It’s never happened before where a presidential candidate promises to throw sand in the gears of a modern democracy in order to bend all levers of government to his will.  Sure, we have had much rumination about how slow or inert government agencies have become, or how there might be overreach on the part of regulators, but never the stated and elaborate effort to to dismantle the capacity of government to do its work.  Democracy depends on a government that can govern, and that’s requires what’s called public administration.  Our federal government, as well as all levels, including state and local, is made up of a vast array of departments and agencies that conduct the essential business of government, from national defense and disaster response to implementing and enforcing public policies of all kind. In their new book, “Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos”, Dartmouth professor, Russell Muirhead, and our guest, Nancy Rosenblum, a Harvard Professor Emerita, lay out how this new term came about and what might ensue if this approach comes to fruition.  Hint: the results are not good.