Bureaucrats under pressure: Political goals versus legal norms

Democratic ideals envision a division of labor in government: the democratically elected government by making laws that civil servants administer. We cannot be sure, however, that political leaders never overstep their mandate and put pressure on the administration to deliver results that conflict with democratic tenets or legal norms (e.g. Albertazzi and Mueller, 2013). Moreover, studies reveal that is not likely that civil servants will effectively rebuff attempts to encroach on their domain and protect the legal state (see Bischoff, 2022). We do not, however, know much about how pressures on the bureaucracy to disregard legal norms play out in practice. Research in the area tends to rely on survey data and the challenge is that self-reported behavior does not always accord with actual behaviour. In this study, we use registry data provided by the Danish Board of Appeal (Ankestyrelsen) on the legality of decisions by local government street-level bureaucrats in the area of social and employment policy in Denmark. The numbers reveal a staggering problem with legal compliance; In 2022, over a third of the decisions were overturned on appeal and variation across municipalities is high. We suggest and find evidence to support that local political and particularly economic interests explain some of the variation in the share of overturned decisions across municipalities. We propose that pressure from political – and administrative – leadership on street-level bureaucrats can explain the associations observed.