The Loyalty Trap - by Jaime Lee Kucinskas

About the Book

"Throughout his campaign and presidency, Donald J. Trump railed against many of the core functions and attributes of the administrative state including regulatory power, expertise, and evidence-based analysis. He promised to "drain the swamp," and sought dramatic changes to policies concerning the environment, trade, foreign affairs, and criminal justice, and appointed several high-profile critics of federal agencies to head those very agencies. Media accounts of dramatic change in political leadership and resistance from within stand in contrast to received wisdom that the state apparatus is unwieldy and filled with non-partisan, technocratic career civil servants. With Trump now out of office and a return to a bureaucracy-as-usual Biden administration, what are we to make of the apparent conflict within the federal government during the Trump administration? Should it be understood as resistance or as something else? In The Stable State?, Jaime Kucinskas examines how career civil servants responded under the conditions of a budding autocracy during the Trump administration and its unprecedented efforts to dismantle the administrative state. She conducted 127 interviews with politically centrist and progressive mid-level managers and high-ranking career civil servants over three waves in 2017, 2018, and 2019-20-included 66 high-ranking career civil servants who worked across executive and contested independent agencies. She argues for a conceptual difference between "resistance" and "complicity" under repressive forms of political leadership and contends that we need to better understand the processes through which bureaucrats make sense of and act in their immediate work environments, negotiating multiple loyalties to personal and professional values, norms, obligations, organizational cultures, and their own circumscribed efficacy. She concludes that despite widespread dissatisfaction with the Trump administration and powerful efforts to stifle dissent within their ranks, most career bureaucrats sought to comply with the directives of political leadership because their work is narrowly defined within the scope of their mandates. Resistance, she concludes, is possible but largely in forms that cohere with institutional and professional imperatives at the individual level. In the modes of organizational change made famous by Albert Hirschman, there is limited room for voice and exit becomes the most reasonable option over time"--

Book Synopsis

Donald J. Trump took office threatening to run roughshod over democratic institutions, railing against the federal bureaucracy, and calling for dismantling the administrative state. How do civil servants respond to a presidential turn toward authoritarianism? In what ways--if any--can they restrain or counter leaders who defy the norms of liberal democratic governance?

The Loyalty Trap explores how civil servants navigated competing pressures and duties amid the chaos of the Trump administration, drawing on in-depth interviews with senior officials in the most contested agencies over the course of a tumultuous term. Jaime Lee Kucinskas argues that the professional culture and ethical obligations of the civil service stabilize the state in normal times but insufficiently prepare bureaucrats to cope with a president like Trump. Instead, federal employees became ensnared in intractable ethical traps, caught between their commitment to nonpartisan public service and the expectation of compliance with political directives. Kucinskas shares their quandaries, recounting attempts to preserve the integrity of government agencies, covert resistance, and a few bold acts of moral courage in the face of organizational decline and politicized leadership. A nuanced sociological account of the lessons of the Trump administration for democratic governance, The Loyalty Trap offers a timely and bracing portrait of the fragility of the American state.

Review Quotes

The Loyalty Trap provides extraordinary insights into how U.S. federal civil servants walked the fine line between their bureaucratic roles and their obligations to American democracy during Donald Trump's presidency. Kucinskas's three waves of in-depth interviews give readers an insider's view of institutions that have served Americans well for more than a century.--James Perry, author of Managing Organizations to Sustain Passion for Public Service

Kucinskas's book offers a captivating insider account of civil servants' challenges in staying morally and culturally committed to their positions as autocratic leadership put them in ethically and legally compromised situations. This study reveals the surprising fragility of our democratic institutions as seen through the eyes of government employees who are experiencing their deterioration in real time.--Brayden King, coauthor of Protestors and Their Targets

Jaime Kucinskas offers profound insights into the tensions between bureaucracy and democracy, illuminating the precarious tightrope public servants walked navigating the unprecedented challenges of the Trump administration--balancing professional standards, personal ethics, competing loyalties, and workplace culture in an increasingly difficult political environment. This is essential reading to understand the complexities of governance in an era of profound political polarization.--Rosemary O'Leary, author of The Ethics of Dissent: Managing Guerrilla Government

Jaime Lee Kucinskas offers a compelling analysis of how bureaucratic loyalty can pave the way toward authoritarianism. Her study of bureaucratic resistance during the Trump administration revitalizes the conversation on ethics in public administration and provides strategies for safeguarding democracy. A must-read on organizational transformation.--Michael W. Bauer, coeditor of International Bureaucracy: Challenges and Lessons for Public Administration

About the Author

Jaime Lee Kucinskas is associate professor of sociology at Hamilton College. She is the author of The Mindful Elite: Mobilizing from the Inside Out (2019) and a coeditor of Situating Spirituality: Context, Practice, and Power (2022).