This chapter examines the strategies employed by the federal government during President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration to align the state workforce with the prevailing political agenda. It contributes to the literature on bureaucracy by elucidating the role of state actors and it demonstrates how established powers exploit institutional weaknesses to erode state capacity as a necessary step in policy dismantling. Drawing on longitudinal aggregate data and reanalysis of two case studies, the research identifies two strategy’s levels: macro-strategies, which target the institutional safeguards of the civil service through measures such as reducing permanent appointments or replacing career bureaucrats with ideologically aligned personnel; and micro-strategies, which alter everyday policy implementation practices by disrupting routines and constructing artificial policy problems, thereby weakening policies from within.