A large political science literature conceptualizes and analyzes the rise of populist governments, and its association with democratic backsliding. These studies tend to ignore the inner workings of governments under authoritarian-populist leaders. New public administration scholarship delves into this phenomenon by analysing the strategies employed by populist leaders and the responses of bureaucrats to "bad policies" during democratic backsliding. This literature, to which this paper contributes, assumes that bureaucrats are united in their pejorative views of authoritarian-populist governments and that their differential active reactions to these governments’ policies are shaped by other factors, such as their public service motivation. However, we expect that bureaucrats, like citizens, often hold diverse views about the very nature of democratic backsliding. Hence, we suspect that bureaucrats’ responses to instances of democratic backsliding are shaped, inter alia, by this variation in their perceptions. We examine this proposition in the context of Israel’s ongoing “judicial reform” initiative. The latter involves the current extreme right-wing coalition government’s attempt to curtail the powers and independence of the Supreme Court and to replace meritocratically-appointed legal advisers within government with political appointees. To investigate bureaucrats’ responses, we employ a mixed-methods design, which combines a survey with midlevel and senior civil servants in central government (N=450) including closed and open-ended questions, interviews (N=20) and a focus group. Our findings suggest that civil servants who perceive the judicial reform as a threat to Israel’s democracy report a higher inclination to exit government, and lower intention to exercise their voice and to exert effort in their work. We show that these findings are rooted in respondents’ association of democratic backsliding with future politicization and corruption, and in their moral aversion to serve a non-democratic regime. We further discuss the normative implications of our findings with regard to the role of bureaucracies in democratic backsliding.

While public sector workers are expected to treat every citizen equally, LGBT+-citizens still experience discrimination. For example, elderly LGBT+-citizens feel more at risk in elderly care homes and sometimes even decide to hide their identities. However, we know little about the role of public sector workers in the inclusion or discrimination of LGBT+-citizens. Building on behavioral public administration research about heuristics and biases that may cause public sector workers to discriminate, we develop an innovative audit experiment in which a potential client requests about availability at an elderly care home. We measure response rate and response quality among four conditions that implicitly or explicitly test for discrimination. Our baseline treatment is a non-LGBT+-citizen, which we compare to a treatment where the citizen identifies as LGBT+. Next, to assess whether a public sector worker would collaborate in discrimination, the third treatment is a non-LGBT+-citizen who asks whether the public sector worker can guarantee there will be no LGBT+-clients in the home. Finally, to assess whether a public sector worker would combat discrimination, the fourth treatment is a citizen who identifies as LGBT+ and asks for a guarantee that their rights will be protected. Following calls to study more complex issues within behavioral public administration, our study contributes by analyzing public sector workers' treatment of LGBT+-citizens.

This paper aims to explore the possibility of a parabolic relationship between citizens' trust in government and their propensity to engage in voice behavior, such as voting or protest. Trust and voice are both of interest in public administration, but the relationship between the two remains unclear. However, drawing on the trust and voice literature (e.g. Hirschman 1970, Hooghe and Marien 2013, James and Moseley 2014, Porumbescu 2017, Barrows 2015, Chen et al. 2021), we argue that trust and voice could sometimes be in tension with one another. Very low and very high levels of trust in government could both reduce citizens’ propensity to express their voice, through apathy and disinterest in the prior case and complacency in the latter case. Citizens may view voice behaviour as futile at low levels of trust and unnecessary at high levels. This paper utilizes data from Round 8 of the European Social Survey (ESS) to investigate whether a parabolic relationship can be established. Results from negative binomial regression analysis suggest that although greater trust in government is predictive of higher rates of voice behavior, very high levels of trust are associated with a decrease in voice behavior. This drop-off effect is partially accounted for by variation between different European country groups. Trust in government may become ‘blind’, reducing citizens’ propensity to engage in various voice behaviours. To the author's knowledge, a parabolic relationship between citizen trust and voice has not previously been proposed in the literature. The results partially support the view that there is a parabolic relationship between trust in government and voice behavior, but further research is required to explore the relationship. The trust-voice trade-off illustrates one way in which policy choices may have unexpected consequences which policymakers should consider.

The paper presents the linkage between emotional intelligence and leader effectiveness. The paper asserts that in the current millennium a set of competences are required for effective leadership in any setting. Though research indicates that leader effectiveness depends on technical, human and conceptual skills, there is a growing body of research that attests to the importance of emotional intelligence for successful leadership. Goleman (1998) suggested technical expertise and Intelligent Quotient (IQ) be used as relevant skills for entry requirements or threshold capabilities into leadership but leaders need Emotional Iintelligence as a sine- qua -non. It is noted that leaders typically flounder not because they lack the technical skills or knowledge to do the job, but are poor in interpersonal aptitude.

The study also sort to establish the moderating effects of a leader’s gender and ethical on the relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness. Is there a difference in male and female score on emotional intelligence and does gender affect the link between EI and leader effectiveness? Cross-sectional research design was adapted for this study because it provided for collection of data on many variables and from a large number of subjects. The study used primary data which was obtained from organizational leaders (CEOs, and Directors in charge of Finance and Administration, Corporate Affairs/Marketing, Operations and Human Resources using a questionnaire. The data for this study was both qualitative and quantitative. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings of the study revealed that leaders with high emotional Intelligence displayed the ability to make better decisions under pressure; uunderstand and gauge the emotions and psychological states of others; have the ability to resolve conflict effectively and quickly; have the ability to stay calm in times of stress and challenges, enhanced communication skills and high scores in trustworthiness. Emotional intelligence, accounts for nearly 90 percent of what sets high performers apart from peers with similar technical skills and knowledge. The study established no significant differences between male and females in emotional intelligence scores except on specific competencies, though women scored slightly higher than men. A total of 98 top leaders responded to the self-rating questionnaire. Of the total respondents 63 of them were male while 35 were female. The respondents comprised of chief executives and top managers in charge of Finance and Administration, Operations, Marketing, Corporate affairs. The paper presents ways in which leaders in public service can grow their emotional intelligence base and how EI could be used in the selection and appointment of persons into leadership and management positions.

Behavioral public administration research examines how citizens’ perceptions of public sector organizations and services are shaped by preconceived stereotypical images. Studies suggest that citizens evaluate public services negatively due to an “anti-public-sector bias” rooted in prevailing negative stereotypes of the public sector. Yet, findings about this phenomenon are mixed and inconsistent across contexts. Moreover, studies on citizens’ perceptions of public sector employees indicate that stereotypical images of different types of professions substantially vary, thereby questioning the negative public-sector stereotype assumption as well as highlighting the multidimensionality of these images. Altogether, the complexity arising from existing research calls for a more nuanced approach to studying public sector stereotypes and their role in shaping citizens’ evaluations. We suggest a novel theoretical and empirical approach inspired by social psychology research (spontaneous stereotype content model SSCM, developed by Nicolas et al. 2022) for systematically exploring the content and structure of stereotypes. The proposed approach would enable to map stereotypes of public sector “entities” – organizations, employees, professions, and the sector at large – according to key dimensions and create a taxonomy. This will further allow examining the interplay between different stereotypical images and their effects on citizens’ evaluations.

The empirical research will include two phases. The first aims to provide a thorough analysis of stereotypical images associated with different public sector “entities” at different levels, based on an online survey among a representative sample of Israeli citizens (N=1,000). This study will apply the SSCM approach, combining scale-based measures and automated NLP text analysis from open-ended responses of spontaneous stereotypes to establish a taxonomy. Subsequently, in the second phase, we will apply the proposed framework and design a survey experiment to examine the influence of the interaction between the images of different levels of the public sector on citizens' performance evaluations.

Nicolas, G., Bai, X., & Fiske, S. T. (2022). A spontaneous stereotype content model: Taxonomy, properties, and prediction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 123(6), 1243–1263.