Action and Reaction: How Bureaucrats Cope with Different Forms of Political Oppression

The rise of far-right populist leaders in contemporary democracies has catalyzed processes of democratic backsliding with serious and diverse political implications. One of the less explored dimensions of this phenomenon is the impact of political leaders’ actions on the functioning of public bureaucracies. The question that guides our analysis of this dimension is: how does the dynamic between political control and bureaucratic reactions occur in contexts of democratic backsliding? To answer this question, we conducted 165 interviews with mid-level bureaucrats from 15 different organizations of the Brazilian federal government, between December 2020 and July 2021. The interviewees were members of the government’s social, economic, environmental, and planning areas during Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s administration. The findings suggest that political control and bureaucratic resistance is dynamic and entails interactions and learning over time. As both politicians and bureaucrats interact, learn, and adapt their actions and reactions to previous experiences, it is possible to identify changes in the actors’ strategies.