Public administration in authoritarian regimes

There has been an “institutional turn” in the study of authoritarian regimes (Pepinsky, 2014). That interest in institutions has not extended to public bureaucracies to the extent that seems necessary if we are to understand how these political systems govern. Bureaucracies tend to be the most standardised institutions within political systems. One can travel to all parts of the world and find pyramidal structures within departments, a formal personnel system based (at least in theory) on merit, probably some more or less autonomous agencies, and other standard features. That similarity is often only superficial, and there are fundamental differences among bureaucracies, even with the apparent similarities.

Comparing public bureaucracies, therefore, involves getting beneath apparent similarities, and understanding how and why systems differ. One of the crucial factors producing differences among administrative systems is whether they function within a democratic or an authoritarian regime. The diffusion of ideas about public management, and pressures from donor organisations have in many cases produced what Fred Riggs (1964) called “doublespeak” in administration.The public image and pronouncements of the bureaucracy are one thing, and sound like those from a modernised, democratic regime. The reality within the system, and especially the reality of relationships between the state and its citizens may, however, be something else entirely.

Simply saying that the bureaucracy is functioning within an authoritarian regime is in itself inadequate to explain differences among administrative systems. For example, there may be marked differences between authoritarian regimes controlled by political parties and those that are more personal (van Soest & Grauvogel, 2017), and both of those will differ from those controlled by the military. In addition, some authoritarian regimes are also developmental, and use the power of the state to direct resources towards economic development (Chibber, 2002), while others may be more oriented merely towards controlling their societies. Also, the ideologies motivating authoritarian regimes may differ, with some being socialist or communist, while others being extremely conservative (including theocracies), and some having little ideology at all except for the maintenance of power.

Finally, some authoritarian regimes depend more on validation through elections than do others. These electoral authoritarian regimes (see Schedler, 2013), or competitive authoritarian regimes (Levitsky & Way, 2010), justify themselves through having a mandate from the people, rather than strictly by power or ideology. The hybrid nature of these regimes means that the bureaucracy in these regimes may be closer to that in democratic regimes than is true for most authoritarian regimes.

While it is common, and understandable, to focus on differences between authoritarian and democratic political systems, and their bureaucracies, there may also be important similarities. Some of those similarities arise from the organisations and individuals in bureaucracies performing roughly the same tasks regardless of the nature of the regime within which they function. Implementing a rural development programme may be pretty much the same anywhere. Further, the ideas of what constitutes good public administration do spread, regardless of the controls imposed by a government, and bureaucrats even in repressive regimes may seek to emulate global “best practice” when possible.

What distinguishes public administration in authoritarian regimes

Crucial differences exist between public bureaucracy in authoritarian regimes and bureaucracy in democratic regimes. Some of these differences will be rather stark, while others may be differences of degree rather than kind. Not all authoritarian regimes will have all of the characteristics discussed here, just as no democratic regime would have all the characteristics we would expect in that variety of government. Still, discussing these characteristics does enable us to understand better how authoritarian regimes function as they make and implement public policy.

As I discuss these differences, I will also point to some similarities with democratic regimes and its public administration. As already noted, authoritarian regimes often display some of the “doublespeak” that Fred Riggs argued was typical of developing regimes. While they may have some of the same structural and even behavioural characteristics of democratic regimes, their use of those mechanisms for governing may differ substantially, given that most authoritarian regimes are concerned primarily with controlling the public, rather than with serving the public.

More Personalised, or Party Controlled. Public administration in consolidated democracies tends to laud the merit system and to consider politicisation of the bureaucracy as inherently negative. This advocacy of merit systems exists despite the existence of some form of political involvement in the bureaucracy in all political systems). Further, the degree of politicisation has been increasing in most democratic systems (Bauer et al., 2021), with political leaders wanting to impose their controls over the remainder of the political system, and to be able to have their policies adopted and implemented without interference from an autonomous bureaucracy.

The public bureaucracies in authoritarian systems may have some of the trappings of a merit-based administration, but in practice they depend heavily on patronage appointments. These appointments are based on three foundations (see Peters, 2023). One is a personal connection with the leader in authoritarian systems that are more personalistic. In others, the political party may be source of patronage appointments. In still other cases appointments to government positions may be based on ethnicity or membership in other groupings and organisations within the society (Knox & Janenova, 2023b).

The familiar phrase of ‘speaking truth to power” is even more difficult to identify in personalised or party controlled administrative systems, although it is becoming more difficult in democratic systems. Typically, authoritarian leaders do not want to hear the truth that bureaucrats or other advisors might want to share with them, and only the bravest advisors may hazard going against the policies of those leaders. This lack of contest over policies will, everything else being equal, make the quality of governance lower in these systems.

Although more politicised, the bureaucracies of authoritarian regimes are not necessarily uninterested in merit criteria for recruitment (see Duong, 2023). All public services would like to hire the most qualified personnel possible, although they may define what “qualified” means rather differently. The dichotomy of “Red or expert” was often applied to recruitment of personnel in the administrations of communist regimes, but it seems that the goal actually may be “Red and expert”.

Less Autonomy. The power that autocratic leaders exercise over their bureaucracies also implies that the bureaucracy has less autonomy. The managerialist reforms of the 1980s and 1990s gave public managers greater autonomy in democratic systems, and the participatory and New Public Governance reforms that followed NPM tended to give more autonomy to lower levels of the bureaucracy. Bureaucratic autonomy has not, however, been welcomed in authoritarian regimes, given the perceived needs of the leadership to maintain control of government and the public. The minimisation of autonomy is related to the use of the military for many bureaucratic functions in authoritarian regimes (see below).

The major exception to this generalisation has been in authoritarian regimes that also had strong ambitions for economic development. For example, the “Little Tigers” of Asia were authoritarian regimes, to varying degrees, as they began their efforts to modernise their economies and become significant players in the international political economy (Cheng et al., 1998).¹ To achieve these developmental goals these governments needed skilled and powerful bureaucracies that had to have at least some autonomy. These bureaucracies tended not to test the boundaries of that autonomy, and largely accepted the controls, but within their domains were influential in their own right.

Bureaucratic autonomy may present a challenge to more fully democratic regimes. At the extreme, the power of bureaucracies over policy in democratic regimes may produce a technocratic control of governing, and some weakening of democracy. If the technocrats control internal policymaking in key areas such as the economy, and also are the principle links between the state and the international political economy, then elected officials may be controlled by the bureaucracy and its preferences, rather than vice versa. In less extreme cases the delegation of authority to the unelected in agencies and other autonomous organisations (central banks as a key example) may make issues of accountability and of democratic controls of the technocrats more opaque than may be desirable.

Possibly a Militarised Bureaucracy. The bureaucracies in authoritarian regimes may also be more militarised than are those in democratic systems. This militarisation is obviously the case for military regimes, in which the leaders will bring with them loyalists from the armed forces. In most cases military officers will assume the major offices of government, although the extent of penetration further into government will vary. In addition, even in regimes that remain nominally democratic but experience significant democratic backsliding, e.g., Mexico under AMLO (Deare, 2021), there may be greater use of the military in positions that previously had been held by civilian bureaucrats.

Historically, military regimes have been associated with a particular relationship between the bureaucracy and the political (or military) leadership. Guillermo O’Donnell (1988) described this pattern as “bureaucratic authoritarianism”, and argued that it had been typical of military regimes in Latin America. The military brought technocrats with them into government in an attempt to enhance economic development, and also developed alliances with the existing bureaucracy. The military leadership were more than willing to utilise repression to reduce any resistance to the plans for economic change that relied on what we would now call neo-liberal economics.²

As well as being relevant for governance as an institution, military regimes rather obviously also use instruments of governance that democratic regimes are reluctant to use. The overt utilisation of coercion, and more commonly creating the fear of coercion, are ways of gaining compliance even in the absence of legitimacy with much of the population (Yerramsetti, 2023). The use of fear can as an instrument can be strengthened by modern tools of governing such as increased digitalisation and facial recognition software. Despite its general appeal, modernisation in administration can be a double-edged sword that can lead to greater repression as well as benefits of efficiency.

The Difficulties of Administrative Reform. Public bureaucracies are constantly under pressures to reform to make themselves more efficient, more effective, or perhaps more open to society (Peters, 2023). For the past several decades, although now of waning importance, the New Public Management Hernes (2005) has been an important style of reform. Although authoritarian regimes are under some pressure to implement NPM reforms, both from donor organisations and from the generalised pressure of “ideas in good currency”, there has been significantly less success in making these reforms in authoritarian regimes than in other types (see Gong et al., 2018).

Many of the recommendations arising from New Public Management (NPM) are antithetical to the style of most authoritarian regimes. For example, decentralisation and deconcentration are two of the fundamental goals of NPM. The intention is to some extent dismantle centralised control and permit organisations within the public sector have greater autonomy to make their own decisions. Similarly NPM advocated privatisation of state-owned enterprises. Taken together these reforms would reduce control of the central authorities over government and the public, and would also reduce state income, neither of which would suit most authoritarian governments. Perhaps the only contradictory evidence comes in cases in which an authoritarian regimes takes power and is confronted with an entrenched bureaucracy (Muno & Briceño, 2023), although the creation of agency-like structures in these cases was more a means of undermining the existing bureaucracy than of promoting efficiency.

The above being said, there are some elements of NPM that are more compatible with less democratic forms of governance (see Cheung, 2005). For example, opening up the public sector to more people from outside traditional civil service, and thereby politicising the public service, is very compatible with an authoritarian regime.³ Also, the use of non-governmental organisations to provide services has performed well for authoritarian regimes, if only as a means of coopting those organisations and preventing future opposition (Muno & Briceño, 2023) In other cases, however, the relationship between authoritarian regimes and NGOs has been more contentious, as those organisations are assumed to be representatives of foreign, liberalising forces.

The major reform initiative that has followed NPM – often referred to as New Public Governance (NPG)–has not been significantly more compatible with the governance goals of authoritarian regimes. These reforms (see Osborne, 2006; Torfing et al., 2020) have sought to coordinate the actions of public sector organisations, both among themselves and with the society. Collaboration between the state and civil society actors is also an important aspect of NPG, as well as in general a greater service orientation within the bureaucracy (Vigoda, 2002). A collaborative approach that involves sharing some control between government and social actors is not compatible, however, with authoritarian control of society.

Although authoritarian regimes may find it difficult to follow the blueprints for reform coming from democratic regimes, they have been successful at times in their own styles of administrative reform. These reforms have occurred most often after a transition, and when the existing administrative structures have been reluctant to comply with the wishes of authoritarian leaders, or the structures have been incapable of administering the programmes of the government. At times these reforms increase bureaucratic capacity, while at others they may be more concerned with supporting the ruling elite (Knox & Janenova, 2023a).

But Still Participatory. One of the paradoxes of bureaucracies in authoritarian regimes is that they do often contain mechanisms for participation. Most of the characteristics I have mentioned so far imply a top-down, control pattern of behaviour but that can be softened with mechanisms for involving the public. These mechanisms have become more prevalent as social media has opened up means of communication among citizens, and bureaucracies may attempt to coopt some of that potentially dangerous (to the regime) communication by providing a more controlled locus for citizens. Further, these opportunities to participate may help legitimate the system. Yerramsetti (2023),

There are a number of examples of officially sanctioned participation within authoritarian regimes. For example, there have been numerous structures for permitting Chinese citizens at the local level to participate (Truex, 2016), and local level participation is also permitted in other authoritarian regimes. In addition, Frankenberg (2019) and his colleagues point to the ways in which a number of authoritarian regimes utilise their constitutions to simultaneously allow and constrain public participation. Further, even if not officially sanctioned, participation on social media platforms can constitute a means for citizens to spread ideas and express discontent with the existing government.

The important question here is just how authentic are these opportunities for ordinary citizens to participate? Are they merely window dressing, or perhaps a means to identify potential troublemakers? Those more negative characterisations are, of course, true in some settings, but in others they can be means to improve legitimacy by providing better services. In addition, allowing participation through the bureaucracy may not be as threatening for an authoritarian government as would be more overtly political forms of participation. Participation tends not to be discussions of major political issues, but primarily discussions about how to make specific public services perform better.

These opportunities for participation may be especially relevant in competitive or electoral autocracies. When the ruling elite in an authoritarian regimes does go through the process of having elections to legitimate its holding power, it is important that the ruling party have positive contacts with the public. These contacts can be gained through clientelism and personal ties between politicians and citizens. The contacts can also be made through discussions about policies in the local community, and having government engage in what would be called “constituency service” in more democratic regimes.

And Still Public Servants. A final point to make about similarities and differences between bureaucracies in the types of regimes is that although bureaucracies in authoritarian regimes may be dominated by issues of control, they also are engaged in providing services to the public, and many of the individuals functioning in these regimes have motives for working in government that are similar to those of individuals in democratic regimes. It appears that the closer we get to the “ground floor of government” (Hupe, 2019) the more likely we are to encounter public servants who are focused on actually delivering public services.

Public service motivation (Perry & Hondeghem, 2008) has become the standard for assessing the extent to which members of the bureaucracy are interested in helping citizens and the society. This motivation is argued to play a major role in their pursuing a public service career. Ripoll and Rode (2023) find that members of the public bureaucracies in authoritarian regimes share a commitment to the public with their democratic counterparts, and further that the degree of authoritarianism of the regime does not appear to affect the level of that commitment.

While many public servants in authoritarian regimes are committed to serving “the people”, the definition of who those people are may be contested. In multi-ethnic societies, or in societies with a large number of immigrants, “the people” may exclude many individuals resident within the country. The definition of the people may also exclude those who are not aligned politically with the ruling group, regardless of their ethnicity. The differences in the treatment of minorities may be subtle as it often is in democratic regimes) or it may be more overt. Finally, the definition of the “public interest” being served in an authoritarian regime may be rather different than that in more liberal societies, so we must be careful in assuming that the types of services being delivered, and the types of relationships that exist with clients are positive (Mussagulova and Van der Wal (2021).

Is this too simple – hybrids

I have thus far discussed political regimes as a dichotomy between democratic and authoritarian regimes, but the world is not that simple. Many, if not most, governments are somewhere between the two extremes. Further, there appears to be more movement away from the extreme positions, especially with “democratic backsliding” being more prevalent in democratic countries (Bermeo, 2016). This follows several episodes of democratisation in more

authoritarian regimes, with some of those systems later reverting to their authoritarian roots (see Boese et al., 2021). Also, electoral authoritarian regimes mentioned above are also hybrid regimes, depending in part on elections but also willing to function in an authoritarian manner.

As we attempt to move the study of comparative bureaucracy forward, we will need to make several improvements in the ways in which we conceptualise the “host” regimes for bureaucracies. We need to differentiate better types of authoritarian regimes and the impacts that those differences have on public administration. Some of those differences, such as strength of political parties and the number of veto players within a system, are already used to explain levels and types of patronage in democratic systems. We may expect some of the same differences in non-democratic regimes that are party based, as opposed to those that are personal or military based.

Following from the above, we also need to think about hybrid regimes more carefully, and attempt to understand what hybridity means for public administration. For example. Boix and And (2013) raise interesting questions about the practice of some authoritarian regimes to develop institutions that constrain their autonomy and power. This change may be happening at the same time that leaders in democratic systems are attempting to reduce the constraints on their power imposed by courts, bureaucracies, and legislatures. Therefore, one of the important future avenues of research will be on the nature of these emerging hybrid regimes and the nature of public administration within them. While proper Weberian bureaucrats may simply follow the directions of their political superiors, others may feel a deeper obligation to their constitution and to more liberal forms of governance.

Conclusion

In many ways the public bureaucracies encountered in authoritarian regimes have many of the same features that Fred Riggs described some years ago for bureaucracies in developing countries. Without describing all these features, the fundamental point is that there is, in most of these systems, a veneer of modernity and respectability, while underneath the reality is neither what textbooks on public administration nor guidelines from international donor organisations, would prescribe.

The dual nature of these systems represents, as in La Rochefoucauld’s aphorism on hypocrisy, “the homage that vice makes to virtue The international standards of good government and proper administration require the semblance of institutions such as a merit system and forms of legal accountability, but in reality those institutions are often mere pretence. The realities of administration may be more corrupt and more politicised. These systems may appear to follow the fad and fashion of thinking in public management, but are often more concerned with the capacity to exert control.

The above having been said, the leaders of authoritarian regimes do need to have a public bureaucracy that can administer its policies and exert effective control over the society. While political appointees might be useful in supporting the regime and its leaders, some may be less useful in making government efficient and effective. This means then hiring officials who are competent and committed, and in some cases having to settle for mere political neutrality. In short, for all the differences that I and the authors of the articles in this special issue have identified, the governance needs of authoritarian and non-authoritarian regimes may not be as systematically different as they are sometimes made to appear.

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Notes on contributors

B. Guy Peters

B.Guy Peters is Maurice Falk Professor of Government at the University of Pittsburgh, and founding President of the International Public Policy Association. He holds a PhD degree from Michigan State University and has honorary doctorates from four European universities. He is currently editor of the International Review of Public Policy and associate editor of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. His most recent books include Administrative Traditions: Understanding the Roots of Contemporary Administrative Behavior (Oxford, 2022) and Democratic Backsliding and Public Administration (Cambridge, 2022).

Notes

1. The same pattern of autonomous and powerful bureaucracies directing economic policy was als found in some more fully democratic regimes such as Japan.

2. This pattern is not dissimilar to the developmental states of Asia that also had military or quasi-military leaders at least for part of the time when development was being pushed most strongly.

3. Regimes may choose to do this without justifying it through the use of the NPM paradigm – it is simply another means of gaining enhanced control. The same strategy may be undertaken by populist leaders, many of whom have had authoritarian tendencies, in democratic regimes under threat of backsliding (see Bauer et al., 2021).