Kucinskas, Jaime Lee. 2025. The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants under Increasing Autocracy: Columbia University Press.

Donald J. Trump took office threatening to run roughshod over democratic institutions, railing against the federal bureaucracy, and calling for dismantling the administrative state. How do civil servants respond to a presidential turn toward authoritarianism? In what ways—if any—can they restrain or counter leaders who defy the norms of liberal democratic governance?