Public administrations across Europe and beyond are operating in increasingly contested political and institutional environments. Recurrent crises, geopolitical instability and rapid technological transformation are exerting sustained pressure on governance capacity, while simultaneously reshaping the relationship between politics and administration. In this context, administrative reform has re-emerged as a central – yet profoundly ambivalent – instrument of state transformation.
Traditionally associated with efforts to improve the quality of government, administrative reform is now implicated in wider processes of democratic stress. While some reform initiatives reinforce institutional resilience, professionalism and administrative legitimacy, others contribute to the politicisation of the civil service, the weakening of checks and balances, and the erosion of administrative autonomy. Far from being normatively neutral, reform choices may actively reconfigure power relations within the state, with far-reaching implications for the rule of law and the quality of democratic governance.
Contemporary debates on democratic backsliding increasingly recognise that democratic erosion does not necessarily unfold as a slow or linear process. In certain contexts, it may be accelerated, episodic or concentrated in critical moments of institutional change. Public administrations are not peripheral to these dynamics. They constitute key arenas in which reform designs, implementation practices and professional norms intersect with political strategies, shaping how democratic safeguards are maintained, recalibrated or, in some cases, swiftly reconfigured.
This panel examines administrative reform as a critical nexus linking governance capacity, institutional resilience and democratic quality. Drawing on public governance paradigms – from classical bureaucracy and the Neo-Weberian State to New Public Management and New Public Governance – the panel invites contributions that analyse how reform trajectories shape administrative autonomy, accountability and legitimacy under conditions of political and institutional stress.