Gutting agencies makes them genuinely illegitimate in the public eye over time
Evidence
We see how the longer-term process of delegitimation goes: a conspiracist president tilts against his own government—against the Justice Department, the State Department, and potentially every agency he directs. Offended by the “deep state” that he imagines plots against him, the president first ignores and then eliminates the career bureaucrats who (in his mind) impede him. Initially, these agencies look illegitimate mostly to the company of conspiracists and the president’s own base. Beleaguered, ignored, harried, and underfunded, the agencies—once staffed by professionals who responsibly served whatever party is in power—are progressively gutted and demoralized. As they lose competence and capacity, they will come to look more and more illegitimate to more and more people. The steady stream of conspiracist claims has cumulative force. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 176
Categorization
- SHARE: A self-fulfilling delegitimation loop: presidential attacks then gutting make agencies actually fail, confirming the original conspiracist charge.
- XREF: connects to: Secrecy of favoritism raises agency legitimacy while exposure undermines it; New conspiracism obscures real power by delegitimating the institutions that render it visible — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 363; Image and style can override corruption and policy failure in public esteem — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 2055 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Secrecy of favoritism raises agency legitimacy while exposure undermines it
#complicates(0.85) - New conspiracism obscures real power by delegitimating the institutions that render it visible
#corroborates(0.80) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 363 - Image and style can override corruption and policy failure in public esteem
#complicates(0.78) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 2055 - Drama-driven media coverage of bogus claims breeds lasting public harm
#expands(0.72) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 167