Centripetal Force: Public Administration & Pluralism

• In Event: Bureaucratic Agencies and Political Pressures

Abstract

This paper argues that public administration career systems make bureaucracies unifying ideological centers of gravity in diverse democracies—especially where electoral systems favor ideological extremists.

Intense, ideologically extreme political actors can mobilize voters through primary elections and/or low electoral thresholds to gain legislative power. Once in office, partisan elected officials have strong incentives to maintain ideologically extreme positions pursuant to reelection. These institutions act as “centrifugal forces” that push politicians to ever more extreme ideological positions, especially in the United States. Ample research demonstrates that the U.S. Congress and state legislatures have become more ideologically polarized over the past 30 years.

In this paper we advance a theory of political pluralism that casts bureaucratic agencies as mainstays of ideological centrism. Based on models of normative isomorphism, we argue that career systems shape bureaucratic attitudes through processes of selection and promotion. On average, individuals who choose government work are likely to have different attitudes from those who seek other kinds of jobs. Although many public employees are likely to hold broadly left-of-center political beliefs, right-of-center attitudes are prevalent in many agencies. Individuals with very extreme ideological beliefs are unlikely to pursue government careers at all. Moreover, the managers who make staffing decisions within government agencies tend to select candidates who align with existing agency norms, and unlikely to select ideologically extreme candidates. Ideologically extreme individuals are unlikely to remain in public agencies in the long term, either because they are dismissed from service or because they exit voluntarily due to poor fit. In the same way, when vacancies at mid- and upper-level positions occur within public agencies, individuals whose attitudes align more closely with the bureaucrats at the upper levels of the organization are more likely to seek and be selected for promotion.

If our theory is correct, ideological variation among public employees is smaller than among the general public. Further, ideological variation within the bureaucracy is greatest at the lowest levels of public agencies, with ideological diversity narrowing in senior positions. To evaluate these expectations, we analyze public opinion data from a variety of sources, including the General Social Survey and American National Election Study. Preliminary analysis yields evidence consistent with our hypotheses: on average, the general public is more ideologically diverse than are government employees, and bureaucrats in more senior positions are less ideologically diverse than their agencies at large.

Public administrators may not be “neutral,” but if we are correct, the bureaucracy writ large is at least ideologically moderate. Our theory thus carries enormous implications for the health of pluralist democracy in a diverse state. We argue that public employment is a centripetal force in an era of extreme polarization. As the nation witnessed dramatically in the transition from President Trump to President Biden, the bureaucracy has been a political unifier at a moment of oft-violent fragmentation.

Authors

• Manny P. Teodoro, University of Wisconsin

• Maxwell Allamong, Texas A&M University

• Seung-Ho An, University of Arizona