Tenuous legitimacy: The administrative state, the antigovernment movement, and the stability of the United States constitutional democracy

The public administration literature is inundated with books and articles despairing about the legitimacy crisis in the field. There have been numerous bases proposed for legitimizing the administrative state, including expertise, virtue or public service, and leadership and vision. Yet the issue remains contested, and the lack of agreement has wide reaching implications. One underexamined implication is the role this tenuous legitimacy has in weakening the administrative state's ability to temper antigovernment sentiment. This dissertation explores the connections and patterns in the ideologies, actions, and philosophical foundations of strongly held views that the administrative state is an illegitimate democratic institution. These domestic antigovernment ideologies are illuminated through case studies of the sovereign citizens' movement, the modern militia movement, and the patriot movement. By studying these groups it becomes clear that the antigovernment ideology is, at least partly, a result of these groups' interactions with the administrative state. The implication of these cases is that the current legitimacy arguments are ineffective in countering these strongly held antigovernment sentiments. This research argues that in order for citizens to not only believe the administrative state is legitimate, but also to experience this, the administrative state must be legitimized in practice not in theory. For public administrators legitimizing the administrative state must include a more direct relationship with citizens in the practice of expertise, virtue and public service, and leadership and vision. Through this practice, not a tenuous theory, public administrators may be able to start repairing the relationship they have with citizens and truly legitimize the administrative state.