CLP - Bureaucracy and Distrust: The Civil Service in the Constitution

Speaker: Dr Ben Yong (Durham University)

Chair: TBC

About the lecture

The civil service has largely been effaced from the constitution in public law theory. This is partly due to the general aversion of public lawyers to the Executive. But it is also because the civil service is not seen to have an identity or authority of its own—an impression the civil service itself encourages. It is like the ‘nerves and tendons that move the several limbs of a body natural’: what matters are ministers; officials merely advise and implement. The result is that the civil service in public law remains a cipher—its functions, and the sources and limits of its authority remain unclear.

Traditionally, bureaucracy and democracy have been in tension: bureaucracy has been seen as a means to an end; but it also threatened to become an end in itself. In more recent years, with the rise of democratic backsliding and populism, the bureaucracy is portrayed as an obstruction to the will of the people—as expressed through its elected representatives. The civil service is the ‘deep state’, a ‘blob’ with a will of its own, frustrating good government. We are in danger of forgetting that no successful state can function without a bureaucracy.

Once we see the civil service in this context, it becomes an object of study in its own right; and various questions arise for public lawyers. How should we understand the functions and roles of the civil service in a democracy; what is the appropriate balance between the autonomy of the bureaucracy and democratic control over it; and do our answers differ in an era of democratic backsliding and populism?

About the speaker

Ben is a public lawyer. His research focuses on the work of the executive and Parliament, the role of officials, and the maintenance of ideals in the grubbiness of organisation. Most recently, he published the third edition of Parliament and the Law (Hart, 2022 with Alex Horne and Louise Thompson)--the only text dealing with Parliament and its relationship to the law--and Leading Works in Public Law (Routledge 2024 with Patrick O'Brien).

https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/benjamin-y-yong/

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