The Rise of Midocracy: How <scp>NPM</scp> and Post‐ <scp>NPM</scp> Reform Ideas Recombine in Contemporary Public Organizations

ABSTRACT This paper introduces and conceptualizes midocracy as an emergent organizational form in the public sector, characterized by the growth and dominance of a professionalized administrative middle layer. The study argues that midocracy draws on elements associated with both New Public Management (NPM) and post‐NPM reform agendas. While administration is essential for coordination, we show how its unchecked expansion can lead to self‐reinforcing dynamics that distance governance from core operations. Midocracy, we contend, reflects a shift from service delivery to symbolic value signaling, strategic abstraction, and polycentric goal‐setting. Our contribution is both conceptual and diagnostic, offering midocracy as a framework for understanding contemporary administrative expansion and its implications for public sector legitimacy and performance. Finally, we relate and critically examine different explanatory accounts of administrative expansion, highlighting how they interact within the dynamics of midocracy.