A Bulwark of Democracy? How Managers Influence Civil Servant’s Reactions to Democratic Backsliding

Political efforts to weaken democratic institutions place civil servants in a dilemma between political responsiveness and protecting democratic values. As civil servants are embedded in an organizational hierarchy, we argue that signals from their direct hierarchical superiors are of key importance to understand how civil servants address this dilemma. Using a randomized survey experiment among Norwegian national-level civil servants, we find that democratic backsliding increases opposition to government wishes, internal and external voice, and con-sideration of exit from the organization. Managerial signals moderate these effects: civil serv-ants are more inclined to voice concerns or consider exit when managers signal responsiveness to government wishes. In a conceptual replication and extension among US civil servants we likewise find a greater inclination to exit if the manager signals responsiveness to government wishes, but also that respondents here are less inclined to voice their concerns to the manager. We discuss possible explanations of findings. Overall, our findings imply that managerial signals within the administrative hierarchy are shaping civil servant responses to democratic backsliding, and that managers who emphasize the importance of protecting democratic values can serve as a bulwark of democracy.