Public Administration Under Populist Rule: Standing Up Against Democratic Backsliding

What happens to democratic administration when populists come to power? This article depicts the contours of the debate within the discipline of Public Administration (PA) about populist attempts to transform the state bureaucracy. It presents the results and limitations of recent empirical research about populist public administration policies and discusses the options for generating more systematic insights. The argument is that populist public administration research needs to improve on three fronts. First, more comparative research is needed in order to identify and explain similarities and differences across affected administrative systems. Second, the threat of democratic backsliding requires scholars to revisit questions about the ethical basis of public administration. Third, as populist backsliding endangers the survival of liberal democracy, PA needs to provide pragmatic and concrete answers as to how administrative systems can be made resilient against threats of illiberal state transformation.