(Illustration by iStock/Moor Studio)
In a world in which many democracies are backsliding, what enables career bureaucrats to resist anti-democratic demands from politically appointed superiors?
A team of researchers used Brazil under President Jair Bolsonaro as a case study, examining what happened when political appointees began taking over agencies that had previously been nonpolitical. The bureaucrats soon faced pressure from above to take actions that could threaten the agency’s mission and the rule of law. But many resisted, either openly by speaking out through established forums or quietly through sabotage.
What factors enabled some bureaucrats to speak out or resist, and convinced others to remain silent and comply? The researchers found that internal and external means of support were critical.
“Support from peers, professional associations, and credible voice channels increases open resistance, whereas peer disagreement reduces silent resistance,” write Mariana Costa Silveira, an assistant professor at the University of São Paulo, School of Economics, Business, and Accounting, and her five coauthors. “Organizational networks and resources—such as reliable ombuds offices, coworker support, and professional associations—significantly shape civil servants’ willingness to openly resist undemocratic demands from political superiors.”
The researchers started looking at this question after Bolsonaro won Brazil’s 2019 presidential election. Because the coauthors had worked on bureaucracy in previous studies, they knew many civil servants, from whom they heard reports of cultural revolution within government under the new administration. Many were ordered to do things contrary to customary legal mandates. Others reported receiving death threats. Female bureaucrats and government workers on environmental assignments deep in the Amazon faced harassment, Costa Silveira says.
In previous work, the researchers had interviewed 400 civil servants, documenting their stories of intense questioning, escalating to threats and lawsuits from the government if they resisted any of their new superiors’ demands. “It’s a very risky situation,” Costa Silveira says. “You can lose your job or position. Even if you are tenured, if you are occupying a managerial position, you can be fired from that role.”
To quantify what they were hearing, the research team decided to use a survey experiment in a new study that randomized different categories of government agency, allowing them to examine the impact of disparate organizational conditions and networks that might influence bureaucrats’ ability to push back against the demands.
The researchers collaborated with the Brazilian government, which provided email addresses for all civil servants in the country. This enabled the group to craft a random, representative sample by contacting half of the country’s federal bureaucrats from 37 divisions of the government. Of 296,048 invitations, 2,481 completed the survey.
The researchers had unique ties to the Brazilian bureaucracy. It might be difficult to replicate the study without similar help in accessing bureaucrats’ emails, making it hard to conduct follow-up research in other countries facing challenges to democracy, Costa Silveira says.
The study launched in 2023, the year after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva replaced Bolsonaro, shifting the ideological bent of the federal government from populist right-wing to democratic left-wing. The changeover presumably allowed bureaucrats who had been hobbled under the previous administration to share their thoughts more freely on the survey.
The researchers looked at four attributes: the bureaucrat’s network within their own workplace; their external professional network; the organizational expertise of the agency; and the strength of workplace protections for whistleblowers. They asked participants a series of hypothetical questions aimed to gauge their comfort level in opposing anti-democratic actions from their political superiors.
The study examined several factors that could encourage bureaucrats facing attacks on democracy at work to speak up. Professional trade associations tend to be strong in Brazil, offering support to workers. Government agencies often have an ombudsman or another avenue for anonymous whistleblowing. And some agencies also have tight relationships with external partners, such as international organizations and NGOs, that might support employees, while individual employees might be able to draw on their own professional networks, Costa Silveira says.
“These findings should alert us to how
authoritarian populists overtake meritocratic bureaucracies by undermining or
co-opting labor unions, professional associations, and independent oversight
bodies,” says Sharon Gilad, a professor of political science at Hebrew
University. “Still, the study offers some hope and direction, suggesting that
the initial strength of the civil service, and the institutional structure that
supports it, can slow the pace of democratic erosion.”
Find the full study: Mariana Costa Silveira, Gabriela Spanghero Lotta, Luciana Cingolani, João Victor Guedes-Neto, Alexandre de Ávila Gomide, Pedro Masson Sesconetto Souza, “The Organizational Dynamics of Bureaucratic Resistance to Undemocratic Pressures: A Conjoint Experiment in Brazil,” Public Administration Review, forthcoming.
Read more stories by Chana R. Schoenberger.