Institutionalized Fear and Conservative Administrative Behavior under Audit-Intensive Governance

Paper 2 in the Fear-Based Decision-Making Research Series This manuscript constitutes the second paper in an ongoing research program on the Fear-Based Decision-Making Framework (Toledo, 2026) in public administration. While the first paper introduced the core conceptual framework and the five-type fear typology, the present study advances the program by applying the framework to explain how institutional accountability arrangements translate fear into observable administrative behavior. Specifically, it examines how audit-intensive governance environments produce conservative administrative patterns through institutionalized fear, systematically mapping the five fear types to recurring decision behaviors in public institutions. The study adopts a theory-building approach and develops an explanatory framework linking accountability design to conservative administrative behavior under audit-intensive governance. Using conceptual synthesis, the paper advances formal theoretical propositions intended to guide future qualitative, quantitative, and comparative empirical research in public administration.