The Loyalty Trap (1st edition)By JaimeKucinskas, New York: Columbia University Press, 2025. 416 pp. $30.00 (paperback). ISBN: 978‐0‐23‐120815‐4
Year: 2026
Type: book-review
Abstract: Since President Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2025, his administration has been chainsawing the federal civil service.Under DOGE, civil servants were fired by the thousands.A presidential decree politicized the hiring and dismissal of thousands of career bureaucrats.Agencies such as USAID were defunded and effectively shut down.Individual dissenters are hunted down by the Administration.All of this at breakneck speed, by decree and seemingly without expert consultation or congressional oversight.This, however, is not where it started.Trump's first term as U.S. President-which started as a surprise victory and ended in the Capital Hill insurrection in January 2021-is also helpful in identifying the elements of a budding autocracy and civil service responses.This is what Jaime Kucinskas did in her well researched and unique book "The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy."
Source: Public Administration Review
DOI: 10.1111/puar.70100
Author: Erik‐Jan van Dorp
Institution: Utrecht University
Language: English
Subfield: Public Administration
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7130380729