Navigating the eye of the storm: policy conflict and bureaucratic policymaking in Australia and Canada

Bureaucrats play an inherently political role in policymaking, particularly in domains like climate change, where policies may face sociopolitical backlash imposing unusually high pressure on policymaking. Yet, it is unclear exactly how bureaucrats respond to backlash, and whether and how they find new ways to exert policymaking influence despite broader policy conflict. We examine how bureaucrats respond to climate policy backlash by developing and applying a heuristic of six bureaucratic practices used to exert policymaking influence, through in-depth expert interviews (n = 68) in two cases of backlash against national carbon pricing: Australia (2011-2022) and Canada (2018-2023). We find that bureaucrats leveraged institutionalized advantages, including ownership of administrative processes (procedure-steering) and long-term perspective (time-biding), to maintain policymaking influence in response to backlash. Over the longer term, bureaucrats’ responses to conflict diverged, with bureaucratic practices increasingly used to push for greater climate ambition in Australia, but remaining unchanged in Canada. We suggest that long-term bureaucratic reactions to policy conflict depend on their underlying perceptions of policy instability, internalization of conflict, and misalignment with the preferences of politicians. Overall, we reveal complex practices through which bureaucrats can advance policymaking activities crucial for the public good, even in times of political gridlock.