Democracies have come under attack worldwide as populist or outright authoritarian backsliders conquer power in ever more countries. Backsliders set their political systems and public administrations on an anti-pluralist trajectory thus jeopardizing liberal democracy as a form of government. Against this background, the paper provides, first, an overview of the current discussion about what happens to bureaucracies under backsliding governments. Second, it revisits classical positions of Public Administration (PA) scholarship, clarifying what can be expected from democratic bureaucrats confronted with backsliding superiors. Third, it calls for resuming a debate about administrative responsibility as an obligation, individually and collectively of a public service, to preserve the integrity of the liberal democratic order. It is argued that in dark times the bureaucracy needs to defend the democratic state and can do so only on a normative reinterpretation of what constitutes administrative responsibility in the face of the backsliding challenge. The question whether such a perspective can be (normatively) supported by the state of the art of bureaucratic ethics and integrity scholarship. Thus the paper is also an attempt to get into a discussion with the study group on the issue of democratic backsliding and bureaucratic reaction as well as resilience.

With poly-crises as main theme for the EGPA conference, one notable development in Dutch public administration should surely be addressed: the ubiquity of references to the ‘menselijke maat’ in and around all levels of Dutch government. Literally translatable as the ‘humane’ or ‘human measure’, it seems to describe a broadly shared ideal of good public service in reaction to the Toeslagenaffaire, or childcare benefits scandal. But for all its use, it is remarkably unclear what this ‘human measure’ entails exactly. The overall aims of my PhD research, supervised by prof. dr. Gjalt de Graaf, dr. Frédérique Six and dr. Jelle van Baardewijk, are therefore threefold. First, a conceptual clarification of the ‘menselijke maat’ and the challenges it addresses or refers to is needed. This will be provided by an inquiry in administrative theory together with an empirical analysis of documents containing conflicting conceptualizations of the human measure. Second, an understanding of how the human measure plays in administrative praxis is imperative. I will conduct a multiple case study to enable an understanding of the actualization of ‘menselijke maat’ and of what facilitates and obstructs this. Finally, an understanding of the practical actualization of the human measure will have implications for future public governance. These need to be articulated. For this I turn to a philosophical inquiry into the outcomes of the empirical research. In EGPA’s study group VII, I would like to present a paper addressing the first aim: that of an empirically grounded conceptual clarification of the ‘menselijke maat’.

This article explores the emotional aftermath of public managers’ decision-making in contradictory situations in which they face conflicting values. Drawing on contingency and paradox theory, the article investigates the impact of two approaches - value congruent behavior and paradox mindset - on decision-making confidence. The study surveyed 400 public school managers from the German-speaking part of Switzerland and conducted Spearman Rho correlations to test hypotheses. According to the results, approximately one-third of the managers made decisions that were congruent with their personal hierarchy of values, but congruent behaviour does not significantly support confident decision-making. Conversely, the paradox mindset approach appears to be more effective in supporting confident decision-making.