Pathways to administrative resilience : public bureaucracies ruled by democratic backsliders as a transnational challenge

Populists in government pose a serious threat, not only to domestic democratic standards but also to transnational policymaking and concerted action. There is a linkage between radical illiberal reform agendas at home and the constraints these agendas produce for achievable governance solutions to international or transnational problems. We argue that there are pragmatic options available to democratic governments to preemptively strengthen and protect endangered national bureaucratic systems against populists' threats in areas like administrative autonomy, professionalism, management style, the legal basis of administrative action, as well as the international embeddedness of modern civil services. Democrats-especially in places where institutional traditions and trajectories are unstable-are well-advised to check their public administrations for potential vulnerabilities to populists' illiberal strategies. Specifically, they need to invest in securing the integrity of the bureaucracy and the institutional guardrails of their management systems, in boosting democratic ethics of civil servants and in fostering international networks.