(iPoster) Where Populism Meets the Bureaucracy: Presidential Appointees Examined

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Abstract

Populism has become one of the most intensively studied phenomena in contemporary politics, particularly in the United States. Yet despite its prominence, public policy and public administration research has paid comparatively little systematic attention to how populism affects the bureaucracy once populists enter government. This is striking, given that anti-elite rhetoric, often framed as a promise to “drain the swamp”, is a defining feature of populist discourse. Whether and how such rhetoric translates into concrete changes in the selection of political appointees (and thus by extension the quality of the bureaucracy), however, remains poorly understood.

This paper addresses this gap by examining the impact of populism on presidential appointments in the United States. Drawing on a newly assembled dataset of U.S. presidential appointees spanning the late George W. Bush administration through the first Trump administration, we provide a large-scale, systematic assessment of whether populism in power alters who is recruited into top executive positions. We conceptualize and test populist claims across three analytical dimensions.

First, we examine demographic patterns, asking whether the Trump administration differs from preceding administrations in the social composition of its appointees. Second, we assess differences in bureaucratic and elite capital, focusing on educational and professional backgrounds to evaluate whether populist appointments depart from established elite recruitment patterns. Third, we extend the dataset by constructing a network of appointees and their professional connections, using social network analysis to assess whether populist governance draws from a novel pool of actors or continues to rely on entrenched appointment networks.

Taken together, the findings provide a systematic test of populist anti-elite rhetoric in practice. By linking populism research with the study of bureaucratic recruitment and elite networks, the paper contributes to a better understanding of how populism reshapes—or fails to reshape—the administrative state.

Author

• Tom Bellens, University of Antwerp