Destabilising the Relationship Between Democracy and Bureaucracy: the Consequences of System Imbalance for an Anglophone Country

The relationship between democracy and bureaucracy is pivotal for the role of executive government and how it operates in terms of principles and institutionalised understandings about the roles of politicians and bureaucrats. Bureaucracy and democracy are conceived as interdependent institutions that function to countervail excessive use of each’s discretions. The paper examines the arguments for balancing the discretions of politicians and civil servants and explores a case where the political executive has been able to comprehensively override principles producing system imbalance with unparalleled consequences for public service effectiveness, government legitimacy and trust in public governance. Bureaucracy produces a dilemma for democracy if it becomes too independent and powerful. At the same time bureaucratic independence is indispensable for preventing political malfeasance and safeguarding democratic procedures. Traditional public administration was grounded in explicit distinctions between politicians and civil servants, the latter being delegated responsibilities for implementation and accorded discretion to employ their expertise in the public interest. The central question then was the exercise of discretion and how it was constrained, which applied to both politicians and public servants. The dilemma derives from extensions to discretion and how these might be counterbalanced. Once the main issue was seen to be the ascendancy of bureaucracy, but that position has been reversed through pervasive politicisation. As a member of the anglophone administrative tradition, Australia is an unlikely case for acute politicisation. The tradition has been distinguished by a distinctive relationship between bureaucrats and elected representatives that emphasised impartiality and professionalism. A second feature of the anglophone administrative tradition was that it facilitated interventions to a greater extent than other traditions while also constraining change. The main manifestation of that has been managerialism, but now these same processes have permitted greater politicisation and undermined the bureaucracy and other institutions of public governance. The constraints are no longer sufficient to contain political pressures. The analysis will explore and explain the conditions that allowed this situation to arise and the consequences for the bureaucracy when political executives expand their discretionary powers and ignore the constraints (such as oversight mechanisms) that were hitherto important.