Reformers must master bureaucratic technicalities or they lose to entrenched opponents

Evidence

But generations of Tammany civil service commissioners, masters in their own way of the art of government, had been there first. Anxious to blaze a path straight to the door of rectitude, Moskowitz and James found themselves trapped instead in a maze of technicalities constructed over decades primarily to keep great things from happening. Civil service administration, the two reformers soon realized, was an art and a science—and it was an art and a science they knew absolutely nothing about. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 304

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the recurring governance theme that institutional inertia and arcane procedure defeat well-intentioned reform — parallels Max Weber’s analysis of bureaucratic rationalization and rational-choice accounts of institutions persisting. — connects to: Bureaucratic inertia and lax enforcement can quietly sabotage reform from within — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 359; Complex bureaucratic warfare can defeat a reformer without identifying a killer — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 374; Discredited parties must transform organizationally and break with the past to regain power — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 87

Broader Connections

• Complex bureaucratic warfare can defeat a reformer without identifying a killer #corroborates (0.88) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 374
• Bureaucratic inertia and lax enforcement can quietly sabotage reform from within #expands (0.82) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 359
• Discredited parties must transform organizationally and break with the past to regain power #complicates (0.72) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 87