Citizens thus feel only tenuously connected to political representatives whose work was to “refine and enlarge” the public sentiment. Representatives in turn express their relative powerlessness in relation to a permanent bureaucracy staffed by career employees whose incentive is to maintain or enlarge their budgets and activity. More power accrues to the executive branch, which nominally controls the bureaucracy and through administrative rules can at least provide the appearance of responsiveness to a restive polity. Political rule by an increasingly unpopular legislature that theoretically
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