Democratic Backsliding, Populism, and Public Administration

Abstract

What happens to public administration when populists are elected into government? This article argues that populists seek to realize an anti-pluralist reform agenda, thereby fuelling trends of democratic backsliding. Against this background, the article discusses potential goals and strategies of populist public administration policy and introduces examples of how populists sought to capture (Orbán in Hungary), dismantle (Fujimori in Peru), sabotage (Trump in the United States), and reform (Blocher in Switzerland) the state bureaucracy. In doing so, populists in government aim at structures, resources, personnel, norms, and accountability relationships. The examples suggest that populist public administration policies can have profound impact on policymaking and democracy, underlining the need for a broader research agenda on this issue area.

Populism and nature—the nature of populism: New perspectives on the relationship between populism, climate change, and nature protection

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Studying public administration in authoritarian regimes

“…Organisations such as Freedom House and the Economist Intelligence Unit that classify political systems have been documenting a general decline in democracy over the past decade at least. Likewise, scholars have been documenting that decline and its implications for governance and the public bureaucracy (Bauer et al, 2021).…”

Illiberal Trends and Anti-EU Politics in East Central Europe: Major Findings and Avenues for Future Research

“…Processes within the administrations and their relationship vis-à-vis the political majorities after 2004, in turn, were covered to a lower degree. Early on, studies demonstrated the potential of such studies for better understanding domestic political tectonics (Grzymała-Busse 2003) and also recent analyses have suggested exploring the role of public administrations in backsliding processes (Bauer and Becker 2020).…”