Merit and impartiality in public administration: the effect of democratic backsliding through participation and contestation

Democratic backsliding threatens core principles of public administration, particularly merit-based recruitment and bureaucratic impartiality. While most existing research relies on single-country analyses, this study offers a cross-national perspective using data from 85 countries between 1996 and 2022. We distinguish among three sequential stages of backsliding–mild erosion, complete erosion, and reversion–and assess their effects on merit and impartiality. The findings show that both principles weaken as backsliding deepens, with the steepest declines occurring in the transition from mild to complete erosion. We further explore contestation and participation as distinct dimensions of democracy. The results indicate that declining contestation is closely linked to losses in merit, while reductions in participation are more strongly associated with diminished impartiality, particularly in later stages of backsliding. Overall, the study illustrates that democratic backsliding affects public administration in differentiated ways, depending on both the stage and the dimension of decline.