Former President Donald Trump, the current Republican primary front-runner, recently released an ambitious plan to rework the federal bureaucracy. While this plan—the centerpiece being Schedule F, which would allow Mr. Trump to fire up to 50,000 federal workers and replace them with loyalists—has been soundly rejected by his Democratic opposition, it does speak to a bipartisan desire to remake the federal government to be more responsive and democratic.
But one area of the federal government has been overlooked when it comes to reform: foreign policy bureaucracy and, in particular, America’s system of ambassadorial selection.
Any future president wishing to truly change establishment foreign policy will need to grapple with a deeply embedded and ideological foreign policy bureaucracy that is predisposed against change. In changing how they select ambassadors, presidents could provide themselves with solutions to this problem.
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