This is a must-read from Casey Eilbert if you care about making government work. Casey shows that the tensions between bureaucratic efficiency and democratic accountability are deep, they have shaped American debate for decades, and both sides in the fight about this right now have not fully grappled with them. I would add that sweeping changes to American bureaucracy tend to occur in moments of broader reconstruction: think Jackson or FDR. They are related to new forms of electoral mobilization, partisan alignments, and theories of representation.