Is the Failed Pandemic Response a Symptom of a Diseased Administrative State?

The U.S. national government’s poor pandemic response raises unsettling questions about the overall health of the administrative state: that is, the agencies, people, and processes of the executive branch of the federal government. First, are the administrative weaknesses revealed over the last year symptomatic of widespread problems beyond the public health bureaucracy? Second, are the weaknesses attributable to the Trump administration or do they reveal a deeper malady, something that afflicted earlier Democratic and Republican administrations? In summer 2020, my colleagues and I conducted a survey of thousands of federal executives to help shed light on these questions. These executives reported a low opinion of the then-current administration, the White House, and the president’s political appointees. Yet they also reported long-standing issues of low investment and problems of capacity that extend back into other Democratic and Republican administrations. Years of neglect have culminated in vulnerabilities manifesting themselves in increasingly regular and severe administrative failures. These failures put all of us at risk.