The Hoover Institution hosted "Populism, Nationalism, and Trump's Anti-Managerial Revolution" on Thursday, March 23, 2017 from 5:00pm - 7:00pm EST.
"Who rules the United States?" This was the question that Matthew Continetti asked recently in his weekly column, reflecting upon reports that some employees of federal regulatory agencies plan to "resist" the policies of the new Trump Administration. This resistance, Continetti continued, reflects the power of our federal bureaucracy-a "permanent government, the so-called administrative state of bureaucracies, agencies, quasi-public organizations, and regulatory bodies and commissions, of rule-writers and the byzantine network of administrative law courts."
How will this struggle between the Trump Administration and the bureaucracy play out? What does Trump's election tell us about the social and cultural forces underlying our current political scene? And in what ways does the political moment echo the writings of James Burnham, a mid-20th century intellectual who, in the pages of National Review and several books, wrote of the "managerial" class's increasingly powerful role in American government.
These are questions that Continetti discussed in a conversation with Hoover Institution research fellow Adam White. It is part of a new monthly discussion series titled Opening Arguments: Conversations on American Constitutionalism.
