Rikki J. Dean

Rikki Dean is Research Fellow in the Democratic Innovations Research Unit at Goethe University Frankfurt. His PhD on 'Democratising Bureaucracy' at the London School of Economics was awarded the Richard Titmuss Prize for Outstanding Scholarship. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and Université Libre de Bruxelles. His research focuses on the relationship of democracy and administration, new forms of citizen participation, and political actors' democratic preferences. You can find out more about his work here.

Democratic Resilience through Public Administration?

Public administration is the largest part of the democratic state, but its role in maintaining and protecting democratic governance is mostly overlooked. It is largely viewed as simply the neutral process of implementing democratic decisions taken in the legislature, ignoring the politics of administration. Once we view administration as a political space, the question that naturally follows is how to ensure it is democratic. This presentation explores that question by examining administrative relationships both to elected representatives and citizens. Can a democratic administration constrain authoritarian representatives, and should it? How do public encounters between citizens and the state shape citizen support for democracy?