Keep Public Service Apolitical

The Steady State | By Annie Pforzheimer May 14, 2025

The “Horizons Project”, a think tank headed by two former civil servants, has produced a series of eye-opening documents warning about creeping authoritarianism in the United States; one of these documents is the “Authoritarian Playbook.” After studying systems around the world and lessons in the United States from over the past several decades, the authors identify a few key elements:

• Rejecting democratic rules of game.

• Denying the legitimacy of opponents.

• Tolerating or encouraging political violence.

• Curtailing the civil liberties of opponents.

• Breaking down social cohesion to divide and rule a society.

Politicizing independent institutions is integral to this playbook, and the Trump Administration has made it a top priority. We see this in the overt attempt to introduce a new legal framework to make more employees “at will” and therefore easier to fire. Even without a new law, it’s becoming a reality that speaking out against a policy is taken to mean both disloyalty to the institution and to the current occupant of the White House, and cannot be tolerated. Employees who can’t easily be fired are moved, demoted, harassed and otherwise ostracized.

For those of us who gave decades of our lives in service to the Constitution and American people, it’s a very personal affront. I entered public service in 1987 and left it in 2019, serving in increasingly senior foreign policy roles under six presidents, of both parties. Political winds shifted, priorities evolved, and major changes occurred when Administrations turned over – but to a great degree my job of representing the United States as a diplomat remained fundamentally unaltered. Without fear, I engaged in policy debates within our system, presenting opposing views and offering solutions to potential problems I could see festering within a new proposal. Not only was I safe from harassment based on having served the previous administration, but my experience was also seen as a valuable counterpoint to the more short-term perspectives of the appointees leading the State Department and National Security Council.

In fact, many of the sharp domestic distinctions between Republicans and Democrats were blurred when it came to overseas goals. All the presidents I served under, no matter what is said in the media about this administration’s “new” focus, told the diplomatic corps that our job was to ensure American security and prosperity. Under all of them, the policies we enacted or continued had to fit that lens. Only a few high-profile issues tended to change from one party to the other, most notably policies on family planning, either fulsome or grudging support to the United Nations, and emphasis (or lack thereof) on human rights. Yet the exceptions in both parties’ cases to hardline political positions rendered the differences almost imperceptible. Democrats cut corners on human rights; Republicans fell in love with soft power and development.

Through it all, watching my political appointee “masters” come and go, I was so proud of what my constant service represented. That pride was itself a tool of policy. I would speak to foreign counterparts about the strength of our democratic institutions as symbolized by the 1939 Hatch Act, which is designed “to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation.​​​​” The Act prohibits civil servants from taking overtly political positions, physically displaying their political affiliations, and in general even talking about party politics at work.

My second diplomatic tour was at the US Embassy in Pretoria in the early 1990’s, when South Africa was moving gingerly from apartheid to a majority-rule system. In November 1992, then-president George H.W. Bush acknowledged electoral defeat after one term and congratulated his successor on his victory. With that action, he gave up power over what was then the richest and most powerful nation on earth, carrying out his constitutional duty with great dignity. Meanwhile, white South Africans were only reluctantly unpeeling their fingers from running a nation that was economically strapped and in the throes of political violence. I could not have been prouder of my country than at that moment; the message was not lost on my South African counterparts.

After leaving the government in 2019, I started teaching international relations at a university. In one class, a young woman from Kazakhstan was eager to speak about her nation on its 30^th anniversary of independence. She enthusiastically presented (many!) slides on its beauty and economic power. When she spoke about its politics, however, her demeanor changed. Voicing a criticism of the president, a long-term dictator, she dropped to a near-whisper even though she was a world away, in a New York City classroom. It was a stark lesson to the other students that the reach of authoritarianism was more than physical – it was mental.

I felt concerned for her, then. But now, when talking to former colleagues who are still inside the system, I hear that same near-whisper - and feel deep concern for every one of us.

Annie Pforzheimer served in the State Department, National Security Council, and Inter-American Foundation between 1987-2019, including as Deputy Chief of Mission in Afghanistan. She currently is an Adjunct Professor of International Relations at the City University of New York. Ms. Pforzheimer is a member of The Steady State, a coalition of more than 270 former national security, intelligence, and diplomatic professionals.