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Democratic Backsliding and Administrative Responsibility: Seeking Guidance for Bureaucratic Behavior in Dark Times
Abstract
Democratic backsliding threatens democracies worldwide. This poses a particular challenge to public officials as backsliders need the civil service to advance their illiberal agendas. Trained on instrumental values and expected to neutrally implement political choices, modern bureaucracies tend to lack orientation on how to act in situations when obeying the government of the day may means becoming an accomplice of democratic backsliding. Against this background, this chapter re-examines classical perspectives in Public Administration thinking regarding the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats, administrative responsibility, and bureaucratic ethics under unprincipled principles. It argues that in such “dark times”, when the survival of liberal democracy is threatened from within the government itself, bureaucrats must prioritize ethical considerations in their actions—and can do so only on the basis of an institutionalist interpretation of their role.
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In looking at the complex relationship between expertise and power in policymaking, what is amiss are studies on how the expertise exchange bargain between politicians and bureaucracy works in practice, especially in antidemocratic contexts. To deal with this limitation, we use Christensen’s (Christensen, J. (2022). When bureaucratic expertise comes under attack. Public Administration) expertise bargain change model for examining the authority transaction between politicians and bureaucrats. Upon external shocks, such as democratic backsliding with the sidelining of policy advice, the extant expertise bargain is challenged. We explore how the bureaucracy acted toward the government’s adversarial (and even antagonistic) stance and how that relationship toward the expertise bargain changed in two policy areas in Brazil (health and environment) during Bolsonaro’s administration (2019–2022). Notably, this article relies mainly on qualitative data from in-depth interviews with bureaucrats who provided expertise to the government on these policy areas during the Bolsonaro administration’s transition. Ancillary documentary sources were examined to detail the strategies of attack from government toward bureaucratic expertise and ancillary documentary sources of quantitative data from a survey with bureaucrats fielded during the Bolsonaro administration’s first year. Results show three factors that condition bureaucratic expertise’s resilience: the nature of the attack (local or extensive), the knowledge base’s and epistemic community’s level of cohesion, and the advice system’s degree of institutionalization. This case study sheds light on how different policy advice arrangements respond and function under antidemocratic contexts, allowing the application and enrichment of policy expertise literature outside regular democratic politics.
What happens to democratic administration when populists come to power? This article depicts the contours of the debate within the discipline of Public Administration (PA) about populist attempts to transform the state bureaucracy. It presents the results and limitations of recent empirical research about populist public administration policies and discusses the options for generating more systematic insights. The argument is that populist public administration research needs to improve on three fronts. First, more comparative research is needed in order to identify and explain similarities and differences across affected administrative systems. Second, the threat of democratic backsliding requires scholars to revisit questions about the ethical basis of public administration. Third, as populist backsliding endangers the survival of liberal democracy, PA needs to provide pragmatic and concrete answers as to how administrative systems can be made resilient against threats of illiberal state transformation.
Countries are facing the deterioration of democratic institutions under a process named democratic backsliding. In this context, political attacks on public organizations become more frequent and intense. While previous studies have examined how civil servants counteract and resist political attacks, their ultimate impact on civil servants' well‐being remains underexplored. To shed light on this phenomenon, we conducted an exploratory sequential mixed methods design with civil servants from Brazil. The first phase of the study is qualitative and exploratory. The second is quantitative and we tested if perceived political attacks was associated with higher levels of emotional exhaustion, which, in turn, would lead to a greater incidence of physical health symptoms. Both studies provide compelling evidence of the negative impact of political attacks on civil servants' emotional and physical health, which may have significant consequences for the performance of public organizations and the effective functioning of the democracy.
The policy dismantling framework was developed to account for processes involving the reduction or termination of existing policies, especially in the so-called advanced democracies. However, is the model proposed by policy dismantling scholars applicable to contexts of democratic backsliding such as Bolsonaro’s Brazil? Do those contexts offer new elements to their analytical model? This article addresses those questions by analyzing the case of Brazil under President Jair Bolsonaro. Departing from research on policy dismantling recently conducted in Brazil and based on data collected with federal civil servants from 2019 to 2021, it will be argued that the mechanics of policy dismantling in Brazil involve not only the reduction and elimination of past policies but also the manipulation of policy capacities. At the individual policy capacity level, that process has involved mistrust and contempt for career civil servants, fear, and bureaucratic reshuffling, whereby bureaucrats were either removed from their original positions or resorted to exit in fear of persecution. The intimidation and disarrangement of the federal bureaucracy in Brazil appears to be an integral part of capacity manipulation, shedding light into what policy dismantling looks like in contexts of democratic backsliding.
This essay introduces the special symposium issue Reappraising Bureaucracy in the 21st Century in Perspectives on Public Management and Governance. The symposium seeks to place Weberian bureaucracy in the context of contemporary public administration and evaluate its relevance to modern-day concerns.
Established liberal democracies around the globe face waves of populism and the danger of democratic backsliding. As populist parties assume governmental powers, civil servants are confronted with a fundamental dilemma: Are they expected to serve their newly democratically elected principals, even when they strongly disagree with their illiberal ideologies? Or are they expected as servants of the state to actively resist the backsliding of democratic values and the rule of law? And, is resisting possible at all without resorting to non-democratic means? In this writing, the author discusses this vexing problem in the heart of the liberal democratic state and makes a plea for strengthening the democratic state
responsibility of the bureaucracy.
Liberal democracy is at risk. Its hallmark institutions – political pluralism, separation of powers, and rule of law—are coming under pressure, as authoritarian sentiment is growing around the globe. While liberal-democratic backsliding features prominently in social science scholarship, especially the branches concerned with political parties and political behavior, public administration research lags behind. However, without considering illiberal approaches towards the executive, efforts of actual and aspiring authoritarians remain only partly understood. State bureaucracies are, after all, important instruments of power. This timely and important volume addresses the administrative implications of liberal-democratic backsliding. It studies public administrations as objects and subjects in the context of illiberal dynamics. For this purpose, the volume brings together an international group of scholars to analyze authoritarian tendencies in several countries. The contributions combine theoretical with empirical work, providing the first comparative perspective on an overlooked aspect of one of the most important contemporary political trends.
Democratic backsliding has multiplied ‘unprincipled’ political principals: governments with weak commitment to the public interest. Why do some bureaucrats engage in voice and guerrilla sabotage to thwart policies against the public interest under ‘unprincipled principals', yet others do not? Despite its centrality in contemporary governance, this conundrum has not seen quantitative research. We address this gap with survey evidence from 1,700 Brazilian public servants during the Temer Presidency, widely perceived to lack democratic legitimacy and integrity. We focus on one key explanator: public service motivation (PSM). We argue that bureaucrats with greater PSM are more likely to engage in voice and sabotage of ‘unprincipled policies’, and exit to avoid implementing ‘unprincipled policies’. Structural equation models support these hypotheses. Public service-motivated bureaucracies are thus short-run stalwarts against ‘unprincipled’ political principals. Over time, they look to depart, however, leaving ‘unprincipled’ principals a freer hand to pursue policies against the public interest.
Autocratization affects democracies and autocracies with gradual setbacks in democratic qualities. The current debate on autocratization is lacking a comprehensive and systematic overview of different autocratization concepts and empirical measures. Addressing the gap, this research note identifies and discusses different strategies of operationalizing autocratization periods with continuous democracy data from Freedom House, Polity IV and the Varieties of Democracy (V‐Dem) project. Evidence for 26 different autocratization measures for 1900‐2019 reveals major inconsistencies between different measures. Our findings suggest that autocratization episodes should be measured with V‐Dem’s Electoral Democracy Index (EDI) or with V‐Dem’s Liberal Democracy Index (LDI), which provide fine‐grained data and the possibility to test for measurement noise. A 10% threshold reduces the risk of conceptual stretching and enables researchers to detect both autocratization episodes that do and do not result in regime breakdown. We also recommend researchers to additionally test empirical findings with different carefully selected thresholds.
The rise of far-right populist leaders in contemporary democracies has catalyzed processes of democratic backsliding with serious and diverse political implications. One of the less explored dimensions of this phenomenon is the impact of political leaders’ actions on the functioning of public bureaucracies. The question that guides our analysis of this dimension is: how does the dynamic between political control and bureaucratic reactions occur in contexts of democratic backsliding? To answer this question, we conducted 165 interviews with mid-level bureaucrats from 15 different organizations of the Brazilian federal government, between December 2020 and July 2021. The interviewees were members of the government’s social, economic, environmental, and planning areas during Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s administration. The findings suggest that political control and bureaucratic resistance is dynamic and entails interactions and learning over time. As both politicians and bureaucrats interact, learn, and adapt their actions and reactions to previous experiences, it is possible to identify changes in the actors’ strategies.
Liberal democracy has become vulnerable to illiberal political movements and the gradual erosion of democratic institutions. To safeguard liberal democracy, we propose the concept of the Guardian State, which embraces liberal principles while acting as a defensive barrier against illiberal tendencies. We need strong administrative institutions that uphold liberal democratic norms and resist pressures from populist politicians. Institutionalizing guardianship as the key norm within the civil service fortifies democratic institutions against backsliding. The principle of neutrality alone cannot ensure that only liberal citizens come to power. Structural measures at the individual and organizational levels are essential to fortify the foundations of the Guardian State and protect liberal democracy against evolving threats. Proactive efforts are necessary to defend and strengthen the public service to ensure the long‐term viability of democratic governance. The Guardian State places the bureaucracy in a key role in preserving the core principles of democracy.
The twenty‐first century has been one of democratic backsliding. This has stimulated wide‐ranging scholarship on the causes of democratic erosion. Yet an overarching framework that identifies actors, behaviors, and decision processes has not been developed. I offer such a structure that includes elites (e.g., elected officials, the judiciary), societal actors (e.g., social movements, interest groups, media), and citizens. I discuss erosive threats stemming from each actor and the concomitant role of psychological mechanisms. The framework highlights the challenge of arriving at a holistic explanation of erosion within a given country during a finite period. It also accentuates why scholars should regularly consider the implications of their specific findings for democratic stability. I conclude by discussing various lessons and suggestions for how to study democratic backsliding.
No one has hitherto had the breadth of imagination and intellectual boldness to describe and analyse government throughout recorded history and throughout the world. This unique study of government is the culmination of the work of the late S. E. Finer, one of the leading political scientists of the twentieth century. Ranging over 5,000 years, from the Sumerian city state to the modern European nation state, five themes emerge: state-building, military formats, belief systems, social stratification, and timespan. The three volumes examine both representative and exceptional polities, and focus on political elites of different types. Empires, Monarchies, and the Modern State (Books Four and Five) opens with Tokugawa Japan and thence reviews the evidence of Ch'ing, Ottoman, and Mughal Empires, before turning to facets of the re-creation, `modernization', and transplantation of the European state model. It concludes with the synoptic review of `Pathways to the Modern State'. Professor Finer's cogent descriptive analysis offers both an invaluable reference resource and an exhilarating journey across time and space.
While the relationship between bureaucracy and democracy has gained attention in historical cycles, the literature on the roles of bureaucrats in relation to democracy has become increasingly fragmented. Drawing on comparisons among public administration theory, as well as participatory, deliberative, and collaborative democracy, this article provides typologies that reflect the historical multiplication of the theoretically determined roles and characteristics of bureaucracy that contribute to democracy. This comparative analysis has demonstrated a common democratic trend among the four schools in adding stresses on bureaucrats’ autonomy, morality, publicity, and direct connection to citizens, with a constant coexistence of rational and managerial elements.
How do populist governments approach public bureaucracies? Here we reflect on the rise of Bolsonarism as a form of populism in the Brazilian context and on its relationship with public bureaucracies. Bolsonaro’s “strategy of governing” builds on an unstable coalition that combines neoconservatism, market-oriented economic approach and military nationalism and corporativism. We analyze how the antagonism at the center of this coalition shapes bureaucratic strategic positions and defend an understanding of Bolsonarism as an ideology of contentious governing that nurtures divisive bureaucracies.
In political science, one issue still in need of greater theorizing is the proper measurement of bureaucratic autonomy, that is, the degree of discretion that political principals should grant to bureaucratic agents. This article reviews the literature on bureaucratic autonomy both in US administrative law and in political science. It uses the American experience to define five mechanisms by which political principals grant and limit autonomy, then goes on to survey the comparative literature on other democratic systems using the American framework as a baseline. Other democracies use different mixtures of these mechanisms, for example by substituting stronger ex post review for ex ante procedures or using appointment and removal power in place of either. We find that the administrative law and social science literatures on this topic approach it very differently, and that each would profit from greater awareness of the other discipline.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 26 is June 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
This Element argues for a complementarity principle – governance values should complement political values – as a guide for designing the structures and procedures of public administration. It argues that the value-congruity inherent in the complementarity principle is indispensable to administrative responsibility. It identifies several core democratic values and critically assesses systems of collaborative governance, representative bureaucracy, and participatory policymaking in light of those values. It shows that the complementarity principle, applied to these different designs, facilitates administrative responsibility by making the structures themselves more consistent with democratic principles without compromising their aims. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This Research Note explores the issue of politicisation of the public service against the backdrop of the emergence of populism . A common feature of populist governments is a lack of trust in the civil service and its willingness to implement the populist political project. An important consequence of marginalising the civil service and its expertise in policy making is detrimental to policymaking. Also, increasing politicisation, that is replacing career public servants with people loyal to the populist regime, drains the public service of organisational memory on how to deal with policy issues. However, liberal democracies in many countries, too, have experienced increasing politicisation over the past decade, albeit within the confines of liberal democratic rules and norms. This emerging, more politicised model of the civil service assumes that neutrality can be an impediment to effective governance and that public servants should be committed to the program of the government. The civil service would be expected to support the government of the day actively and energetically, and therefore there would be fewer barriers. Thus, while politicisation in different forms is a feature of both liberal and populist government, the consequences of politicisation are different in the two regimes.
Points for practitioners
In liberal democracies, the civil service offers expertise to support politicians in the policy‐making process. Populist governments, emphasizing loyalty to the regime more than expertise, tend to increase the number of political appointees in the public service.
Most of the populist leaders elected are political outsiders and do not want to be constrained by what they consider to be entrenched and self‐serving elites.
The most pressing dangers for liberal democracy are when populist governments consider policies that would change political and social rights.
Liberal democratic government, too, have increased political control of the public service although without altering the rules and norms of democratic governance.
Hegel gave the bureaucracy a distinctively corporatist and collegiate structure and insulated it from legislative control. The close match between these features of the Philosophy or Right and the structure of the Prussian bureaucracy, which had been used by reformers to insulate progressive decisions from Junker resistance, suggests that Hegel, too, wanted the bureaucracy to spearhead reform within a hostile environment.
The rise of right-wing authoritarianism and populism (RWAP) challenges modern democratic governance and the legitimacy of a career-service, nonpartisan, merit-based public administration—hallmarks of modern democratic institutions. Using citizen survey data collected for the first two years of the Trump presidency, this study finds that some core features of RWAP are negatively related to confidence in public administration. Generally speaking, the populist tendency appears to be a significant source of negative affect toward public administration.
How does representative government function when public administration can reshape democracy? The traditional narrative of public administration balances the accountability of managers, a problem of control, with the need for effective administration, a problem of capability. The discretion modern governments give to administrators allows them to make tradeoffs among democratic values. This book challenges the traditional view with its argument that the democratic values of administration should complement the democratic values of the representative government within which they operate. Control, capability and value reinforcement can render public administration into democracy administered. This book offers a novel framework for empirically and normatively understanding how democratic values have, and should be, reinforced by public administration. Bertelli's theoretical framework provides a guide for managers and reformers alike to chart a path toward democracy administered.
Liberal democracy is at risk. Its hallmark institutions – political pluralism, separation of powers, and rule of law—are coming under pressure, as authoritarian sentiment is growing around the globe. While liberal-democratic backsliding features prominently in social science scholarship, especially the branches concerned with political parties and political behavior, public administration research lags behind. However, without considering illiberal approaches towards the executive, efforts of actual and aspiring authoritarians remain only partly understood. State bureaucracies are, after all, important instruments of power. This timely and important volume addresses the administrative implications of liberal-democratic backsliding. It studies public administrations as objects and subjects in the context of illiberal dynamics. For this purpose, the volume brings together an international group of scholars to analyze authoritarian tendencies in several countries. The contributions combine theoretical with empirical work, providing the first comparative perspective on an overlooked aspect of one of the most important contemporary political trends.
Liberal democracy is at risk. Its hallmark institutions – political pluralism, separation of powers, and rule of law—are coming under pressure, as authoritarian sentiment is growing around the globe. While liberal-democratic backsliding features prominently in social science scholarship, especially the branches concerned with political parties and political behavior, public administration research lags behind. However, without considering illiberal approaches towards the executive, efforts of actual and aspiring authoritarians remain only partly understood. State bureaucracies are, after all, important instruments of power. This timely and important volume addresses the administrative implications of liberal-democratic backsliding. It studies public administrations as objects and subjects in the context of illiberal dynamics. For this purpose, the volume brings together an international group of scholars to analyze authoritarian tendencies in several countries. The contributions combine theoretical with empirical work, providing the first comparative perspective on an overlooked aspect of one of the most important contemporary political trends.
Liberal democracy is at risk. Its hallmark institutions – political pluralism, separation of powers, and rule of law—are coming under pressure, as authoritarian sentiment is growing around the globe. While liberal-democratic backsliding features prominently in social science scholarship, especially the branches concerned with political parties and political behavior, public administration research lags behind. However, without considering illiberal approaches towards the executive, efforts of actual and aspiring authoritarians remain only partly understood. State bureaucracies are, after all, important instruments of power. This timely and important volume addresses the administrative implications of liberal-democratic backsliding. It studies public administrations as objects and subjects in the context of illiberal dynamics. For this purpose, the volume brings together an international group of scholars to analyze authoritarian tendencies in several countries. The contributions combine theoretical with empirical work, providing the first comparative perspective on an overlooked aspect of one of the most important contemporary political trends.
Liberal democracy is at risk. Its hallmark institutions – political pluralism, separation of powers, and rule of law—are coming under pressure, as authoritarian sentiment is growing around the globe. While liberal-democratic backsliding features prominently in social science scholarship, especially the branches concerned with political parties and political behavior, public administration research lags behind. However, without considering illiberal approaches towards the executive, efforts of actual and aspiring authoritarians remain only partly understood. State bureaucracies are, after all, important instruments of power. This timely and important volume addresses the administrative implications of liberal-democratic backsliding. It studies public administrations as objects and subjects in the context of illiberal dynamics. For this purpose, the volume brings together an international group of scholars to analyze authoritarian tendencies in several countries. The contributions combine theoretical with empirical work, providing the first comparative perspective on an overlooked aspect of one of the most important contemporary political trends.
Liberal democracy is at risk. Its hallmark institutions – political pluralism, separation of powers, and rule of law—are coming under pressure, as authoritarian sentiment is growing around the globe. While liberal-democratic backsliding features prominently in social science scholarship, especially the branches concerned with political parties and political behavior, public administration research lags behind. However, without considering illiberal approaches towards the executive, efforts of actual and aspiring authoritarians remain only partly understood. State bureaucracies are, after all, important instruments of power. This timely and important volume addresses the administrative implications of liberal-democratic backsliding. It studies public administrations as objects and subjects in the context of illiberal dynamics. For this purpose, the volume brings together an international group of scholars to analyze authoritarian tendencies in several countries. The contributions combine theoretical with empirical work, providing the first comparative perspective on an overlooked aspect of one of the most important contemporary political trends.
This chapter describes the dynamics of administrative change and
bureaucratic resilience under populist governments in Italy, focusing
on the first two decades of the 2000s, which have been characterized by
the intermittent presence of populist parties in government. Our key
explanandum is the effect on public administration of populist govern-
ments in office, and the main traits of bureaucratic reactions in these
circumstances. Our main argument throughout this chapter is that
populist governments in Italy have displayed a marked chasm between rhetoric and deeds, between the level of talk and the level of action, when it comes to public administration and the
reforming of the bureaucracy, and that the level of administrative
continuity has been significant. This has been due partly to populist
governments having not attached great priority to administrative
reforms in the governmental agenda, and partly to bureaucratic
resilience.
Liberal democracy is at risk. Its hallmark institutions – political pluralism, separation of powers, and rule of law—are coming under pressure, as authoritarian sentiment is growing around the globe. While liberal-democratic backsliding features prominently in social science scholarship, especially the branches concerned with political parties and political behavior, public administration research lags behind. However, without considering illiberal approaches towards the executive, efforts of actual and aspiring authoritarians remain only partly understood. State bureaucracies are, after all, important instruments of power. This timely and important volume addresses the administrative implications of liberal-democratic backsliding. It studies public administrations as objects and subjects in the context of illiberal dynamics. For this purpose, the volume brings together an international group of scholars to analyze authoritarian tendencies in several countries. The contributions combine theoretical with empirical work, providing the first comparative perspective on an overlooked aspect of one of the most important contemporary political trends.
Liberal democracy is at risk. Its hallmark institutions-political pluralism, separation of powers, and rule of law-are coming under pressure, as authoritarian sentiment is growing around the globe. While liberal-democratic backsliding features prominently in social science scholarship, especially the branches concerned with political parties and political behavior, public administration research lags behind. However, without considering illiberal approaches towards the executive, efforts of actual and aspiring authoritarians remain only partly understood. State bureaucracies are, after all, important instruments of power. This timely and important volume addresses the administrative implications of liberal-democratic backsliding. It studies public administrations as objects and subjects in the context of illiberal dynamics. For this purpose, the volume brings together an international group of scholars to analyze authoritarian tendencies in several countries. The contributions combine theoretical with empirical work, providing the first comparative perspective on an overlooked aspect of one of the most important contemporary political trends.
Despite evolution of management thought, Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracy continues to be a classical theory whose prescriptive elements guide the nature of organizations and their structures and processes. In the wake of information, communication and technological revolution which is reshaping the structure and processes in modern day organizations, the paper re-examines the basic premises and constructs of Max Weber’s rational bureaucratic organizations and their relevance today. Weber’s contribution to social sciences in general and organization studies in particular, is both methodological as well as empirical. The paper discusses the context in which Max Weber originally propounded his theory. In so doing, the paper also draws similarities of his theory with that proposed by other management thinkers of his time. Few examples of modern-day organizations and also different cross-national contexts are examined to discuss the present-day relevance of Weber’s postulates. It is suggested that despite the ever-present portents of its demise, bureaucracy will continue to guide the dominant form of organizations in the near future because of its inherent rational character.
Political theorists are aware that the old-fashioned model of state power, according to which elected officials make policy decisions, which are then faithfully enacted by a loyal cadre of public servants, is hopelessly outdated. The complexity of the modern state, not to mention the difficulty of the economic and social problems it confronts, is such that a great deal of rule-making power is delegated to public servants. Yet if public servants are not merely in the business of administration, but are also deciding questions of policy, how are they making these decisions, and what normative principles inform their judgments? The Machinery of Government attempts to answer this question. The central challenge involves reconciling the tension between the traditional commitment to political neutrality on the part of the civil service with the fact that administrative discretion inevitably involves making normative judgments. State employees are in many cases unable to do their jobs effectively without some conception of where the public interest lies. It seems inevitable that this will conflict with the commitment to political neutrality, since this conception of the public interest may be tension with that of elected officials. The solution to the dilemma lies in an understanding of the constraints that liberalism imposes on popular sovereignty in a liberal-democratic polity. Not only do courts play an important role in checking the power of democratic publics, the executive branch is also the custodian of certain fundamental liberal principles.