America 250: Jefferson v. Hamilton Ideals on Governance

Submitted by NCAC Board Member, Ryan Heimer

Jefferson’s ideal was rooted in liberty, restraint, and distrust of concentrated power. He believed republican government worked best when authority remained close to the people, when the national government was limited, and when public life was anchored in civic virtue rather than bureaucracy or financial centralization. Jefferson feared that too much federal power would reproduce the corruption and hierarchy Americans had just rejected. His vision leaned toward a stricter reading of constitutional power and a belief that self-government flourished best in decentralized institutions. 

Hamilton’s ideal, by contrast, centered on energy, capacity, and national cohesion. He believed the young republic would fail without a strong central government able to stabilize finances, maintain public credit, coordinate national policy, and command public confidence. Hamilton did not see government strength as the enemy of liberty; he saw it as the condition for survival and prosperity in a fragile new nation. His political outlook favored broader constitutional interpretation and durable national institutions capable of turning revolutionary aspiration into effective governance. 

This was never merely a personal rivalry. It was a foundational disagreement over the purpose of government itself. Jefferson asked how liberty could be preserved against overreach. Hamilton asked how the republic could endure without administrative strength. Jefferson worried about power becoming distant from the people. Hamilton worried about the government becoming too weak to govern at all. Both concerns remain familiar to anyone working in public administration today. 

Jefferson v. Hamilton 

That is why the Semiquincentennial is such a useful civic moment. It encourages reflection not only on what the founders said, but on what public servants must do. Modern administrators work in institutions that carry both Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian inheritance. When they defend transparency, local responsiveness, civic trust, and constitutional restraint, they echo Jefferson. When they build competent agencies, manage public resources, coordinate across jurisdictions, and respond to national crises with professionalism and scale, they echo Hamilton. The daily work of public administration often lies in balancing both traditions rather than choosing one absolutely. 

Thomas Paine adds another important dimension to this conversation. His writings pressed the revolutionary generation to see government as a public instrument tied to the welfare of ordinary people, not merely the privilege of elites. Paine’s moral urgency helps connect the Jefferson-Hamilton debate to the ethical core of public service: government must be judged not only by its structure, but by whether it serves the common good. In that sense, the question is not simply whether one prefers limited government or strong government, but whether public institutions are acting with legitimacy, competence, and fidelity to the public they exist to serve. 

For today’s public administrators, that may be the most valuable lesson of all. The founding era did not leave behind one settled blueprint. It left behind a constitutional democracy shaped by argument; between liberty and capacity, localism and nationhood, restraint and action. The enduring strength of the American government has often come from wrestling with those tensions rather than pretending they do not exist. As the nation nears its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, public servants have an opportunity to frame their work within this longer civic tradition. The American experiment has always depended on people willing to translate ideals into institutions and principles into practice. Jefferson reminds us that the government must remain accountable to liberty. Hamilton reminds us that liberty without effective governance can become fragile and unprotected. Between them lies the continuing challenge of democratic administration: building a government strong enough to serve, but restrained enough to remain the people’s own. 

Reflecting on the works of Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America adds another layer by emphasizing that democratic resilience depends not only on constitutions and institutions, but on civic character. American democracy has survived not because it avoided conflict, but because enough citizens and leaders chose responsibility over cynicism at key moments. That idea is especially meaningful for public administrators. Administrative work often appears procedural, technical, and routine. Yet much of democratic life is preserved through ordinary acts of competence, honesty, and fairness. The Soul of American does just state government is not found only in founding documents or great speeches. It is also found in the daily, disciplined work of public servants who keep institutions trustworthy. 

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Governing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Submitted by Board Member, Ryan Heimer

Technology Policy, Democratic Institutions, and the Future of Public Administration 

The relationship between government and technology has entered a new phase. In earlier eras, public administration often treated technology as a supporting function that has been important for efficiency, recordkeeping, and communication, but secondary to the central tasks of policy design, budgeting, and implementation. That distinction is becoming increasingly untenable. Artificial intelligence, semiconductor supply chains, digital platforms, cloud infrastructure, and data governance now shape not only how governments operate, but also how they exercise authority, maintain legitimacy, and deliver public value. 

Recent works on technology and governance including Chris Miller’s Chip War, Jennifer Pahlka’s Recoding America, and Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska’s The Technological Republic. They offer a particularly useful framework for understanding this transformation. Although these works approach the subject from different vantage points (geopolitical competition, bureaucratic reform, and national strategy) they converge on a shared conclusion: the ability of governments to understand and manage technology is increasingly inseparable from the broader question of effective governance. 

My hope is the outline within these texts, when read alongside contemporary AI policy efforts such as the Build American AI initiative, the White House National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence, and research on municipal AI readiness, point toward a major shift in the field of public administration. Technology policy is no longer a specialized issue confined to technical agencies or information technology offices. Rather, it is becoming central to democratic governance itself. Public administrators must therefore develop not only traditional competencies in management and policy analysis, but also the institutional, strategic, and ethical capacity to govern in an increasingly technological society. 

Technology as a Question of State Capacity 

Chris Miller’s Chip War provides the broadest strategic context for understanding why technology has become so important to governance. Miller’s central contribution is to show that semiconductors are not simply commercial products; they are a form of strategic infrastructure underpinning economic power, military capability, and technological leadership. Modern economies depend on chips to power everything from smartphones and automobiles to artificial intelligence systems and advanced defense platforms. As a result, semiconductor production and supply chains have become a core arena of geopolitical competition. 

For public administration, the significance of this argument lies in its implications for state capacity. Governments have historically treated infrastructure such as roads, ports, water systems, and electric grids. Now foundational to national development and public welfare. Chip War suggests that advanced technological production now occupies a similarly foundational role. The ability to access and sustain semiconductor capacity is increasingly tied to economic resilience, innovation potential, and national security. 

This insight is especially important because it broadens how public administrators must think about technology. The issue is no longer simply whether agencies possess updated software or modern information systems. Rather, it is whether the state as a whole possesses the institutional and strategic capacity to operate in an environment where technological dependencies shape policy outcomes. In this sense, Miller reframes technology not as a narrow policy area but as an essential component of modern statecraft. 

Institutional Failure and the Administrative Problem 

If Chip War explains why technology matters strategically, Jennifer Pahlka’s Recoding America explains why governments often fail to use it effectively. Pahlka’s analysis is less concerned with geopolitical rivalry than with the ordinary functioning of the administrative state. Her central claim is that many public-sector technology failures are not caused by a lack of ambition or public purpose, but by institutional arrangements that make effective digital implementation difficult. 

In Pahlka’s account, government technology projects frequently fail because they are constrained by outdated procurement systems, fragmented authority, rigid compliance structures, and an overreliance on large external contractors. These institutional features tend to reward procedural caution over practical usability, producing systems that are expensive, slow to deploy, and often poorly matched to the actual needs of citizens and frontline workers. The result is not merely inefficiency, but a deeper disconnect between public purpose and administrative execution. 

This argument is particularly important for public administration because it locates technological failure within the core structures of governance. The problem is not simply that governments need better tools; it is that they often lack organizational forms capable of building, managing, and adapting those tools effectively. Pahlka therefore shifts the debate from innovation in the abstract to institutional design in practice. 

Her proposed solution is equally significant. Rather than continuing to treat technology as a service to be outsourced, governments must cultivate internal technical expertise, embrace iterative design, and build closer working relationships between policy professionals and technologists. For public administrators, this implies that effective governance increasingly depends on the ability to connect administrative processes with digital realities. 

Democratic Governance and Technological Power 

Alexander Karp and Nicholas Zamiska’s The Technological Republic extends this discussion by placing technological development within the larger question of democratic power. Their argument is that democratic societies cannot remain effective, secure, or competitive if the government becomes detached from technological innovation. In an era defined by artificial 

intelligence, advanced computing, and strategic rivalry, the relationship between public institutions and technological development becomes a central political question. What distinguishes The Technological Republic from the other works is its emphasis on the broader constitutional and civic stakes of technological governance. Karp and Zamiska suggest that democratic states must do more than regulate innovation after the fact. They must actively shape the conditions under which innovation occurs, ensuring that technological advancement strengthens rather than undermines democratic institutions. 

This argument carries considerable weight for public administration. Public institutions are not merely neutral managers of social complexity; they are the mechanisms through which democratic societies organize collective action. If governments withdraw from technological development or fail to understand its implications, they risk ceding strategic power to private actors, foreign competitors, or institutional systems that operate beyond meaningful public accountability. 

In this respect, The Technological Republic revives an older tradition of thinking about the state, not as a passive regulator, but as a strategic partner in national development. Its relevance to public administration lies in the reminder that governance requires institutional ambition as well as managerial competence. 

Artificial Intelligence and the Expansion of Governance Responsibilities 

The arguments advanced in these three books are reinforced by the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence as a major policy domain. AI is no longer simply a matter of private-sector innovation or consumer technology. It now occupies a central place in debates over economic growth, infrastructure investment, national defense, labor markets, public service delivery, and democratic accountability. 

Initiatives such as Build American AI reflect this shift by emphasizing the need for coordinated investment in domestic AI research, semiconductor production, computing infrastructure, and workforce development. The underlying premise is that AI leadership will not emerge automatically from market forces alone. It requires intentional public investment and strategic coordination across institutions. 

For public administration, this development is significant because it expands the scope of governance responsibilities. Artificial intelligence touches multiple domains traditionally associated with public management: procurement, workforce training, infrastructure planning, intergovernmental coordination, and public accountability. It also introduces new governance questions concerning transparency, algorithmic bias, privacy, and oversight. In short, AI governance is not reducible to technical regulation. It is a multidimensional administrative challenge that cuts across the core functions of modern government. 

The White House Framework and National Administrative Capacity 

The White House National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence further illustrates the extent to which AI is becoming embedded within the machinery of governance. The framework presents artificial intelligence as both a strategic technology and a foundational driver of future economic growth, public service modernization, and national security. It accordingly emphasizes four major priorities: strengthening American AI leadership, building infrastructure and capacity, modernizing government use and procurement, and ensuring responsible and trustworthy AI. 

The first priority, strengthening American AI leadership, underscores the need for sustained federal investment in research, advanced computing, semiconductor production, and strategic collaboration among government, universities, and private industry. This priority reflects the growing recognition that technological leadership is not self-sustaining; it depends on deliberate policy choices and long-term institutional commitment. 

The second priority, building infrastructure and capacity, highlights the material foundations of AI systems. Artificial intelligence depends on data centers, broadband, cloud resources, energy systems, and talent pipelines. In this sense, AI policy is also infrastructure policy. The federal government’s emphasis on physical and digital capacity reinforces the broader lesson of Chip War: technological power rests on concrete systems of production, supply, and support. 

The third priority, modernizing government use and procurement, is particularly relevant to the field of public administration. The framework recognizes that agencies must improve their ability to acquire, govern, and deploy AI tools effectively. Streamlined procurement, clearer guidance, stronger internal expertise, and more agile institutional systems are necessary if AI is to become a useful tool of governance rather than another source of bureaucratic failure. This emphasis closely aligns with Pahlka’s critique in Recoding America: governments cannot modernize merely by declaring technology a priority; they must also reform the institutional processes through which technology is adopted and managed. 

The fourth priority, ensuring responsible and trustworthy AI, points to the ethical and democratic dimensions of technological governance. Transparency, accountability, privacy, fairness, and human oversight are not peripheral concerns. They are central to whether citizens will trust the systems public institutions adopt. As AI becomes more deeply embedded in public decision-making, maintaining public legitimacy will require more than technical efficiency. It will require strong governance safeguards and a continuing commitment to democratic values. Taken together, these priorities show that AI policy is now inseparable from broader 

questions of national administrative capacity. Investments in infrastructure, reforms in procurement, and safeguards for trust and accountability all point toward the same conclusion: governments must modernize institutionally if they expect to govern effectively in an AI-driven environment. 

The Local Dimension: Community AI Readiness 

Although national strategy is essential, the consequences of technological transformation are often felt most directly at the local level. This is where research on community AI readiness becomes especially important. The National Academy of Public Administration’s report Bringing AI to Main Street argues that AI should not be viewed solely as a national competitiveness issue or as a private-sector innovation trend. Rather, its effects will be experienced in communities, where local governments, civic organizations, educational institutions, and regional economies must adapt to technological change. 

The Academy’s central concept is community AI readiness, which it defines as a community’s capacity to adopt, adapt to, and benefit from AI technologies through investments in digital infrastructure, workforce training, education, data governance, and local policy. This concept is especially valuable for public administration because it reframes AI adoption as a question of institutional and civic preparedness, not merely technological availability. Communities do not benefit from artificial intelligence simply because the technology exists. They benefit when public institutions create the conditions that make adoption possible, useful, and equitable. 

This insight adds an important practical layer to the broader arguments advanced in Chip War, Recoding America, and The Technological Republic. If Chip War demonstrates why technological capacity matters strategically, and Recoding America explains why public institutions often struggle to modernize, then the NAPA report shows where much of this challenge will actually unfold: in cities, counties, and regions that must translate abstract technological change into concrete public outcomes. Local government thus becomes not a peripheral actor, but a central arena in which the future of AI governance will be tested. 

The report is also significant because it emphasizes that AI adoption must be approached through iterative design rather than static planning. AI is not a static technology, and therefore the infrastructure, policies, and communications supporting it cannot remain static either. This argument closely parallels Jennifer Pahlka’s critique in Recoding America. Both perspectives suggest that governments will struggle if they continue treating technology adoption as a one-time procurement exercise rather than an ongoing process of adaptation, learning, and redesign. 

Equally important is the Academy’s focus on community engagement and performance measurement. The report recommends public engagement, asset mapping, and regularly updated metrics as tools for identifying readiness gaps, informing decisions, and building trust. For public administration, this reinforces the idea that AI governance must be participatory as well as data-informed. Efficiency alone is not enough; legitimacy also depends on whether communities understand, trust, and help shape the systems being implemented. 

The NAPA report further highlights the extent to which Al governance depends on foundational infrastructure and workforce capacity. Its discussion of broadband, fiber networks, cloud computing, data centers, energy supply, and workforce reskilling makes clear that AI policy is inseparable from broader investments in public capacity. In this respect, the report supports the broader argument of this essay: technological governance is not simply about software or digital tools. It is about whether institutions possess the infrastructure, talent, and organizational systems necessary to convert innovation into public value. 

Finally, the Academy emphasizes that local AI adoption must be grounded in transparency, fairness, accountability, and human-centered decision-making. Its case examples and governance recommendations point to the importance of ethical frameworks, vendor oversight, evaluation processes, and public-facing accountability mechanisms. This is especially significant for public administrators because it makes clear that AI readiness is not merely a technical matter. It is also a matter of democratic legitimacy. Communities that pursue innovation without trust, oversight, or ethical safeguards may improve administrative efficiency while undermining the public values they are meant to serve. 

For these reasons, the concept of community AI readiness adds a vital local and administrative dimension to current debates over technology policy. It reminds scholars and practitioners alike that the future of AI governance will not be determined only in federal strategy documents, research labs, or corporate boardrooms. It will also be determined in the practical work of local institution-building: expanding infrastructure, preparing workers, engaging residents, strengthening data governance, and ensuring that technological change serves the broader public good. 

Implications for the Field of Public Administration 

Taken together, these works suggest that public administration is undergoing a significant transformation. Traditional competencies such as budgeting, personnel management, policy analysis, and program evaluation remain indispensable. However, they are no longer sufficient on their own. The governance challenges associated with semiconductors, digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and public-sector modernization require a broader and more technologically informed conception of administrative competence. 

This does not mean that every public administrator must become a technologist. It does mean, however, that future administrators will need to develop a working understanding of digital systems, procurement strategy, infrastructure dependencies, data governance, and the ethical implications of technological deployment. They must be capable of translating between policy goals and technical realities, between public values and institutional design, and between democratic accountability and administrative innovation. 

The NAPA framework reinforces this point by showing that public administrators must increasingly think in terms of readiness, not simply adoption. Readiness includes not only whether institutions can purchase or deploy a system, but whether they have the infrastructure, workforce skills, governance standards, and public legitimacy needed to make that system effective. In this sense, the public administrator of the future is not just a manager of programs, but a builder of institutional capacity in an environment shaped by rapid technological change. Equally important, these works point to the continued value of cross-sector collaboration. 

Many of the most consequential technological advances in American history emerged through partnerships among government, academia, and private industry. That pattern remains relevant today. Effective technological governance will depend not only on what governments do internally, but also on how they structure relationships with researchers, firms, civic organizations, and local communities. In this sense, the public administrator of the future increasingly resembles a strategic integrator. Someone who can navigate institutions, technologies, and democratic values simultaneously. 

Conclusion 

Artificial intelligence and related technologies are reshaping the context in which public institutions operate. They are altering the material foundations of economic growth, the structures of strategic competition, the design of administrative systems, and the expectations citizens place on government. The central lesson of Chip War, Recoding America, The Technological Republic, contemporary AI policy initiatives, and NAPA’s work on community AI readiness is that technology is no longer an auxiliary issue in governance. It is becoming one of the principal means through which governance itself is exercised. 

For the field of public administration, this represents a structural shift. The central challenge is no longer simply whether the government can adopt new tools, but whether public institutions can develop the capacity, flexibility, and ethical discipline necessary to govern technological change in ways consistent with democratic values. Ultimately, governing in the age of artificial intelligence is not just about machines, data, or software. It is about institutional capability. It is about whether democratic governments can adapt quickly enough, intelligently enough, and responsibly enough to remain effective stewards of the public good in a technological age.

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Jessica Nguyen Wins First Place in the 2022-2023 Student Essay Contest

NCAC congratulates Jessica Nguyen for winning First Place of the National Capital Area Chapter’s (NCAC) 2022-2023 Public Administration Student Essay Contest for her essay Mitigating Maternal Mortality in Maryland: Integrating Midwives into State Medicaid System to Reduce Racial Disparity!

Along with the distinction of the essay winning the Chapter’s Essay Contest, Jessica will receive a cash award of $2,000 that we hope will go toward furthering your education and a three-year membership to the American Society for Public Administration.

Jessica joined us at our Chapter’s Annual Meeting on May 18 to discuss her essay and express her gratitude for being selected. You can view the recording of our Annual Meeting here.

Congratulations, Jessica, on winning First Place for your essay in our Chapter’s 2022-2023 Student Essay Contest!

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Dylan Desjardins Wins Second Place in the 2022-2023 Student Essay Contest

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]NCAC congratulates Dylan Desjardins for winning Second Place of the National Capital Area Chapter’s (NCAC) 2022-2023 Public Administration Student Essay Contest for his essay Open Algorithms: Moving Away from “Magic 8 Ball” Governance! 

Along with the distinction of the essay winning the Chapter’s Essay Contest, Dylan will receive a cash award of $1,500 that we hope will go toward furthering your education and a three-year membership to the American Society for Public Administration.

Dylan joined us at our Chapter’s Annual Meeting on May 18 to express his gratitude for being selected. You can view the recording of our Annual Meeting here.

Congratulations, Dylan, on winning Second Place for you essay in our Chapter’s 2022-2023 Student Essay Contest![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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NCAC Board Member Sits on Panel entitled “Permission to Practice: Public Service Boundary Spanning”at NECoPA

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One of our NCAC Board Members, Connie Berhane, recently sat on a panel at the Northeast Conference on Public Administration (NECoPA) annual conference, “Permission to Practice: Public Service Boundary Spanning.”  She presented on her contributions to a 2021 ebook project by the same name, which involved the collaborative production of original written content and video roleplays by nine practitioners and pracademics in Colorado, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and the Washington, DC Metro Area.

Connie developed a script for the roleplay of an information interview she conducted the year before, turning it into a teaching tool.  She also was the subject of a recorded interview in which she explained how she used boundary spanning to uncover new avenues for career growth.  Her main takeaway for attendees was not to be afraid to reach out to a person or organization to seek information or request information interviews.  Check out the ebook and NECoPA session!

Ebook and videos: https://seniorfellowsandfriends.org/permission-to-practice-public-service-boundary-spanning

NECoPA session: https://youtu.be/jnNPDZAGybI

This video begins with a casual chat before the session starts.

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         By NCAC Board Member Connie Berhane

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An Interview with Zina Merritt

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) was recently ranked #1 among mid-sized agencies as part of the Partnership for Public Service’s list of the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government. And while rankings for leadership on diversity issues were not conducted this year, GAO has long held a top spot for its commitment to diversity as well. To learn more about how GAO integrates social equity into their organization and work, I spoke with Zina Merritt, the Special Assistant to the Comptroller General for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Prior to this role, Zina directed audits of national security and international programs and was a longtime advocate of equal employment opportunity to support diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEI&A) at all levels of the agency. In November 2017, GAO expanded its mission core values of accountability, integrity, and reliability to include people values—being valued, respected, and treated fairly. The underlying tenets of these people values factor into values Zina has long advocated for, and consequently the Comptroller General appointed Zina to serve in this role as GAO’s executive level DEI&A strategist.

Zina has a variety of responsibilities at GAO that include identifying and sharing best practices and programs to support DEIA and monitoring and measuring related performance outcomes of programs and initiatives. She also advises GAO’s Executive Committee, other senior leaders, managers, employee resource groups, and individual employees, while addressing concerns and responding to employee needs throughout the agency. When asked about her strategic
management role, she explained that GAO’s commitment to DEI&A is codified into the organization’s strategic plan and DE&I Strategic Implementation Plan. Specifically, GAO’s current agency strategic plan includes a performance goal that promotes identifying, attracting, and retaining a workforce with the skills necessary to achieve operational excellence. Another performance goal promotes enhancing and sustaining a culture that is fair, diverse, and inclusive and provides opportunities for all employees to excel. In 2019, GAO transformed its prior Workforce Diversity Plans into what is currently our DE&I Strategic Implementation Plan, and it is currently expanding upon this effort by adding accessibility as a focus area. The plan establishes GAO’s processes to review data and trends on demographic characteristics, comparisons to other federal workforces, and DEI&A related performance management goals and metrics. GAO executive level leaders also have explicit leadership and management expectations. For example, the annual performance expectations for GAO’s senior executives clearly communicates the role that they should have as senior leaders in supporting and implementing these efforts. Management and employees also have a critical role in this plan’s implementation through their constructive ongoing engagement in DEI&A efforts.

Zina noted that “Most importantly, effective DEI&A efforts require commitment from the organization’s head, who sets the tone at the top by supporting and engaging in DEI&A efforts at all levels. This includes regularly engaging with senior leadership, managers, affinity groups, and employees on DEI&A related issues to include some of the tough topics, such as acknowledging and communicating with employees regarding external events impacting employees and their families.” She praised the U.S. Comptroller General, Gene Dodaro, for affirming the agency’s commitment to DEI&A in his annual EEO statement to employees, regularly engaging with GAO’s diversity counsel and affinity groups, and participating in many DEI&A events.

Zina explained that the strong emphasis GAO places on respecting, valuing, and treating its employees fairly through a strong commitment to maintaining a skilled and diverse workforce and fostering an inclusive work environment has a direct bearing on GAO’s ability to fulfill its mission: to support the Congress by making government more efficient, effective, and equitable. Research shows that diverse groups allow for critical and innovate thinking, as well as the ability
to better anticipate alternative viewpoints. By leveraging each employee’s unique skills, talents, experiences and characteristics, GAO can broaden the range of perspectives in and approaches to the work. Events over the past year included the pandemic, incidents of police brutality of African Americans, and the most recently, targeted acts of hatred towards Asian Americans. These have brought increased visibility of the inequities and disparities that exist in
this nation and in how the government is addressing these issues. Despite some of the associated challenges, GAO maintained continuity of its DEI&A efforts in their virtual work environment. Zina says that “GAO believes that our workforce should be as diverse as the populous we serve” and that this belief definitely contributes to making GAO such a great place to work.

It also reflects GAO’s commitment to approaching audits of federal programs with a critical eye. GAO included equity as one of the 5 core auditing pillars in an April 2021 Yellow Book update. The technical update provides expanded definitions and examples of the core pillars for examining whether government programs are being administered in a manner that is effective, efficient, economical, ethical, and equitable. This commitment is not new, as equity has appeared in previous editions of the Yellow Book, and GAO has been providing Congress with analysis that includes equity for decades. For example, since the 1970s, GAO has examined racial inequalities in education, voting rights, equal employment, racial profiling, representation in the census, access to capital and housing, health care, and the military justice system. In
September 2020, GAO launched a webpage on Race in America that includes a collection of  GAO reports on this topic.

GAO is currently reporting on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting different racial groups and also has more work planned. GAO will be evaluating whether the Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have controls in place to prevent discrimination at traveler screening checkpoints. Additionally, GAO has work underway examining law enforcement’s use of force and will be looking at initiatives, such as de-escalation training, that could help reduce the use of force. While GAO has been examining program disparities for many decades, it continues to refine its audit tools. In November 2020, GAO convened the Emerging Risks Taskforce to ensure the agency is positioned to tackle emerging risks of importance to Congress and help teams to identify and incorporate issues related to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in their assessments, consistent with the agency’s core values and quality assurance standards. This task force will help GAO develop tools to better assess whether and how DEI&A issues are important to audits, engaging the right people within and outside of GAO to provide a diverse range of perspectives, developing and employing the right methodologies needed to answer related researchable questions, and ensuring that review teams have an appreciation for the limitations and sensitivities associated with this kind of work.

Zina is responsible for providing progress updates to the Executive Committee, employees, and select Congressional Committees on GAO’s DEI&A efforts, and also represents GAO at external forums focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility topics. On August 31, she presented, along with other GAO staff, expert researchers, and federal employees, at GAO’s Centennial Webinar Series: Foundations for Accountability: Oversight Issues for the Next
100 Years, on the topic of Leading Practices to Manage, Empower, and Oversee the Federal Workforce. To see more opportunities to view webinars in the series go to https://www.gao.gov/about/what-gao-does/hundred-years-of-gao/anniversary-events.

 

Submitted by NCAC Board Member, Steven Putansu

Categories: Current Events, Policy Tags: Tags: , ,

Political Polarization, COVID, Social Justice Issues, and Where America Goes From Here

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A book review and interview with the author by Natalie Donahue

The inspiration for “The Divided States of America” stemmed from Dr. Kettl’s dissertation.  He decided to take a fresh look at the field to understand what the underlying issues were and where federalism may be headed for the future.  That may sound strange as many people think of federalism (if they think of it at all) as a static concept; an idea grounded in the founding of our current government dating back to when the states signed the Constitution after powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved to the states through the 10th amendment.  But, in fact, there have been four “generations”, as Kettl calls them, of federalism in the United States in which states and the federal government have fought for primacy.

The first generation lasted nearly 100 years from the ratification of the Constitution until the end of the Civil War, where the states were the primary power in the country.  With the passage of the 14th amendment asserting the fundamental equality of Americans with the states being forbidden to “make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities” of any citizen, the idea of federal primacy was clear – leading us into the second generation of federalism which shifted the balance of intergovernmental power away from the states and toward the federal government.  However, the primacy of the federal government was short-lived as the states pushed back and argued that the way the Constitution should be interpreted should be through the decisions they make – with states fighting to sustain a “separate but equal” doctrine.  States’ rights ruled social policy in America with the passage of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 which ended the separate but equal doctrine and with it, state dominance in social policy, creating the third generation of federalism.  Federal dominance was once again short-lived as the fourth wave of federalism began in the late 1960s as states renewed their pre-eminence through the administration of national programs (such as Medicaid).  

In this fourth generation of federalism, the United States has seen increased inequality both among and between the states.  Depending on perspective, this inequality creates unfairness, undermines democracy, and generates distrust.  The roots of this inequality grow in the political diversity of this country.  The battle between both the size of government and the scope of government programs has been at the forefront of politics for decades but is especially acute now.  As Kettl said in our discussion: “The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a great example in that conservatives were against it, liberals were for it, and we saw the two political parties playing tug-of-war in the creation of the program, but the administration surrounding the implementation decisions of ACA was left to the states.  In effect, the ACA, like Medicaid, became not one national program, but 51 different programs” (50 states plus the District of Columbia).  This notion brings us back to the premise of “The Divided States of America” being that federalism guarantees that the government Americans get depends on where it is that they live.  State by state, we see there is tremendous variability and enormous amounts of inequality across the country.  This leads to increased polarization, which leads to increased inequality, with the problem spiraling.

The issue of inequality was particularly acute across the United States in 2020.  I asked Dr. Kettl about the role of federalism as it pertains to the social justice movement rallying behind the cause of racial injustice, particularly around the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others at the hands of police.  Dr. Kettl talked about the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the idea that national principles were truly national in scope – but what we have seen over the past year in particular is that the efforts of the federal government to shape national policy turned out to be resting more in the hands of the states; with great variance between them.  “The idea of having a single national policy dissolved in the face of different kinds of strategies and different states.  Putting all this together, we discovered that the sense of unity that had grown out of federalism seem to have been either short-lived or never really existed to begin with – as the whole movement for civil rights was largely a product driven by the federal government.  [So what we see now] is that not only has the consensus seem to have dissolved, but the consensus about how to frame a consensus has dissolved.”    

Dr. Kettl and I also spoke about the COVID pandemic and the big role federalism has played in the country’s response to it.  A modern principle of federalism is that states are to act as “laboratories of democracy”, meaning states would experiment and be innovative in their policy implementation decisions; where one state found success, other states would adopt those lessons and follow them within their own borders.  However, states are now basing their decisions “much more on an ideological basis than on issues of either principle or evidence.  [Overall, there is an] unwillingness to even count what it is that is working best, let alone to be able to follow what it is other states are doing”, said Kettl.  “When COVID hit U.S. shores last year, we saw early on a political polarization of wearing masks and even whether or not COVID was real; all of which affected the way in which states responded, with the states going down very different kinds of roads”.  The United States saw states bidding against each other for personal protective equipment, states encouraging mask-wearing while others encouraged herd immunity as a response.  

This struggle has continued during the COVID vaccine rollout – where, again, the variance between the states and their approach to vaccination has been the main determinant of the overall health of their citizens.  “It is arguable that the reliance on the states taking the front lines and first devising a strategy for dealing with COVID and now for the states to have the front-line responsibility dealing with vaccinations has, in fact, proven dangerous and cost lives”.  Due to state governments not having the resources, capacity, or the interest in providing a solution for all their citizens (particularly those in underserved communities) and each state going their own way in their COVID response plan, the country as a whole will be unable to be fully safe. 

So how do we move into a fifth generation of federalism where Americans experience less inequality and outcomes are not determined by the state in which we live?  “There is a real urgency for the country to have a national conversation about the balance of power, as we’ve introduced a lot more inequality into the system… which, in the long-run, is dangerous to democracy.”  Dr. Kettl thinks we should look to another founding father, Alexander Hamilton, who was perhaps the strongest champion among the nation’s founders of a powerful, robust central government.  What we need is “not federal government control, but a stronger federal government steering wheel to shape things like a national response to a national issue; issues that affect everyone, whether directly or indirectly, [which are] things that require a stronger national voice and stronger national consensus.  This is unlikely to happen if we allow 50 different states to go 50 different directions – the cost of which would be to encourage and to fuel greater inequality, which is the one thing the country does not need at this point.  There has to be not federal control but a partnership between the federal government and state and local governments.”  

Dr. Kettl believes the rollout of the COVID vaccine provides the perfect opportunity for the levels of government to work effectively in a coordinated way to try to address the issue, and come together as a country to find a solution that works effectively for all citizens regardless of the neighborhood or community where they live.  Now is the time to move to that fifth generation of federalism and find the right balance between federal and state power in order for the country to truly become the United States of America. 

You can buy a copy of Dr. Kettl’s “The Divided States of America: Why Federalism Doesn’t Work” at your favorite local bookstore.

Natalie Donahue and is the Chief of Evaluation in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and also moonlights as an adjunct at various Universities teaching monitoring and evaluation and public policy courses.  In doing some course prep for a public policy class, she stumbled upon arguably one of the best books to be published last year: Dr. Donald Kettl’s The Divided States of America. 

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