Public Administration and the Illiberal Challenge

Amid populism and backsliding, this Element explores how public administration can resist illiberal pressures to safeguard democracy.

This Element addresses the illiberal challenge facing public administration amid the rise of authoritarian populism and democratic backsliding. It investigates how populist governments seek to reshape state bureaucracies, undermining pluralism, expertise, and constitutional safeguards. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.This Element addresses the illiberal challenge facing public administration amidst the rise of authoritarian populism and democratic backsliding. It investigates how populist governments seek to reshape state bureaucracies, often undermining liberal democratic principles such as pluralism, expertise, and constitutional safeguards, and examines how public administration must respond to safeguard democratic integrity. Drawing on global examples, the Element identifies strategies of populist administrative manipulation, patterns of bureaucratic compliance and resistance, and critical gaps in scholarly understanding. It develops a framework for analyzing these dynamics and proposes normative principles to defend active democratic bureaucracy. Through theoretical inquiry and practical recommendations, it advocates for robust, ethically grounded public administration capable of countering illiberal pressures. Its central thesis underscores the need to restore the intellectual foundation of public administration as a social science deeply embedded in and committed to the democratic policy process. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.