The Irony of ‘Nobody Elected Elon’
Image Credit: Geoff Livingston via Wikimedia | CC BY 2.0
By Peter Jacobsen, Foundation for Economic Education
Democrat lawmakers have been rallying behind a simple slogan in opposition to DOGE (the “Department of Government Efficiency”): “Nobody elected Elon.” The slogan might be convincing if the irony behind the statement weren’t so apparent.
Much of the consternation surrounding DOGE has been due to Elon Musk’s involvement in downsizing federal bureaucracies such as USAID. But if this criticism (that nobody elected Elon) were applied to all bureaucrats, all the agencies Musk is targeting would be closed already.
Unlike most federal bureaucrats, Elon campaigned alongside Trump and was a known part of the package. In this sense, he’s probably closer to being “elected” than the typical agency head.
On the flip side, most DC bureaucrats are essentially immune from the democratic process. Back in 2021, I wrote an article for FEE on the existence of the deep state.
The article covered a study which, at the time, was a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). It has since been published in the journal Econometrica.
The paper, titled “Ideology and Performance in Public Organizations,” makes several key observations. To quote from the previous FEE article:
- “Democrats made up around 50% of bureaucrats from 1997–2019, whereas Republicans made up only 32% in 1997 and fell to 26% in 2019.”
- “As you look at more senior positions, bureaucratic over-representation of Democrats increases.”
- “[T]he authors find no clear increase in exit [of career civil servants] from bureaucracies in the Clinton-to-Bush transition, the Bush-to-Obama transition, or the Obama-to-Trump transition.” In other words, the composition of the permanent bureaucratic state doesn’t change much in response to voters.
- Political misalignment between bureaucrats and presidents decreases the performance of bureaucrats.
When you look at these facts together, it becomes obvious why Trump is so keen to retire these government employees. They are plurality (often majority depending on the agency) Democrats, the leftward bias increases with seniority, they are less productive under Republican presidents, and it appears like they are relatively immune to democratic votes for the opposing party.
These facts are also hard to reconcile with Democrats’ sudden urgency about unelected bureaucrats. If unelected bureaucrat Elon Musk is a threat to democracy, isn’t it a greater concern that permanent bureaucrats are not impacted by election results? That looks pretty undemocratic to me.
Undemocratic processes seem to pervade our political system—including in the Democratic Party. Remember, Kamala Harris was chosen as the Democratic presidential candidate without a primary just seven months ago.
So it seems like the problem Democrats are worried about isn’t unelected bureaucrats. They’re worried when unelected bureaucrats they don’t like displace establishment unelected bureaucrats they do like.
I think it’s fine to be worried about the influence of unelected administrators. I certainly am. I just think we should be consistent in our worries. If Democrats want to challenge undemocratic bureaucrats, they should do so by putting limitations on federal bureaucrats.
What would limits look like? A good start might be preventing government bureaucrats from taking lucrative lobbying jobs later on in their careers, or maybe imposing term limits. In any case, if unelected bureaucrats are really such a danger to democracy, then we should look for ways to limit their power comprehensively.
Peter Jacobsen
Peter Jacobsen is a Writing Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education. This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
