In a February 12, 2025, Atlantic article, “The Government Waste DOGE Should Be Cutting,” Stephen Macekura, a professor of International Studies at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, offers a critical re-evaluation of government inefficiency. Macekura argues against the prevailing narrative that inefficiency stems from the civil service. Instead, he asserts that "much of the waste, inefficiency, and indeed fraud result from the government's overreliance on private-sector organizations to conduct its work."
His analysis directly challenges the notion promoted by figures like Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he describes as operating under the "false assumption... that problems of inefficiency in federal agencies stem exclusively from the public administration." He points out that this "byzantine system of outsourcing to nonprofit and for-profit organizations adds costs and creates waste because each nongovernmental contractor exacts fees or imposes a profit margin."
Drawing on extensive historical and contemporary examples, Macekura traces how bipartisan efforts to reduce the federal workforce have paradoxically led to an expansion of government spending through private-sector contracts. He highlights that "all such efforts ended the same way: a modest number of layoffs among public workers combined with a dramatic expansion of private-sector contracting."
As an illustration, he notes that while the federal workforce has remained relatively static since 1946, federal spending has ballooned from $628 billion to $4.6 trillion in 2023. A 2017 estimate found that "more than 5.2 million contract and grant employees worked for the federal government."
Macekura's work underscores the critical importance of rethinking the federal government’s reliance on contractors and strongly advocates for strengthening the civil service to improve accountability and efficiency. He contends that "the true solution to government inefficiency is to reverse outsourcing. Severing private contractors and hiring more public servants would allow the state to cut time spent managing contractors and devote more resources to the actual work of government."
His ongoing scholarship contributes significantly to debates about public administration and the evolving role of private enterprise in governance. In April 2023, he published "Making the Contract State: Nathan Associates, Inc. and Foreign Aid Privatization” in Diplomatic History. He also authored a chapter, “Managing Global Development: Robert Nathan and the Liberal Roots of the Contract State in US Foreign Policy,” in the 2025 book, Mastery and Drift: Professional Class Liberals since the 1960s
Read Macekura's full article, "The Government Waste DOGE Should Be Cutting," in The Atlantic to delve deeper into his analysis and proposed solution.