How a concentrated attack on political institutions threatens to disable the essential workings of governmentIn this unsettling book, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum trace how ungoverning-the deliberate effort to dismantle the capacity of government to do its work-has become a malignant part of politics. Democracy depends on a government that can govern, and that requires what-s called administration. The administrative state is made up of the 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 every kind. Ungoverning chronicles the reactionary movement that demands dismantling the administrative state. The demand is not for goals that can be met with policies or programs. When this demand is frustrated, as it must be, the result is an invitation to violence. Muirhead and Rosenblum unpack the idea of ungoverning through many examples of the politics of
