Book Review: Global Attack on Modern Government
Review of Hanson, Stephen E. and Kopstein, Jeffrey S. 2024. The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future. Hoboken, NJ: Polity Press.
Preface: Why read this book? Well, even the Wall Street Journal Opinion sees what is going on, the move toward 1500s Styled Patrimonialism, from Seib (2025): Trump Is Replacing the Nanny State With a Daddy State. The president is using the powers of his office in an aggressive, paternalistic way without precedent. Is an old form of intrusive government being replaced by a new one? Yes, Trump-America is modeled on Putin-Russia, the latest rendition of the old 1500s, Pre-Enlightenment Rule of Men Patrimony, intrusive Government on steroids. Read on.
The Hanson and Kopstein (2024) book is about the disturbing move away from The Rule of Law styled government that evolved after the 1600s, and going back to 1500s era styled government represented in The Rule of Men, the patrimonialism system. The assault on the Agencies of Modern Government is an assault on the Rule of Law, which has been brought back into play in the patrimony that is Putin-Russia, and it has been spreading like a Pandemic. The list is growing, apparently with Trump-America next.
The titles of the six chapters give hints as to what is driving the move to patrimony --- to the Rule of Men with “the pater” in charge --- and, how to slow it down on the way to hopefully stopping it. The following takes each in turn.
1 At the Precipice: Too few are telling the story about the essential role of the Agencies that compose the Modern Administrative State from everything to ensuring food and drug safety to making predictions of severe weather, to ensuring national standards for education, to ensure adequate attention to public research, to the management of a Pandemic. Yet, on the other side, the assault and attack is wide and deep. The assault has especially come from the Right in “… a global wave of rebellion against the modern state … countries around the world … libertarians, religious nationalists, and supporters of strong executive power have aligned against what they see as the threat to human freedom (which said groups claim stems from) overweening state regulation (p. 13).” As a result, we stand on a precipice.
2 The Deep State Bogeyman: How did the US, in particular, get to the precipice? The stories leading to the precipice are about the deep state bogeyman, building on dark themes of bad things being done by the Agencies to the American public. An increasing number of Americans who primarily get news from conservative media prone to spreading disinformation believe in the outrageous (no scientific credentials) deep state notion. And, politicians have contributed to the outrageous disinformation, like in Newt Gingrich claiming, without any empirical evidence, that the 2016-2020 Trump Administration was being in effect stopped as in: “Of course, the deep state exists. There’s a permanent state of massive bureaucracies that do whatever they want and set up deliberate leaks to attack the president (p. 30).” Outrageous. The point is, there is no deep state bogeyman.
Now, are there any legitimate concerns about problems in an Administrative State at play in Modern Government? Well, it depends on who one asks.
Libertarian Claims: Libertarians despise bureaucrats, because Agencies work not only at nudging but also sometimes at bounding, restraining, tempering the arrogance of self-interest only, using science-based Law. Libertarians want to be “free to choose” without any concern for what the other can go along with, in effect being opposed to ethical reflection. Unfortunately, libertarian thinking has inspired a massive crusade against state bureaucracy not recognizing the ethic-based claim that it provides for the public good, not just the private good of libertarians.
Religious Claims: Another party to the assault on what is viewed as the Secular Administrative State is coming from religious fundamentalists. So, phrases like “gender ideology” are used to assault Federal Agencies when in fact the science of gender makes clear a visual inspection at birth is just the starting point to understanding the true gender of a newborn. Religious fundamentalists (just like market fundamentalists, and an alliance has been formed between the two groups in the assault) ignore the science to use ideology & theology that cannot be defended other than as an unfounded belief.
Centralize the Power in the Executive (Unitary Executive Theory): The Unlimited Executive Power group, supposedly resting on a credible Unitary Executive Theory, is all in on assaulting the Agencies, because “… the ability of state agencies and judges to resist executive power blocks the power of the president to enact their favored conservative policies (p. 44).” So, again, it is ideology and theology. Like Donald Trump said it: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president’ (pp. 46-47).” Well, that is patrimony, not Rule of Law.
3 Beyond the Democracy Debate: The erosion of the Rule of Law --- which then erodes democracy --- around the Spaceship Earth is underway, as in Modi-India and Orban-Hungary, both increasingly authoritarian states. It also emerged in Bolsonaro-Brazil, Johnson-UK, Milei-Argentina, Netanyahu-Israel (who adopted the “deep state” frame used in the US), and, yes, now in Trump-America. A main point is that the historical view that countries could be understood as being on some continuum from autocracy to democracy is flawed. It is far more complex, once it is realized that the important continuum is from the Rule of Men to the Rule of Law, the latter essential to democracy.
4 How Vladimir Putin Resurrected Tsarism: Personalistic autocracy, a vertical power in patrimonial form was built by Putin-Russia on 1) the implosion of the Soviet economy after the 1991 break-up of all the countries formerly under the Soviet Union; 2) the arrogance of Western advisors --- many economists --- who just made recommendations about moving full-bore to private property rights and the Incentive, and did not deal with the shared interest (the Ethic) in building a Rule of Law; and, 3) some random circumstances, as in the rapid increase in the price of oil at just the right time for “the Putin” to take advantage. The Patrimony had substantive money from the sale of oil.
The West was actually a main cause, as it brought “shock therapy” as represented in 1) moving from a public property state to a private property state without developed coherent property law; 2) moving to price as the way to allocate resources without understanding the Market working with price based Incentive is embedded in the larger Community: Government of shared interest holding the Ethic, and the latter had to be built first; and, 3) not realizing the extent of the dysfunction in the Administrative State that was in place at the time of the Soviet Union being broke-up. The Rule of Men also tends to destroy independent initiative and autonomy, taking the creativity out of the system, slowing and dampening the innovism which is central in an integrated, joint Modern Market & Modern (competent Agencies key) Government.
5 The Wave From East to West: A kind of arrogance on the part of the West claims innovation in political structure and process moves West to East, as in exporting small-d democracy. In the current situation, the opposite is true: The patrimonialism that originated in the East is moving West, at a rapid pace. And, what is driving it? Well, more or less the same forces that drove Putin-Russia.
In the US, it was the crash in 2008. The massive, extreme inequality that was caused by The Neoliberal Order 1970-2008 was the main driver. The collapse of the house mortgage market was another, and, then, the recession that came after all of it. Labor had been left behind, especially in the middle-rank as lower-income people were being helped by Government safety net and welfare programs. And, for the upper income group, massive wealth was accumulated due to the “no social responsibility” Friedman Declaration of 1970, made worse by the Reagan Revolution in the early-1980s.
Predictably the 2008 crash brought a personalistic authoritarian in the form of Trump arriving to fix it. Trump then proceeded to vilify every Agency, every aspect of the Administrative State, mainly because said entities would bound “the Don” from absolute power. In the UK, similar issues had come out of the same framing, as in the Thatcher Revolution coinciding with the Reagan Revolution. It all came to head with “the Boris (Johnson)” in effect driving the UK to leave the EU.
6 Reclaiming the Modern State: The last chapter gives the reader hope. The suggestions are: “First, we must diagnose the problem clearly and educate the public … Second, … double down on the defense of our existing state apparatus against its enemies. Third, … mobilize public sentiment in support of the hardworking people who staff state agencies … Fourth, we need to reorient our foreign policy to include the defense of rule-of-law states – and not just democracy – the assault on the modern state is a worldwide phenomenon, and our collective response has to be an international one (p. 166).” All good ideas, and, Metaeconomics has a lot to say about the essential role of the “defense of the existing state apparatus” as in thinking about the joint effort of Market & Agencies, Market & Government with each essential to the other. Understanding it is “&” and not “VS” is essential.
Rule of Law based inclusive democracy needs the modern state. Thinking Spaceship Earth wide, a strong alliance is needed between supporters of Rule of Law based democracy and the supporters of the modern agencies that make it possible. The book closes with the point: “… global order will crumble with patrimonies in competition for power… like causing a climate catastrophe… need cooperation among modern administrative states … Preserving the modern state at this critical juncture may determine the fate of humanity itself (p. 183).”
Postscript: It comes down to the key role of the Ethic in forming, building, and operating a Government that works for everyone. And, even deeper, it comes down to recognizing that the Ethic is empathy-with the other based, finding what the reasoned other can go along with. Rule of Law systems reflect that empathy-based Ethic. Rule of Men systems only reflect the dark empathy of the loyalists too “the pater” and as a result tend to be unethical and corrupt. Also, such systems tend to demonstrate incompetence (science-lite, often cargo-cult science) as loyalists run what few Agencies “the pater” will tolerate. For more details to include applications of the framework in the book see https://www.metaeconomics.info/post/the-assault-on-the-deep-state