Resisting Political Control: The Public Bureaucracy in an Era of Populists

• In Event: Populism, Democratic Backsliding, and Public Administration

Abstract

In normal times, civil servants tend to behave like good Weberian bureaucrats, who comply with the expectations of their principals. Yet, does this expectation hold in an era of populist politics? During the week of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, we conducted a set of survey experiments with a sample of 420 bureaucrats to causally identify their willingness to shirk or sabotage the government if assigned with the implementation of an undemocratic policy. Our list and vignette experiments show that roughly 60% of the respondents are willing to resist, especially if they work at the federal level and do not have a supervisory position. Most respondents affirm to be inelastic to peer pressures, confirming that they seek to preserve their democratic values above the wishes of their colleagues and elected officials. These findings suggest that the civil service is a point of resistance in processes of democratic backsliding.

Authors

• B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh

• João V. Guedes-Neto, University of Pittsburgh