Democratic backsliding is commonly understood through the erosion of elections, judicial independence, checks and balances, and the rule of law. Yet its consequences for the administrative state鈥攁nd the ways in which administrative transformation may subsequently reinforce democratic erosion鈥攔emain less systematically understood. This panel shifts attention from democratic backsliding as a predominantly political process to institutional backsliding within public administration.
The panel asks two interconnected questions: How does democratic backsliding enable the erosion or replacement of established institutions within public administration? And how does institutional backsliding in the administrative state feed back into broader processes of democratic erosion?
Bringing together perspectives from comparative politics, public policy, public administration, and institutional theory, the panel examines how political leaders seek to transform legal-rational institutions and practices, including bureaucratic autonomy, meritocracy, professionalism, neutrality, impersonality, and expertise. It focuses on mechanisms such as politicization, executive aggrandizement, discursive delegitimation, repression, co-optation, leadership replacement, and the cultivation of personal loyalty.
The panel also examines bureaucratic agency and institutional resistance. Under what political, institutional, and organizational conditions can bureaucrats defend established rules and professional practices? When does resistance succeed, and when does the balance shift toward institutional transformation?
The papers collectively conceptualize administrative backsliding not simply as a consequence of democratic erosion but as a potential feedback mechanism of regime change. Weakening legal-rational bureaucracy may expand executive discretion, strengthen personalist authority, deepen patrimonial practices, and turn public organizations into instruments of regime durability. By connecting macro-level regime transformation with meso-level institutional change and micro-level political and bureaucratic agency, the panel seeks to advance comparative understanding of democratic backsliding, politicization, administrative resilience, personalism, and institutional change.
