At The Mercy of Politics? When Policy Change Undermines the Credibility of Public Managers

Politicians often change policies—sometimes unexpectedly—but how it affects the bureaucracy remains largely unknown. We argue that changing policies can undermine the credibility of public managers in the eyes of the street-level bureaucrats. Testing this argument causally in the real world is challenging as it requires unanticipated policy change that only affects part of the bureaucracy and a pre- and post-change measurement of relevant constructs. To overcome these challenges, we leverage a quasi-experimental design by exploiting that a nationwide reform in Denmark’s education sector was unexpectedly changed for half of the country’s high schools. We find a long-term negative causal effect of policy change on the credibility of public managers, when they showed commitment to the initial policy. The effect is driven by street-level bureaucrats whose policy preferences align with the initial policy. We discuss trade-offs for policy makers and managers when initiating or responding to policy changes.