
Source: Sean Wilentz, ‘The Dred Scott of Our Time’, The New York Review, 4 July 2024.
And if ever a podcast was made for a moment, the one whose tagline is “a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks” did not disappoint. Check out 5-4 Pod’s “emergency episode” on Trump v. United States.
Finally, I want to wrap up a longish pull quote from Jonathan Bernstein’s Substack post about the “unworkable” nature of these decisions. Since I am cribbing so heavily here, you might as well just read the whole thing—and sign up for the newsletter while you are at it—it is worth your time:
What’s actually happening here dramatically limiting the ability of Congress to govern. It’s Congress, along with the presidency, that sets up these agencies, funds them, gives them tasks, and oversees them. It’s Congress in particular that has used administrative agencies to carry out goals that are too complex for the legislature to micromanage, or really to directly manage at all. Yes, some of this is Congress’s own fault, as they’ve reduced their own capacity. But delegation to executive branch agencies is a perfectly sensible solution to a complicated and constantly changing world, should Congress want to do that. The Court increasingly won’t let them.
[...]
To be clear: What the Court is doing is reducing the role of Congress. And Congress is the best hope the people have to influence what the government does. At the same time, by aggrandizing the president, the Court is at least in part transforming the presidency from just another portion of the government designed to represent the people into a sovereign above the law. Roberts and his allies are not going after administrative agencies. They’re going after representative democracy — the ability of the people to do collective self-government.
The Court is attempting to turn a system of separated institutions sharing powers into one in which the courts decide what the federal government does…while the president and the presidency can do whatever they want. That’s an inversion of what the Framers were trying to do in Philadelphia. It’s contrary to the way the nation has actually run for over two centuries. It’s foreign to the whole notion of a republic.
It’s also likely a mess in practice.
[...]
I’m no expert in many of the specifics the Roberts Court has ruled on over the last few years, but one word I keep seeing over and over again by those who are experts in the various subject matters is “unworkable.”
Source: Upending the Constitution, Good Politics/Bad Politics.
Or, as Justice Sotomayor wrote: “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”3
Perhaps owing to my childhood in California, my gaze has always been on elections in Latin America and Asia. European politics have always seemed kind of antique, with their big wars and their little kings. But I am taking my first trip to the Isles next month, to Scotland. So I am probably going to be a little more attuned than usual.
My adult life has corresponded with the slow, tragic rightward shift of the Supreme Court, starting with tilting the 2000 election to Bush shortly before I could even vote. A few years later, I remember sitting in my shady apartment near the beach in California watching the Samuel “one side or the other is going to win” Alito confirmation hearings on C-SPAN on my bunny ear antenna TV while angrily AIM-ing my fellow UCSD poli sci majors about the path the country was headed down. Little did I know.
For more context on her dissent, see: Perry Stein, Justice Sotomayor dissent: ‘The President is now a king above the law’, Washington Post, 2 July 2024. For a look at how novel the majority’s interpretation was, even compared to what the justices previously said on the record, see: Aaron Blake, What conservative justices said about immunity — before giving it to Trump, Washington Post, 2 July 2024.