Michael W. Bauer

While scholarship has documented how populist and authoritarian‐leaning executives deform bureaucratic institutions, post‐illiberal reconstruction has only begun to receive attention. This paper develops an exploratory framework distinguishing four repair strategies (neutralizing, rectifying, balancing, and democratic hardening) and two repair modes (formal‐institutional and normative‐capacity repair). Applying the heuristic to Poland, Brazil, and Hungary, we posit that the selection and limits of repair strategies follow the gap between the depth of illiberal entrenchment and the legal‐political capacity of successor governments to overcome veto players and enact rectifying reforms. Within the periods observed, formal‐institutional repair has outpaced the reconstruction of professional norms, expertise, and trust, and repair has produced layered administrative orders in which illiberal‐era instruments partly persist and thus remain available to future governments. Administrative repair is thus structurally asymmetric. Democratic successors can rebuild the administrative state, but they are unlikely to restore it to the status quo ante.

Liberal democracies face mounting pressures from systemic transformations and emerging illiberal political forces, placing public administrations at a critical juncture. This introduction to the Special Issue “Mapping bureaucratic transformation in polarized polities: Comparative perspectives on democratic reform, robustness and regression” conceptualizes bureaucratic transformation along a continuum from democratic anchorage to democratic backsliding in public administration, capturing how administrative reforms can either reinforce or erode liberal-democratic governance. Drawing on normative theory and comparative empirical analysis, the contributions to the Special Issue examine how bureaucracies are reshaped by populist strategies and institutional vulnerabilities. This introductory article presents a heuristic framework that locates bureaucratic change along three relational dimensions—bureaucracy-society, bureaucracy-politics, and internal governance—and four opposing pairs of transformation, offering analytical tools to assess the democratic anchorage, resilience, and reform potential of public administration under conditions of polarization. Points for practitioners: (a) Safeguard bureaucratic integrity: ensure ethical standards and professional autonomy within public administration to maintain democratic resilience, especially in polarized political contexts. (b) Balance accountability and autonomy: strive for a balance between political responsiveness and procedural integrity, fostering participatory mechanisms while protecting bureaucratic autonomy from politicization. (c) Strengthen civic embeddedness: institutionalize participatory mechanisms and sustained engagement with civil society and professional associations to sustain public trust and institutional legitimacy, particularly in polarized environments. (d) Adapt to evolving democratic needs: as representative democracies evolve, focus on reforms that strengthen connections between citizens and the executive, enhancing democratic legitimacy through inclusive governance practices.

Objectives: This chapter examines the ethical dilemma of bureaucrats in democracies facing illiberal transformation. It argues that the dominant Weberian model of neutrality and hierarchical obedience offers little normative ground for resisting executive orders that undermine constitutional democracy. The objective is to explore whether Hegel’s conception of bureaucracy as part of the ethical life (Sittlichkeit) of the state provides a firmer foundation for legitimizing bureaucratic resistance. Methodology: The chapter employs a conceptual and comparative analysis of Weber’s and Hegel’s theories of bureaucracy, complemented by neo-Hegelian critiques (Frankfurt School, Hannah Arendt). It reconstructs Hegel’s view of bureaucracy as a mediating “universal class” and contrasts it with Weber’s ethically minimalist model to derive implications for public administration ethics and education. Results: The analysis shows that Weberian neutrality risks enabling democratic backsliding by rendering bureaucrats passive executors. Hegel’s framework, by contrast, embeds ethical judgment within institutional roles and provides a normative basis for civil servants to act as guardians of constitutional order under illiberal rule. Conclusions: Public administration education should cultivate a liberal-institutional ethos that prepares bureaucrats not only to administer impartially but also to exercise principled resistance when democracy is threatened.

A análise da mudança em políticas públicas, até o momento, concentrou-se na avaliação e explanação de diferentes graus de mudança. As distinções entre radical versus incremental, ruptura de trajetória versus dependência de trajetória ou auto-reforço versus sequências reativas dominou o debate enquanto a direção precisa da mudança em políticas sociais raramente foi levada em conta. Este artigo, portanto, concentra-se em até onde uma mudança em política pública implica em uma “redução”, “decréscimo” ou “diminuição” dos seus atuais, concebendo este direcionamento de mudança como “desmonte de política pública”. Ao desenvolver ferramentas analíticas para identificar e explicar o desmonte de políticas públicas, este artigo objetiva elucidar algumas das causas, condições e estratégias de desmonte de políticas públicas e estabelecer o desmonte de políticas públicas como uma categoria distinta da mudança em política pública.

Trust is known to be beneficial for cooperation, though remains underdeveloped in public-private partnerships (PPPs), which are caught in a trust trap due to the cooperative regime’s internal heterogeneity. Accordingly, PPP’s inherent trust relationship is disentangled, and the burden of divergent actor rationales is introduced. We hypothesize that potential PPPs find themselves ex ante in a situation that requires certain repair mechanisms before the ‘usual’ venues of trust development can become effective. As such, exogenous information is theorized as quasi-substitute for relational experience that may support the development of a ‘leap of faith’. Theoretical considerations are tested by a vignette experiment with representatives of both the public and the private sector. Within and between-group analyses find strong support for the burden of divergent rationales and stable levels of (role-based) trust. However, the effect of the information treatment on trust levels is limited.

Populist, illiberal, or outright autocratic movements threaten democracies worldwide, particularly when such extreme political forces gain control of executive power. For public administration illiberal backsliders in government pose a dilemma. Trained on instrumental values and expected to implement neutrally the political choices of their elected superiors, bureaucrats lack orientation of how to act in situations when obeying their own government may mean becoming an accomplice to democratic regression. Against this background, this article maps the dubious demands of backsliders in government as well as the potential reactions of bureaucrats to them. Public administration thinking is subsequently examined with a view to showing how administrative resistance to democratic backsliding could be normatively justified. Finally, the article provides practical recommendations to enhance the resilience of democratic public administration in the face of illiberal challenges.