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About this episode
The history of the American federal civil service — what can we learn from its past glories and failures, and where should we take this next? We have Kevin Hawickhorst of the Foundation for American Innovation to discuss:
The Pendleton Act myth — Why civil service reform didn’t begin or end with Pendleton, and why starting the story there misses what actually made the system work.
The rise of the subject-matter state — How early 20th-century agencies staffed with real experts — entomologists, engineers, agronomists — made the U.S. bureaucracy arguably the most capable in the world.
From expertise to org charts — How mid-century functional reorganization hollowed out mission-driven agencies and replaced subject knowledge with process management.
What competence delivered — From agricultural breakthroughs to infrastructure build-out, what a serious, technically grounded civil service was able to accomplish.
Whether we can rebuild — DOGE, the abundance movement, state capacity, and why this might be the best time in decades to make the government work again.
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