Fixing Government’s “Back-of-House” Problem

Restaurant diners rarely think about what’s happening “back of house”—the kitchen where the food is prepared. Most care only about the “front of house”—the service they receive, the quality of their meal, and the price they pay. Voters are much the same. They usually don’t pay attention to government’s back of house—how bills get passed or policies implemented. They care about front-of-house issues—the policies they order at the ballot box and the tangible results served to them. These include basic services like entitlement checks, taxes, public safety, and national defense, as well as custom “dishes” for special interests, such as industry subsidies or union labor requirements.

But just as diners start paying attention to the kitchen when their food arrives late, cold, subpar, or makes them sick, or when a poor health inspection is posted in the window, voters, too, begin to scrutinize government operations when dysfunction becomes too obvious to ignore. Americans have taken a renewed interest not just in what government does but in how it does it.

From Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance, many on the right and on the left are recognizing that American government has fundamentally failed to deliver what citizens need—largely because of its internal dysfunctions. DOGE, in effect, installed a glass window between the dining room and the kitchen—sparking curiosity and outrage on the right about how some parts of government do their business. Klein and Thompson’s book has similarly pushed some on the left to confront the reality that over-proceduralization and excessive regulation have made government unable to produce enough of what the country and its citizens require.

It’s no surprise that this moment has arrived during a low point in trust in institutions and amid deep political divisions. Historically, public interest in the workings of government has tended to rise when confidence in it declines. After World War II, Americans believed in a government that had proved itself capable of defeating Nazism and Imperial Japan—triumphs made possible by innovations of earth-shattering power and world-historical impact. In an era of broad postwar prosperity and security, few questioned the political leaders, experts, and technocrats who made major decisions, from the routing of interstate highways to the construction of nuclear power plants. Mistakes happened, but the public largely accepted them, trusting that they reflected sincere efforts to advance the national interest.

As Marc Dunkelman (Why Nothing Works), Philip K. Howard (Everyday Freedom), Klein and Thompson, and others have recently observed, the upheavals of the 1960s restructured American government. Though Left and Right tell the story differently, the basic outline is the same: high-profile failures like the Vietnam War, Watergate, ineffective desegregation, pesticides’ environmental consequences, dreadful public housing experiments, and heavy-handed urban-renewal efforts turned voters’ attention to government’s back-of-house operations. In a wave of antiauthoritarian reform, activists sought to replace human judgment with rigid legal procedures and expanded individual rights. The goal was to eliminate the elite biases and prejudices that seemed to taint experts and those in authority. Public decisions would now follow formal processes designed to incorporate community input and limit human discretion. Courts would step in to block projects that failed to follow the rules or that violated individual rights.

As individuals and groups gained effective veto power over government projects, a slow paralysis set in. Public-sector unions, newly established—the concept had long been considered, rightly, to be at odds with the public interest—signed collective bargaining agreements that restricted executive authority, reduced worker productivity, and made meaningful accountability nearly impossible. Meantime, plaintiffs—often driven by NIMBYism or self-interest—took government to court over procedural shortcomings. Consider environmental review, first mandated in 1970 through the National Environmental Policy Act. Initially, government officials completed reviews in less than a year and produced impact reports that spanned only several dozen pages. Over time, they’ve ballooned into several-thousand-page behemoths that took federal agencies a median of 4.5 years to finish between 2010 and 2018.

While the post-1960s shift toward legalism and process played out nationally, cities had already experienced a different kind of governance crisis. From the 1930s through the mid-1960s, autocratic builders like New York’s Robert Moses, Boston’s Edward Logue, San Francisco’s Justin Herman, and others dominated infrastructure decision-making. Few doubted their ability to deliver major public works, many of which initially enjoyed widespread popularity. But these builders often overlooked the human costs of their projects—bulldozing functional, well-loved neighborhoods in the name of slum clearance or to make way for new highways, bridges, and complexes like Lincoln Center.

To protect communities from the unchecked power of figures like Moses, New York City adopted the Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP) and formalized community boards in its 1975 charter revision. ULURP establishes a six-phase, seven-month process for approving land-use changes. While community boards are formally advisory, their membership—made up of local residents and business owners—holds significant power to block rezonings. A local council member’s opposition is almost always enough to kill a proposal, thanks to the custom of “member deference.” The threat of a veto is enough to chill prospective proposals before they get off the ground, with little institutional incentive to support new development.

Building in New York today—from housing to roads to subway tunnels—is far more expensive and time-consuming than almost anywhere else in the world. A mile of subway tunnel costs eight to 12 times more in New York than in cities like Paris and Berlin, thanks also to agreements with unions mandating antiquated work rules and bloated staffing requirements. But voters and elected officials chose to layer on regulations and processes to slow down public decision-making. It’s as though longtime patrons insisted that chefs follow the same old recipes—without deviation—even if it meant that the meals would cost more and take much longer to prepare. Today’s chefs aren’t free to craft new dishes or reorganize their kitchens to meet changing tastes.

If unaccountable bureaucrats and power brokers like Moses were seen as the greatest threat by the 1960s, voters today are waking up to a different problem: a sclerotic process that cripples government’s ability to get things done. Even if political leaders had the skill, creativity, or will to deliver projects on time and on budget, they often lack the authority to make rapid and sustained headway. President Joe Biden spent billions on initiatives like rural broadband, electric buses, and EV charging stations—but failed to deliver on those promises. Instead, a web of federally mandated requirements—ranging from minority- and women-owned business contracting to union-level wages and “environmental justice”—created so much red tape that real progress became nearly impossible. Meanwhile, politically connected interest groups did just fine.

The second election of the twenty-first century’s great iconoclast, Donald Trump, signaled not just a preference for policies different from Biden’s—it reflected a deeper desire to transform how government works. Trump’s promises to overhaul the system, root and branch, suggest voters’ dwindling faith in the post-1960s model of governance.

In Washington, Trump and Musk quickly capitalized on this perception. During his relatively brief stint as a special government employee, Musk had DOGE disrupt an administrative state already weakened by the Supreme Court’s reversal of the landmark Chevron doctrine last year. Much of the uproar in the early months of Trump’s second term has stemmed from his disregard for standard procedure, such as summarily deporting illegal immigrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, bypassing the usual requirement to secure removal orders from immigration judges.

Yet concentrating decisions in the hands of powerful executives or government-sanctioned experts carries risks of its own. Courts are already moving to constrain Trump’s actions on immigration, tariffs, and the federal workforce, raising the prospect of a constitutional showdown. And in today’s climate of deep distrust and polarization, executive actions—no matter how well-intentioned—are likely to face immediate skepticism from a significant portion of the electorate. Up to half the voters in any given jurisdiction may see such efforts as illegitimate and work to reverse them as soon as the next administration takes power.

American governance nonetheless needs a new model of public decision-making—one capable of reversing over-proceduralization and its harmful effects. Howard argues, rightly, that someone must be empowered to make trade-offs in service of the national good. But who should decide between competing goods like environmental preservation and energy independence? And what guardrails and guidance can ensure that such decisions reflect the public will, incorporate legitimate opposition, and yet preserve enough discretion to avoid letting the system fall back into bureaucratic paralysis?

Ideally, Congress would serve its constitutional purpose to debate national priorities and regulate interstate affairs. For decades, though, Congress has mostly refused to lead, preferring instead to defer hard decisions to executive agencies and courts. Even if the Senate weakens or eliminates the 60-vote filibuster requirement long used to delay or block bills opposed by the minority party, it remains to be seen whether lawmakers will reject posturing and politicking in favor of making real trade-offs.

That leaves the American people. If Congress won’t lead directly, it could at least pass a law allowing voters to tell their government what they want—on, for example, interstate infrastructure projects of national importance. Letting the electorate advise Congress on these big-picture questions would help shift Americans from passive consumers of government to active citizens shaping critical public decisions.

A nonpartisan National Infrastructure Improvement Commission, composed of infrastructure experts appointed by congressional leaders of both parties, could be tasked with reviewing interstate proposals to submit to voters for approval. The public would have an opportunity to participate in drafting these referenda, preventing the kind of top-down, urban-renewal-style decision-making of the past. The commission would approve final proposals, up to a set number—perhaps five—to go before voters as yes-or-no ballot questions in the next federal general election. While the vote would be legally nonbinding, political leaders would face strong pressure to treat it as binding to avoid appearing to oppose the will of the people.

A nationwide debate on the proposals could precede the vote, including at least one nationally televised and streamed debate—modeled on presidential debates—where leading advocates and opponents would square off. As presidential debates have lost influence, these issue-focused debates might take on greater national importance, forcing Americans to grapple with the real trade-offs involved.

To avoid voters in one region imposing costs on others, proposals could be bundled into national packages. For example, voters might be asked whether to approve a package including new nuclear power plants in various regions, a unified national energy grid, or new interstate or continental natural-gas pipelines.

If approved, the vote would pressure the federal government to act—on a deadline, and regardless of which party holds power. As Howard has proposed, executives would have broad discretion to deliver on the projects, subject to reasonable safety oversight. Congress would waive procedural mandates, preempt state laws, and limit judicial review to whether officials on approved initiatives exceed the bounds of their authority. Injunctive relief would be allowed only in extraordinary circumstances. In practice, this would mean dramatically limiting, if not eliminating, environmental reviews, prevailing-wage rules, minority-contracting goals, and similar requirements, except those providing for basic health and safety. The American people would have weighed the pros and cons, and that’s deliberation enough. Once approved, the full resources and authority of the federal government would be mobilized to turn plans into reality.

In our polarized time, national issue–based voting might not heal divisions; but it can shift attention away from political personalities and toward real trade-offs between competing goods. The U.K.’s referenda on Scottish independence and Brexit doubtless had their problems, including oversimplification of complex matters, but they succeeded in mobilizing millions to consider their nation’s future and tell their government what they wanted. Similar efforts in the U.S. should aim to inform voters as neutrally as possible about the trade-offs, hearing both sides of the argument from advocates and crafting clear, precise ballot language.

National referenda would appeal to both the Left and the Right, though for different reasons. The Left could showcase government’s ability to meet public needs in the twenty-first century. The Right could bypass the perceived influence of the deep state and elite preferences to cut through reams of red tape. If successful at the federal level, such referenda could inspire similar reforms of drawn-out state and local processes, like ULURP. Voters could weigh in on packages of neighborhood rezonings, with community input shaping the proposals—but without today’s many veto points.

Ultimately, rebuilding government capacity will require a new class of merit-based, execution-focused public servants, free from political precommitments and bureaucratic inertia. These line cooks won’t make headlines, but they must be answerable for delivering results on voter-approved projects. Some would likely gain visibility and prestige for bringing about sweeping improvements in the nation’s infrastructure.

What happens in the back of house can make or break the experience of dining—and governing. A government overly concerned with satisfying procedural requirements and accommodating powerful interests has failed to deliver what voters need and want. A good restaurateur in distress would ask patrons what they want and rearrange his kitchen accordingly. A responsive government should likewise ask its citizens what they’d like to order.

Top Photo: Building in New York today is far more expensive and time-consuming than almost anywhere else in the world. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)