The (Liberal) Democratic Challenge of Public Administration

Debates on democratic backsliding have prompted public administration scholars, notably Kutsal Yesilkagit and Michael Bauer, to argue that administrations facing illiberal populism must abandon neutrality and actively resist — even against electoral majorities. This paper examines Bauer's recent attempt to ground such resistance in Hegel's philosophy of right, which recasts bureaucracy as an ethical mediator embodying practical reason rather than a mere instrument of political rule. Through a close reading of Hegel's original text, this paper argues that Bauer's Hegelian turn imports more than a theory of administrative ethics: it imports Hegel's broader project of a "sovereignty of reason" directed against arbitrariness in politics as such, not merely against its populist variant. Read against contemporary diagnoses that locate liberalism's crisis in excessive depoliticization rather than its absence, this suggests that Bauer's strategy risks reinforcing the very populist grievances it seeks to counter. The paper concludes by outlining the need for a normative foundation of public administration that supports a politics of freedom without positioning itself against politics itself.