Balance by Design: Democratic Accountability and the Civil Service
- May 12
- 6 min read
Three Practical Ways for Public Sector Leaders to Maintain Judgement Under Pressure
Ministers and senior public sector leaders do not need to trade harmful words, especially in public, when responding to crises. Both carry legitimacy within a successful democratic system. Distinguishing between political and bureaucratic legitimacy offers a strong framework to rebuild trust between ministers and officials, and to improve delivery for the public.
In this article I explain the difference between political and bureaucratic legitimacy. I then propose three ways that officials can ‘design in’ a strong response to the threat conditions that can arise in a crisis and preserve the necessary balance between these two important forms of legitimacy.
Democratic Accountability and Threat Rigidity
The minister stands at the Dispatch Box, rifling through her brief, fielding questions with a calm that she does not feel inside. This scandal was unnecessary, she thinks. If I had known all the facts, obviously I would have decided differently. Now I’m facing political and media pressure because I was poorly advised.
When a crisis hits the public sector, it often manifests in language that officials can reasonably perceive as leading to negative consequences - a threat, in other words.
Witness the recent “speak truth to power” comment by the Prime Minister, implying that civil servants are currently failing to do something that they should be doing. Or his comment in December 2024 that too many civil servants were “comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”. Whether you believe there is some truth in such language, it does nothing to nurture trust between ministers and officials.
The consequence of threat is often increased centralisation of control. This is a core tenet of Threat Rigidity Theory, developed by Staw, Sandelands, and Dutton in 1981. This says that individuals, groups, and organisations facing threats revert to well-learned, familiar behaviors (rigidity) rather than adopting innovative solutions. This response to anxiety often results in tightened, top-down control and narrowed information processing, which can be harmful in new crises.
It is also evident from recent political history, such as in 2025 when new internal government guidance banned mid-ranking and senior officials from speaking at events with Q&A sessions, or where media were expected to attend. A move that the Institute for Government said was likely to have a “chilling effect on public discourse”.
As explored later in this article, centralised control is not in itself bad. In a crisis situation, it can be advisable. However, when it has a long term effect on bureaucratic responsiveness and undermines its legitimacy, the impact can be extensive and negative. A few recent examples of this include:
The imposition of a ‘strategy and policy statement’ on the Electoral Commission in the Elections Act 2022, criticised for reducing its independent discretion and now set to be removed by the Representation of the People Bill.
The decision to remove Sir Olly Robbins, who was only appointed the year before (irrespective of the strength of the rationale in individual cases, rapid turnover of permanent secretaries will have an effect on the department).
When only 20% of the UK public are satisfied with our current governing system, public sector leaders must find ways to respond to threats that sustain democratic accountability and strong public service delivery.
Political and Bureaucratic Legitimacy: Competing Perspectives
The challenge for public sector leaders is how to navigate threats in a way that does not undermine either political or bureaucratic legitimacy. This means balancing the following:
Political legitimacy, which is drawn from an electoral mandate, visible accountability, political responsiveness, and decisive authority.
Bureaucratic legitimacy, which comes from professional competence, evidence-based judgement, constitutional restraint, and institutional continuity. Note that I am using the word ‘bureaucracy’ not to conjure an image of a Kafkaesque dystopia, but as form of organisation defined by complexity, division of labour, permanence, professional management, hierarchical coordination and control, strict chain of command, and legal authority.
To solve this challenge, it helps to examine it from different perspectives.
The bureaucratic perspective
As, in line with Threat Rigidity Theory, the bureaucracy centralises control to manage threat conditions, it loses access to vital intelligence from its frontline members.
Delivering public services and an incumbent government’s priorities requires navigation of a highly complex system, and flexibility and agility to remain effective as the system shifts. Frontline regulators, operational leaders, and policy analysts often detect weak signals of movement long before senior leadership does.
In the short term, centralised control can create coherence and stability, in the long term it can encourage organisations to reduce local discretion and experimentation, to tighten narrative discipline, and escalate decisions upwards, risking a loss of insight and adaptability.
The political perspective
Ministerial criticism can produce reputational fear within the civil service. Senior leaders start asking “How will this look?” rather than “Is this the right thing to do?”. To an extent, this is sensible and appropriate in a system where ministers are ultimately accountable for the actions of their departments.
The risk, however, is a spiral of short-term reputation management caused by both the ministers and the senior public sector leaders operating under threat conditions. This is to the detriment of sound judgement by both.
The Institute for Government’s Policy-making in a crisis: a civil servant’s guide gives a vivid illustration of this, highlighting the Bounce Back scheme for businesses launched during the COVID-19 pandemic. Political criticism was leveled at the Government for not getting money to businesses impacted by lockdown quickly enough, and so the scheme was created and launched by officials without a Fraud and Risk Assessment being completed. The costs of this lapse in judgement runs to billions of pounds.
The democratic accountability perspective
Ministers are parliamentarians, and parliamentarians (in the House of Commons, at least) are elected. Senior public sector officials are not elected. This creates a valid imbalance between political and bureaucratic legitimacy, whereby ministers determine political direction and officials advise on and implement its delivery. The result can be clarity and cohesion with clear lines of public accountability.
Taking this to the extreme, this perspective leads to the conclusion that the onus is on public sector leaders to adjust their mindset about what constitutes a ‘threat’, and accept that what they currently perceive as negative implications are in fact justified interventions by the government of the day.
Navigating Threat Conditions By Strong Public Sector Leadership
The problem we set out to solve was how senior public sector leaders can navigate threat conditions in a way that does not undermine either political or bureaucratic legitimacy. All of the three perspectives set out above have some justification, leading to the need for both ministers and officials to recognise the importance of balance. .
When bureaucratic legitimacy is put under sustained threat from those with political legitimacy, harmful threat rigidity symptoms can emerge, Civil service departments can become paralysed by centralised, risk-averse structures and by short-term reputation management taking over. This, in turn, weakens delivery for the public, which is usually the very thing ministers are criticising officials for.
Crucially, the answer is not for individual officials to summon up the courage to speak truth to power. Balance is maintained by institutional design.
Balance by Design
As the saying goes, preparation is key. Building in mechanisms to support balance during periods of tension and threat can support senior leaders in maintaining a broad perspective while respecting the political legitimacy held by ministers. Here are three approaches that can achieve this.
Design deliberate mechanisms to preserve distributed thinking and challenge during periods of political pressure. This will ens3. ure those around senior public sector leaders remain involved in key issues and decisions, and preserve that longer-term and wide horizon thinking that brings sound judgement to the fore. Practical mechanisms could include:
protected red-team discussions
rotating challenge roles in meetings
requiring operational perspectives in policy discussions
explicitly rewarding escalation of inconvenient information
Senior leaders should ensure that temporary command structures to respond to a threat do not become the new cultural norm. This means regular check points to review whether the threat response remains appropriate, as well as open internal communications to ensure key senior staff know what is expected of them at a given point in time.
Senior leaders should reward those who promote psychological safety. Psychologically safe cultures can still produce organisational drift or rigidity - it is not in itself a cure. It needs to be set within a culture of transparency and learning so that the initiatives and iterations of policy or delivery that arise from early warning signals are acted upon. This mitigates the risk of confusing open examination with permanent contestability.
The minister stands at the Dispatch Box, rifling through her brief, fielding questions with a calm that she does not feel inside. We considered all the options, she thinks, but the situation was uncertain and unintended consequences arose. But now I have new options to outline, built on the learning from this situation and designed to deliver for the public.
Public trust is not strengthened when either ministers or officials dominate the system. It is strengthened when democratic authority and bureaucratic judgement remain in productive tension with one another. This balance does not happen by accident, but by design.
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