What is structural reform? Is it to do with state capacity, the lack of which is caused by a plethora of defects– the excessive number of “veto points” in a given government decision,1 the broken feedback loops between the legislature and the executive branches,2 and the terrible lack of attention paid to customer service3? These are all important parts of the picture. In this article, we will present a fuller picture that captures what we mean by “structure” and ties all of these defects –and others– into a common thread.
We begin with the observation that the federal government is full of very complicated structures. The U.S. Government Manual categorizes over 400 structures into seven different categories, differentiated by, to make a long list brief:4
Mission
Measurement of success
Leadership selection and removal
Staff quantity, hiring process, and compensation
Ability to sue and be sued
Legal form: a department, an independent commission, a government corporation, a private nonprofit chartered by statute, etc.
Source(s) of funding
Source(s) of oversight
Source(s) of veto authority and ability to be vetoed
Reviewability of decisions in court
Whenever an organization is created or reorganized, it needs to answer each of these “design questions,” which together are meant to enable that organization to achieve its mission. For example, the 1933 Act that created the Tennessee Valley Authority5 created a corporation rather than an agency, with what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the “flexibility and initiative of private enterprise.” Its employees were exempt from civil service classification, which let it hire out of private industry, and it reinvested its power revenues each year, allowing it to become financially independent over the years. Without these design choices, the TVA would not have become the icon that it is today of what big government can accomplish. Other great examples of structural innovation include:
The Interstate Commerce Commission (which was the first major federal model of the independent expert regulatory agency)6
The Judges’ Bill of 1925, which gave the Supreme Court discretion over its own docket and thereby turned it from a court of error correction into the agenda-setting institution it is today7
The post-war reorganization of the security and defense apparatus8
The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, which consolidated a sprawling committee system and gave Congress a professional staff of its own for the first time9
The post-war creation of the federal science funding apparatus10
A recent restructuring is the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002, which combined twenty-two agencies into one department in the largest federal reorganization since 1947.11
Every purpose needs a structure fit to it, from Congress, which needs to fulfill its purpose of writing legislation and representing the people, to the executive branch, which needs structures that allow it to carry out Congressional mandates. We believe a political tipping point has come for government restructuring, whether through legislation or executive order or some combination of both. Structural reform means investigating every institution whose purpose has outrun its form through the lens of the design principles above. Relying on those principles, on the statutes and case law that shape existing structures, and on the insight of our partners and practitioners, we plan to write the blueprint for the structures that will align our federal government to its purpose in the 21st century.
See Marc J. Dunkelman’s Why Nothing Works (2026), for a brilliant historical analysis of the shift away from “Hamiltonian,” centralized government towards decentralized “Jeffersonian” government that pushes power down and out towards communities– and thereby creates innumerable veto points within all levels of our federalized bureaucracy that prevents vital energy, housing, and transportation infrastructure from being built even where there is legislative will.
See Jennifer Pahlka’s Recoding America (2023), and her substack, “Eating Policy,” for countless case studies of the failure of the “waterfall model.” Lawmakers are often incentivized to look the other way after passing policy, and to follow up to see if outcomes were achieved only if the failure is so egregious that it is politically unavoidable. Pahlka follows the “Outcomes Review” model being piloted in the California legislature, which makes it easier for lawmakers to establish a feedback loop between the legislative and executive branches, standard practice in any organization that sets and achieves objectives.
See Annie Lowrey’s The Time Tax (2026), which documents the outrageously invasive and onerous forms that people must fill out on a regular basis in order to receive government benefits like Medicare and food stamps. Beyond reducing the efficacy of government, the terrible “customer experience” generates resentment and distrust among those whom the government –and those who pass social welfare policy– most want to help.
See Anne Joseph O’Connell’s “Bureaucracy at the Boundary” (2014) for a more thorough treatment of the “boundary organizations” that do not fall neatly into the executive, legislative, or judicial branches. These bodies, including international organizations, government corporations, the U.S. Postal Service, Amtrak, and many more, are often endowed with authorities and limitations (sometimes at cross-purposes with each other) from overlapping statutes spanning decades.
See Kevin Hawickhorst’s “The First Prophet of Abundance” (Asterisk Magazine) for an inspiring romp through the conception, operation, and legacy of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Hawickhorst writes that the TVA “proved that a government agency, armed with technical expertise and disciplined administration, could achieve feats once thought impossible for the public sector.” That is what new structures can do.
See James M. Landis, The Administrative Process (1938), for the theory beyond the modern administrative state: a group of politically independent experts who enjoyed “uninterrupted interest in a relatively narrow and carefully defined area of economic and social activity” would be able to intelligently regulate highly complex, powerful, and fast-moving industries on behalf of the public interest. If the railroad companies and tycoons were getting too powerful, the federal government needed an equally powerful body –the Interstate Commerce Commission– to act as a countervailing force. By the time President Wilson left office in 1920, the independent regulatory agency had been replicated four dozen times throughout the government.
See Edward A. Hartnett’s “Questioning Certiorari: Some Reflections Seventy-Five Years After the Judges' Bill” (2000) for a description of how the act replaced most of the Court's mandatory appellate jurisdiction with discretionary review by writ of certiorari. Nearly everything distinctive about the modern Supreme Court –that it hears roughly seventy cases a year, that it chooses which questions the country will resolve, and that its composition is fought over accordingly– follows from that Act rather than from Article III.
See “The National Security Act Turns 75” (National Security Archive) for a summary of the post-war restructuring of the defense and security apparatus, out of which emerged what would become the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, and a powerful Defense secretary who would eventually hold more and more sway over foreign affairs.
See Roger H. Davidson’s “The Advent of the Modern Congress: The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946"”(1990) for a deeper dive. The Act cut House standing committees from roughly forty-eight to nineteen and Senate committees from thirty-three to fifteen, and authorized each surviving committee to hire permanent professional staff. Before 1946, Congress had almost no analytic capacity of its own and depended on the executive branch and on lobbyists for the information it needed to legislate.
See Vannevar Bush’s The Endless Frontier for an example of an expansive, clear-eyed mission with considered priorities that resulted in a restructuring of the federal government. That structure, and the assumptions it ingrained (some of which have not stood the test of time), still determines the incentives that drive the modern science funding establishment today.
See Charles Perrow’s “The Disaster after 9/11: The Department of Homeland Security and the Intelligence Reorganization” for a summary of the post-9/11 fallout and the motivations and political tussles over the reorganization of DHS. He concludes that most of the changes that made our nation more secure in the aftermath of 9/11 had nothing to do with DHS, and that hindsight “does not leave us with much to be grateful for from [the] department.”
Great post, I learned a lot!