Pandemic failures expose problems of the administrative state

State governments used an unprecedented level of executive power to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Governors and other state officials tried to control entire state economies and even our private interactions. The impact these measures had on overall public health is not yet known, but there were many blunders made along the way. These failures expose some inherent problems of the administrative state — the vast landscape of departments and agencies that make up the executive branch of government.

One must separate intent from reality to understand how the administrative state functions. These bureaucracies are meant to enforce the laws the legislature creates. They should be focused on carrying out the policy goals pursued by these elected representatives. In reality, bureaucrats get their marching orders from governors.

This explains why, when governors issued controversial orders in response to the pandemic, the administrative state supported them unequivocally. Although staffed by experts who claim that they are impartial and guided only by evidence, state bureaucrats generally just went along with whatever policies their governors chose. Given their radically different responses to COVID-19, it was as if each state bureaucracy followed its own unique version of “the science.”

This highlights an important shortcoming of the administrative state: It is highly susceptible to groupthink. Governors call the tune and bureaucrats fall in line. There are no mechanisms to ensure opposing viewpoints are heard, much less considered. This feature might be useful in the rare instances when emergency action is required, but it is disastrous as a standard operating procedure.

This groupthink helps make sense of the pandemic policies that made no sense. Remember when former Mayor Bill de Blasio reopened beaches in New York City but prohibited swimming in the waters lapping those shores? Barbecuing was also specifically outlawed. For a few weeks in Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer allowed the use of boats — except those powered by a motor. She permitted people to walk a golf course — but not while carrying and occasionally swinging golf clubs. The rest of this page could be filled with examples of nonsensical policies that were obviously pointless and performative.

It is difficult to imagine how governors and their bureaucratic advisers came up with these bizarre rules. The administrative state may operate in a bubble where blatantly bad ideas receive little or no substantial pushback. State officials seem disconnected from reality when they issue arbitrary orders that are unlikely to make a difference when applied in the real world.

Another problem with letting governors and the administrative state run the show is that they are susceptible to the pleading of special interest groups. One reason that schools remained closed for so long in many states and cities was the influence of teachers unions. They have a long-established, cozy relationship with government officials. Unions can more easily persuade public officials than could, say, a group of concerned but politically unsophisticated parents.

The administrative state is also plagued by overconfidence. This was on display in spades during the pandemic. Many governors and bureaucrats promised they could “defeat” this coronavirus. They were so confident in their models showing how the virus would spread that they used them to justify unprecedented lockdowns. Fortunately, these models were off by a significant factor, and their dire predictions never came to pass. But we got stuck with costly lockdowns, anyway.

Futile contact tracing was another product of the administrative state’s overconfidence. Officials and bureaucrats claimed to know how to “box in” the virus through testing and tracing. This makes sense in theory, but in the real world the administrative state proved woefully inadequate in pulling it off. Despite their best efforts, governments could identify in real-time only a small fraction of people who were actively carrying the virus or exposed to it. Eventually, they simply gave up contact tracing; it proved to be a waste of time and money, doing nothing to contain the spread of COVID-19.

The debate about the governmental responses to the pandemic tends to focus on the role that governors played. But more attention should be paid to the administrative state on which governors relied to devise and deliver their policies. There are considerable drawbacks to depending on this bureaucratic machinery to respond to a complex phenomenon such as an easily transmissible coronavirus pandemic.

Michael Van Beek is the director of research at Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich.