Show Notes
Today's guest is near and dear to my heart. It's my dad, Diego Ruiz. We recorded this in person, and we both had the same cold, which you may be able to hear. At some point, you may also hear my son in the background, which makes three generations of Ruizes on the podcast. Diego has helped win elections in the US and Central America, served as Executive Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), was a senior advisor in the House of Representatives, and was Deputy Chief for Strategy and Policy at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), managing a multidisciplinary “in-house think tank.” In this episode, we discuss: * How to win a congressional election in Miami * What “burrowing in” to the civil service means * How to win a presidential election in communist Nicaragua * How the Sandinistas used Michael Keaton and Mike Tyson to dampen voter turnout * Why the Base Realignment and Closure Commission may be a model for DOGE You can find the full transcript at www.statecraft.pub.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
More from Statecraft
My guest today is Will Howell, the inaugural dean of the School of Government & Policy at Johns Hopkins, which welcomes its first class in fall 2028. His argument is that the standard policy masters degree is no longer fit for purpose. I happen to agree. Two disclaimers: I took Will’s class as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, and I’m a Journalist-in-Residence at his school now. Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood and Shadrach Strehle for their support in producing this episode.
A while back, Edward Luttwak explained to us how to stage a coup. Julian Waller focuses on the next step: how authoritarian regimes are built and maintained. We discuss: * Authoritarian regimes as the historical norm * Why military juntas don’t last and party states do * Autocracies: Iran, North Korea, and the Papacy * How the Kremlin has reacted to the Wagner mutiny * What a “pacted transition” looks like in Venezuela * Why the US shouldn’t worry about authoritarianism
Today, my guest is writer, thinker, and friend Dan Wang. He was on Statecraft a year ago, but this time, we're talking about a scholar who has shaped both of our thinking: the late great James C. Scott, author of (among many other classics) Seeing Like a State. We discuss: * How Scott’s fieldwork helped him understand peasant life and state capacity * How mountains impede state power, in Southeast Asia and the USA * How peasants and civil servants resist authority * The advantages of tubers over rice * Dan’s guiding principles for a career in an era of large language models For the full transcript of this conversation, go to www.statecraft.pub.
Today we have a special repeat guest, Scott Kupor, Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The OPM is the people function in the federal government — the department that sets the rules for the various HR departments in other agencies. Director Kupor was on Statecraft six months ago, and is now a little more seasoned in the federal government. We discuss: * How veterans’ preference works in federal hiring * Who gets fired first when an agency conducts a Reduction In Force (RIF) * Proposed changes to prioritize performance during RIFs * Kupor’s progress in recruiting early career and tech talent to government The full transcript for this conversation is at www.statecraft.pub
On today’s episode, we’re continuing a conversation about presidential power that we broached a couple of weeks ago on Statecraft in an essay called, “What Trump Can Learn From Nixon.” It was about the attempts, in Richard Nixon‘s one and a half presidential terms, to build what observers called the “administrative presidency” — the presidency that actually fully controlled the administrative state. My guests today have thought very deeply about presidential attempts to control the administrative state. William Howell and Terry Moe are co-authors of a book called, Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency. They’re both political scientists. Terry is a professor of political science at Stanford, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Will is the Dean of the School of Government and Policy at Johns Hopkins University. We discuss: * Why most federal employees in the 1800s were mailmen, and what changed * How presidents have tried to control the administrative state * Whether Republicans have used presidential power to rein in agencies they object to * Whether the Supreme Court has been a firewall against Trump For the full transcript of this conversation, go to www.statecraft.pub.