Government Lawyers’ Role Perceptions and Response to Patronage

This article explores how politicization influences government lawyers’ willingness to engage in informal cooperation and advice sharing during democratic backsliding. While research links democratic erosion to civil service politicization—especially through patronage appointments—little is known about its impact on everyday professional interactions. Existing studies emphasize individual responses such as voice, sabotage, exit, or compliance. This study instead examines the relational dimension: does patronage undermine collaboration among public employees? Government lawyers occupy a sensitive position. They are career civil servants, formally subordinate to political authority, yet tasked with safeguarding legality and constitutional principles. This dual role makes them frequent targets of populist and authoritarian attacks. To resist pressure and fulfill their guardian function, they depend on informal consultation and advice sharing. We argue that patronage-based appointments weaken these cooperative capacities. Two mechanisms explain this effect. First, patronage erodes trust. When lawyers believe colleagues were promoted for loyalty rather than merit, uncertainty about motives grows. This distrust discourages voluntary communication, vital for legal coordination and institutional resilience. Second, withholding cooperation from perceived loyalists can serve as quiet resistance. Rather than openly defying authority, lawyers may limit collaboration to preserve integrity and distance themselves from politicized decisions. Role perceptions moderate this dynamic. Drawing on role theory, we distinguish “Gatekeepers of the Public Interest,” who prioritize law and democratic principles, from “Hired Guns,” who emphasize responsiveness to political principals. We hypothesize Gatekeepers are more likely to withdraw cooperation from patronage appointees, while Hired Guns remain less affected. We test these claims in Israel, a critical case marked by judicial reforms and hostility toward government lawyers, including efforts to replace them with political appointees. Using a mixed-methods design—a vignette experiment embedded in an online survey of current and former Israeli government lawyers (N = 114) and qualitative interviews—we examine how politicization shapes collaboration. Preliminary findings confirm expectations: lawyers are significantly less willing to advise or cooperate with colleagues perceived as patronage appointments, especially those identifying as Gatekeepers. These results show that patronage not only politicizes careers but also corrodes the relational infrastructure of bureaucracy, undermining trust, collaboration, and civil servants’ collective capacity to safeguard the public interest under democratic backsliding.