The Patrimonial Style in American Politics Could Spread Under Trump
The corrupt “constitutional” sheriff movement might get a big boost
In a recent guest essay for The New York Times, political scientists Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Kopstein warn that Trump’s return will bring a renewed assault on the institutions of the modern government. It’s a concise distillation of their book, The Assault on the State, which argues that authoritarian-style leaders are bringing pre-modern modes of politics like patrimonialism, Max Weber’s term for the governing model in which the ruler acts like a father to the nation and wields power arbitrarily, back into vogue. Trump’s new patrimonialism, an apt descriptor for his intentions to hollow out state institutions, staff the government through unabashed nepotism and loyalism, and make key governing decisions based on patronage and arbitrary rule, has been telegraphed in Heritage’s Project 2025. As Hanson and Kopstein note, “Trump aims not to streamline modern state bureaucracies, but rather to replace them with a much older form of rule based on personal loyalty to the ruler.”
The governments in Moscow, Budapest, and Ankara provide examples of the sort of patronage-based, insider-dealing, loyalist-saturated governance Trump will pursue in his second stint in office. But we can also look more locally: all across America’s heartland, county sheriffs dominate the practice of politics and the administration of justice in their jurisdictions in a way that Trump will actively try to replicate within the executive branch.
MAGA Microcosms
In many of these areas, sheriffs wield a near-exclusive power and take advantage of minimal oversight to operate however they please. As Jessica Pishko—a fellow at the Pulaski Institution, which I run—notes in her book, The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, “The office of sheriff is uniquely able to morph as the sheriff himself requires. It is this versatility, alongside the freedom to express highly partisan views, that makes the sheriff (and his employees) prone to abuse of office, corruption, and misbehavior.”
The American sheriff’s power is a holdover from a prior era in which a singular law enforcement figure wielded tremendous discretion over the application of justice within a defined region or location. Historian Cindy Hahamovitch traces the similarities between American sheriffs and their medieval counterparts: “Medieval sheriffs’ job was to keep order in a way that secured the crown’s power, which allowed them to secure their own power through force and profit from their positions. They had extensive job descriptions, which were almost identical to those of modern American sheriffs.” Constrained executive this was not.
For an especially concerning analogue, consider the “constitutional sheriff” movement, which believes that state and federal government should have complete jurisdiction over its territory and the sheriff should be the ultimate law enforcement authority. The sheriff sees himself as filling an ordained place in the American political order outside of normal controls. Despite the name, there is nothing constitutional about this movement that is gaining traction.
It’s no surprise, then, that the abuses that American sheriffs’ departments are prone to correlate with the abuses that Hanson and Kopstein warn about with Trump’s incoming neopatrimonialism. Indeed, Trump’s second term could do lasting damage to the future prospects of American democracy. The potential for corruption, patronage, and a general politics of pillage and plunder at the highest level is enormous.
But American democracy is also its democracies—plural. Federalism is a blessing and curse. Many Americans live with a deteriorating democratic life just outside their front door, from state legislatures and courts engaging in serious overreach to state attorneys general pursuing aggressive culture war policies. In many communities, the sheriff is a one-stop shop of political power. And the abuses mean that local communities experience a breakdown in what should be the kind of accountable, transparent, and public-serving local politics we expect in any liberal democratic society. The unfortunate reality is that Trump’s reentry into the White House makes things worse for these people not only because Trump might look the other way at the abuses of like-minded sheriffs, but also because he’ll serve as an example, energizing a form of micro-Trumpism within sheriffs’ departments rather than moving us away from it.
Sheriff Syndicates
“Sheriffs can and do run their office as an extension of themselves, which means they hire relatives and give favors to donors,” Pishko told me. Stories abound of sheriffs hiring family members and friends. Benefits also accrue to donors and political backers. These sheriffs build out patronage networks, and effectively set up lines of succession. This is an especially alarming dynamic when coupled with the investigating and jailing powers of the office. They also exercise the right to civil asset forfeiture, a practice conducive to unimaginable abuse—and one that doesn’t even achieve its aims of such as solving crimes or discouraging drug use, as veteran criminal justice reporter Radley Balko has shown.
In many places, sheriffs even act as coroners. As Pishko notes, 41 counties in California give sheriffs this medical authority, handing them the power of “officially determining a cause of death—for example, whether a death is a homicide or accident.” Amazingly, the sheriffs who are coroners are not generally required to have prior medical expertise, notes Pishko.
The electoral oversight that should act as one of the few checks on local sheriffs rarely does. Sheriffs frequently avoid competitive elections, acting as patrons to the very people who might one day succeed them. In many small-population rural communities, sheriffs control who gets police jobs and therefore who gains law enforcement experience. As political scientists Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman explain, sheriffs “control the pool of political competition by directly managing those individuals who might one day challenge them for the job.”
For both sheriffs and deputies, the actual job requirements are often scant. Most places in America, there isn’t a lot of crime. This means that, other than in cases of naked abuse, there isn’t much to differentiate an incompetent hire from a corrupt one—a problem that is compounded by an environment where sheriff misconduct is regularly overlooked and ignored, as Pishko reports in her book.
It’s certainly not the case that every sheriff’s office in the United States is operated by a wannabe feudal lord. And it’s unfair to mischaracterize the hard work of officers attempting to protect and serve the public to the best of their abilities. But the American landscape is already dotted by fiefdoms run on patrimonialism and an older, rusted sort of power unfit for one of the world’s great liberal democracies.
With the return of President Trump—a convicted felon with no regard for constitutional restraints and a love for brute force—shady sheriffs all across the United States will feel even more emboldened to rule their counties as they see fit. The guy who empowered son-in-law Jared Kushner, an executive for his family’s real estate company, to solve the opioid crisis and achieve peace in the Middle East, who appointed his daughter Ivanka an official presidential advisor, who has elevated his sons Donald Jr. and Eric as de facto advisors at the highest level, who insisted that his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, a former TV producer, co-chair the GOP, and who has installed countless other lackeys and hangers-on in important roles, is doing what power-hungry sheriffs have always done in their jurisdictions. In a week’s time, these sheriffs will see someone who views governing like they do once again occupying the highest office in the land.
An earlier version of this article was first published at Arc Digital.
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I think it’s as much DT following the example i”of sheriffs at least as much as it is them behaving as he does. Counties, especially rural ones, have long been run by sheriff departments the way medieval fiefdoms were ruled by lords.
A really dangerous development and shows that even at the local level there can be lot of corruption and mismanagement. Is FBI mandated to act against corrupted sherrifs if state governments do not do that?