How to Save (and Kill) the Compliance Model of Bureaucracy

Political theorists have rediscovered the administrative state. A common argumentative step in this rapidly evolving research field is the refutation of the so-called compliance model of bureaucracy. I begin this paper by arguing that the compliance model comes in two variants: the naive and the democratic. Many scholars only address the naive variant, which is indeed untenable because it assumes the administrative state is, or can be, apolitical. By contrast, the Democratic Compliance Model (DCM) acknowledges that bureaucracies unavoidably exercise political power and therefore contends that they ought to be subject to democratic control. I defend the DCM against two commonplace criticisms – that it is useless and that it has undesirable implications – which some scholars see as sufficient grounds for abandoning the compliance framework entirely. Drawing on methodological debates in political theory, I demonstrate that the DCM can be both useful and desirable. To kill the compliance model, scholars must, first, engage with the DCM instead of merely targeting the naive variant and, second, critique the fundamental premises that support the DCM rather than merely the usefulness and desirability of its prescriptions.