Guerrilla Government at the Environmental Film Festival

For Capstone, I recently finished reading Rosemary O'Leary's fascinating The Ethics of Dissent: Managing Guerrilla Government (also reviewed by Eric Boyer in the journal last year). Imagine my surprise when I saw similar stories of bureaucrats fighting the bureaucracy from the inside during this week's showing of The National Parks: America's Best Idea and The World According to Monsanto as part of the Environmental Film Festival. The former told how George Melendez Wright and Adolph Murie, two Park scientists, fought against Park policies regarding wildlife management by writing copiously researched scientific reports (yes, thousands of sample of wolf poop were dissected for science), limply implemented hated policies, and using personal contacts to spark dissent from outside the system. The latter interviewed both political appointees on Monsanto's payroll and rank-and-file employees who both went along with and stood up to the FDA's GMO food policy.

These stories make me proud to call myself a bureaucrat. Although O'Leary rightly points out that guerrilla activism in government agencies isn't always for the greater good, it is important to keep in mind that government policy is not created in a vacuum by political appointees, but is often crucially shaped by career experts who are passionate about what they do. (Monsanto shows how shamefully civil servants can give in to private interests.) This is important to remember, because even perfectly intelligent people like George Packer tend to paint government as "sluggish and indifferent" with only rare examples of employees worthy of being singled out for even two (rather than three) cheers.

I won't hold back. I say, three cheers for the bureaucrats!