Populist-inflected governance in a mature democracy: Bureaucratic de-legitimation and executive control in the United Kingdom (2019–2024)

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between radical right populism and bureaucracy in the UK—a parliamentary system with strong executive dominance. While much literature on populism and public administration focuses on bureaucratic capture or constitutional rupture, the UK presents a different pattern in which populist pressures operated within existing institutional arrangements. The article argues that populist governance in the UK between 2019 and 2024 represents an effort to reassert an idealized ‘Westminster story’ of executive control against the messy and complex realities of contemporary policy-making and public administration. Drawing on three case studies—the construction of civil service antagonism (the ‘blob’), reforms to the election management body (the Electoral Commission), and attempts to implement the Rwanda asylum scheme—the article traces strategies of de-legitimation, institutional bending, and policy forcing. The UK case highlights how populist-inspired executives seek to bypass bureaucracy without dismantling the administrative state.