In the Ottawa Citizen, U of Ottawa professor Errol Mendes expresses his thinly-veiled outrage over Stephen Harper’s attempts to wrest control of public policy from a deeply-embedded shadow government of unelected bureaucrats:
The proper role of the federal public service is to provide fearless advice to the government on policies that are critical to the future of all Canadians. The government has the right to decide whether to accept that advice or reject it and then to expect the federal public service to loyally implement the government’s policy decisions if they are lawful.
What the government can’t do, if it does not want to torture Canadian democracy, is to force public servants to develop and promote policies they do not accept as in the interests of Canadians, and then pretend the public service is fully supportive of the ideologically driven policies.
Yes, you read that right: it’s up to public servants to decide whether they will accept or not accept the policies of an elected government, and they have a right to determine whether or not a particular policy is “in the interests of Canadians.” As for the PM, he’s getting in the way, and overstepping his bounds:
This is not the first time the government has sought to undermine the critical task of the public service to provide fearless advice.
What Mendes euphemistically calls “advice,” of course, rational people would call “unelected, partisan bureaucrats opposing and stifling the policies of an elected Conservative government”:
There is a deep chill in many departments such as Environment, Justice, Foreign Affairs and CIDA, where objective research and advice by department officials on issues such as the real dangers of climate change, deeply counterproductive use of mandatory sentencing, and unbalanced foreign policies and foreign aid are stopped from ever seeing the light of day. In addition, the Prime Minister’s Office vets almost all external communication, resulting in Canadians not being able to test the fearless advice offered by public servants against the destructive ideologies of perhaps Canada’s most ideologically driven government.
Mendes asks Canadians to join him in conflating democracy and behind-the-scenes bureaucratic rulership:
The undermining of the public service of Canada should be one of the most important ballot box issues in the coming federal election
Yes, well, if millions of Canadian voters were CHRT Tribunal Members like Mr. Mendes was, or if they had been hired by a Liberal prime minister as a senior advisor in the Privy Council Office to “handle diversity in the public service,” perhaps they might consider the matter of entrenching the back-door powers of the unelected public service as being one of the most important ballot box issues. As it stands, they seem to prefer that their government be an elected one.
Love your country, fear your government, beware of bureaucrats.
I don’t know about you, EBD, but I DO consider “entrenching the back-door powers of the unelected public service as being one of the most important ballot box issues”, although maybe not the way Mr. Mendez does.
The usual suspect, Prof. Mendes, complains that
“the Prime Minister’s Office vets almost all external communication, resulting in Canadians not being able to test the fearless advice offered by public servants against the destructive ideologies of perhaps Canada’s most ideologically driven government.”
I’d always understood that the role of the civil service was to give “fearless advice” to the government, not to set itself up as an opposition think-tank.
Wait a minute. Don’t those first two paragraphs openly contradict each other?
The first paragraph insists that the bureaucracy provide ‘fearless advice’ .Heck, I suppose that’s better than ‘authoritarian advice’ or ‘sneering advice’ or…why not just drop the adjective? At any rate – their task is to provide advice. Then, Mendes says that the govt may accept or reject this advice. And THEN…that bureaucracy must carry out the will of the people/govt..even if its esteemed advice has been rejected.
But in paragraph two, Mendes contradicts this acceptance of the will of government, and insists that the government CANNOT put through policies which that same bureaucracy rejects!
But who was elected to govern? The civil service or the legislature? And who is ideologically driven? I suggest it’s that same ‘fearless civil service’.
I prefer an elected legislature, Mr. Mendes, and reject an ideological civil service, unelected and unaccountable, acting as the ‘de facto’ government.
This is ABSOLUTELY OUTRAGEOUS!!! Who the hell does Errol Mendes think he is?!? He can sugar coat his argument all he wants but in point of fact what he is saying is that unelected government bureaucrats are the ones who should ultimately be deciding what public policies go forth and which ones get squashed.
What an elitist, undemocratic tyrant Mendes is!!!
Indeed, let’s have an election on this. Iggy & Rae & Mendes & Mallick & Other Like-Minded ELITISTS versus Stephen Harper & The Conservatives. Let the Canadian People decide!
“What the government can’t do, if it does not want to torture Canadian democracy, is to force public servants to develop and promote policies they do not accept as in the interests of Canadians, and then pretend the public service is fully supportive of the ideologically driven policies.”
Where do we start with this?
Human rights tribunals, forced multiculturalism, forced bilingualism, “healing circles”, money wasted ad infinitum.
A perfect insight into the entrenched mindset of an elitist bureaucracy that believes that public elections are merely a distraction they have to endure every so often before they continue on their path of state control of every aspect of the lives of the citizens for whom they have such great disdain.
Personally I believe half of all civil servants above the level of file clerk should be replaced every five years.
I seem to remember something about Harper getting into sh!t for stating that enacting a conservative agenda was gonna be hard, considering the liberals entrenched in the bureaucracy, judiciary and media.
Or did I imagine that?
Syncro
Prof. Mendes is one of the reasons that the social sciences have become a laughing stock. Forever insulated from the cut and thrust of the real world, forever attached to the government teat, forever surrounded by lifetime academics and government-financed activists who share his simplistic views of the world.
We should slash funding for the silly sciences in half and plow the money into the hard sciences like engineering, medicine and the places where it actually does some good rather than merely funding these mediocrities.
You nailed it, ET. It’s just thinly-disguised verbal chicanery. First Mendes writes:
and then –
Huh? Are we all clear now about whether the elected government or unelected bureaucrats have the final say about public policy?
I don’t like the federal civil service bureaucracy any more than the rest of you, having had the misfortune of working for it for a few years, but I don’t think he’s saying what you think he’s saying:
“What the government can’t do…is to force public servants to develop and promote policies they do not accept as in the interests of Canadians, and then pretend the public service is fully supportive of the ideologically driven policies.” (emphasis added).
It sounds to me like what he’s saying is that the government shouldn’t say that the civil service supports policies that they do not, in fact support, even if the civil service is bound to implement and promote them. I don’t think he’s arguing that the civil service trumps the PMO, he’s saying the PMO hasn’t the moral right to misrepresent the service’s opinion of the government’s policies.
Which is a whole different kettle of stupid – I don’t give a fig what the civil service’s opinions are on anything. Their job is to execute the decisions of the Parliament and the PMO. This “advice” crap is the domain of a very small number of expert analysts, not every jumped-up desk jockey with delusions of grandeur.
Daniel, if you read the entire article in the Citizen it’s quite clear that Mendes’ argument, and his outrage, is not driven by the idea that the PM “pretend(s) the public service is fully supportive of the ideologically driven policies“. That statement is a watch-the-hand distraction, IMO. He’s not mad about Stephen Harper “pretending” anything, he’s mad that the bureaucrats’ opinions on highly political, highly partisan issues like “the real dangers of climate change” and the “deeply counterproductive use of mandatory sentencing” is being treated as mere “advice.”
Mendes is a Liberal donor, a former member of the PCO under Paul Martin, a former CHRT Tribunal member, and he’s clearly stumping for unelected, embedded, anti-Conservative bureaucrats to have greater powers. He wants a publicly *campaigning* bureaucracy, so that Canadians can “test the fearless advice offered by public servants against the destructive ideologies of perhaps Canada’s most ideologically driven government.”.
Daniel,
The problem ( as PM Harper put it) is a leftist civil service that will fight tooth and nail to not implement ANY Conservative policy.
It makes the series ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ even more prophetic..
Mr. Mendes seems to suffer from fundamental confusion about the role of the public service.
One would hope that their advice is fearless,
in particular because noone outside of Cabinet
should ever know what advice has been given.
The public service has, properly, knowledge of
a more-or-less technical sort, which is not likely
found in the great majority of politicians. It is,
after all, our policy, and a good policy, to
assign the most successful of politicians various
ministries in turn. The highly competent Jean
Chretien had served in several ministries before
he became PM, for example.
The public service has, or should have, detailed
knowledge of the workings of various policies and
the details of the implementation of various laws,
beyond what can reasonably be expected of most
Cabinet ministers. This, too,
enters or should enter their advice.
While “their job is to execute the decisions of the Parliament and the PMO” another part of the work
of the civil service is also
to see that the Cabinet brings forth the best and
most practicable legislation, within a
broad policy framework set forth by the Cabinet.
The TV series “Yes Minister” (based in part on
real events at Westminster) shows clearly the
dynamic among the Cabinet, and the senior public
servants (mostly Deputy Ministers and the Clerk of the Privy Council).
Stephen Harper seems to have been quite successful
on managing this process; hence no doubt Mr. Mendes’s distemper.
Errol Mendes wants his cake and to eat it too…he wants to be part of an unelected, elite group that has the power to effect social re-engineering without ever having to get a mandate from Canadians.
He wants to be part of a group of people that want to dictate to you how you should live your life; how to think, how to act and how to talk..
..then, if you don’t follow along with the pogrom..er..program, there is Mr. Mendes – ready to switch hats – and sit in judgment of your perceived transgressions.
People such as Mr. Mendes are very dangerous and should be watched very carefully..don’t let one word of his pass without inspection,introspection and analysis.
Great post EBD. I thought your mention of “a deeply-embedded shadow government of unelected bureaucrats” was smack on the money. And that shadow government is by and large a Liberal government.
I’m afraid universities are not what they used to be, which is a terrible shame. As long as these once venerable institutions continue to promote pea-brained left wing idiots like Mendes, their decline will continue.
Me thinks Steve should make Mendes’ wish come true by having all senior snivel servants (department heads) be asked to resign each time there is a change of government.
EBD
[….He’s not mad about Stephen Harper “pretending” he’s got the bureaucracy onside, he’s mad that the bureaucrat’s opinions on highly political issues like “the real dangers of climate change” and the “deeply counterproductive use of mandatory sentencing” is being treated as mere “advice,” and isn’t being OBEYED….]
Like justice still cranking out Cukier’s idiot propaganda about the long gun registry.
That LIBRANO who was concerned about the continued employment of the faithful weasels in Miramache, was much more honest.
Enviro-Can still reciting the “Inconvenient truth”.
This Mendes guy has the nerve of a canal horse…..and the intelligence….he had better hope his U of O job has tenure. He obviously prefers the LIBRANO featherbed of the snivel service.
The problem will always be the civil servants in this country, who, regardless of the government in power, will always aim to serve themselves.
The Federal Government, in both stripes, has done a masterful job in keeping their distance from the civil service because it is in their interest to do so…and Governement service suffers because of it…so does the party in power, because of the waste and mismanagement.
Will the current government have the balls to tackle this…I sure hope so.
Daniel, on the off chance you’re correct, I’ve sent Charles Adler a link to this thread and encouraged him to get the Professor on as a guest this week. Then there can be a little back & forth for us all to clearly decipher what he meant.
What a surprise.The university that has a liberal Rock as it’s ‘fearless leader’. A university that has a trifle or so of trouble understanding the concept of free speech,as in Ann Coulter. A university that gives tenure to a professor that wants our soldiers to be tried for war crimes,just because,as in Amil Attar. This university has another fool that is upset with the gov’t for governing,as in Errol Mendes.
The University of Ottawa is a cesspool of ignorance and elitism. If you have a child attending or planning on attending there,do not allow it. It is child abuse.
It’s pretty clear that our universities, much like the civil service are in need of drastic pruning. Like a hedge or an arbour, the old, diseased deadwood chokes out the healthy, vibrant shoots, (ha! was going to call them suckers) resulting in a sickly, overgrown, unresponsive thicket.
Bring in the chainsaws or the Roundup(TM). Now!
Mendes- You first, arsehole! Your privileged, self-importance is a clear symptom of the infestation.
Mendes said “”the Prime Minister’s Office vets almost all external communication, resulting in Canadians not being able to test the fearless advice offered by public servants against the destructive ideologies of perhaps Canada’s most ideologically driven government.””
Just curious – how would Canadians be able to “test the fearless advice” if they are unaware of it? Surely Professor Mendes is not suggesting that we abandon the tradition that the public service advises, then loyally implements the direction of the government? Nowhere in that process is there room for the public servant to speak about the advice given. I’m sure Professor Mendes would agree – if the government in power were not Conservative.
This would be the same Errol Mendes who appeared on multiple news media outlets back when PMSH prorogued parliament. His castigation of the prime minister was shamelessy partisan, and the personal hatred in his tone was palpable.
His little club isn’t running the show, and he has sore-loser-itis. Everyone who feels bad for him, raise your hand.
Perhaps Mr. Mendes should read the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Service.
(http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/hrpubs/TB_851/vec-cve1-eng.asp)
The Code states that “Public servants shall give honest and impartial advice and make all information relevant to a decision available to Ministers.”
However it goes on to state that “Public servants shall loyally implement ministerial decisions, lawfully taken.” The public service is duty bound to carry out the political decisions of the executive branch of government. Whatever their person perspectives may be, they are irrelevant, as the government of the day commands their loyalty. Disloyalty is explicitly unethical under their own code.
A correction,the man I named as Amil Attar is actually Amil Attaran,and surprise,surprise,he and Mendes hang around and both are friends of Mike Danger,AKA fearful leader of the opposition.
Just Google Errol Mendes if you want to keep your blood pressure from falling dangerously low.
He wrote a gem of an article in June, extolling how Liberals could “start to bury the legacy the Harper government has sown in this country”. In a fit of hypocrisy, he titled it: “The Liberals should talk to Canadians about the dangers of petty, partisan politics.” It doesn’t seem to get any more petty or partisan than this boob.
http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1641-bury-the-politics-of-division
It is fundamentally impossible for the civil service not to enter the political arena. They essentially the arena. The public service will always, ALWAYS support the party who will make it larger and give it more money. Hence they will always oppose the Conservative party. The only answer to this problem is to make the civil service so small that its political influence is negligible.
A similar solution exists for the problem of politicians wrecking the country. Get rid of them.
I think that next major form of government that is invented will eliminated public servants as well as politicians.
No doubt about it,this man is an a$$hole. He wrote about PMSH, “Similarly, there is ‘leading from behind’ when it comes to standing up for Canadians’ most cherished democratic and human rights values in the context of bringing home Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay”.
http://globalbrief.ca/blog/2009/09/13/what-happened-to-canada/
When a potus replaces another potus – particularly one from
The opposing party about 50000 civil servants lose their jobs and are replaced in an openly partisan manner. Canada should have a similar practice that way politicians and policy implementers are on the same page and they both have a vested interest in seeing policy succeed.
Indulge me with one more: in the preface to Mendes’ book he acknowledges the contributions of…”author and philosopher Michael Ignatieff”.
I saw no mention of “economist and hockey-dad Stephen Harper” included. Surprise, surprise.
Well, let me try that again… sorry:
It is impossible for the civil service not to enter the political arena. They essentially built the arena. The public service will always, ALWAYS support the party who will make it larger and give it more money. Hence they will always oppose the Conservative party. The only answer to this problem is to make the civil service so small that its political influence is negligible.
A similar solution exists for the problem of politicians wrecking the country. Get rid of them.
I think that next major form of government that is invented will eliminate public servants as well as politicians.
This Mendes dipshit is a Conservative voters best friend. Who does this insufferably, self-important, ideological radical think he is.?. Oh yeah, a Librano… With friends like Mendes, Grandpa Iggster and the Libranos are better off without friends.
Why do all these people who express their desire for Canadian values always seem to be from somewhere other than Canada?
“What the government can’t do, if it does not want to torture Canadian democracy,force public servants to develop and promote policies they do not accept as in the interests of Canadians, and then pretend the public service is fully supportive of the ideologically driven policies.”
That’s the point…most recently highlighted when the Conservatives were claiming Stats Can supported the government making the long form census voluntary. Or previously when bullying Richard Colvin, Dr. Mark Tushingham, Kevin Page, Peter Tinsley, Paul Kennedy, and Linda Keen because they wouldn’t drink the Conservative koolaid.
Gord, I have no reason to doubt you but that 50,000 figure seems rather high, no?
Hey, perhaps you should call Dennis Miller tomorrow and update him on this story?! You can explain it this way: “Imagine an American university professor coming right out, during the tenure of a Republican presidency and Congress and saying that the federal bureaucracy must fearlessly resist any policies that are not in line with the Democrats’ agenda.”
Just imagine the reaction!!!
I can only speak of that which I know, and that would be Environment Canada. You probably don’t care very much if today’s forecast (or tomorrow’s) is formulated or delivered by liberals or conservatives. But you might care a lot more to know whether climate change policy is being filtered by liberals or conservatives.
Well, of course, to get work in the weather service, you pretty much have to be a liberal. If you happened to make the wrong political choice as I did, you’ll be given to understand that your future lies south of the border in private forecasting. Or you can try doing it here in our statist and public-service-dominated culture.
So then, what to do when the government changes from liberal to conservative? Do you fire all the public servants who were liberals under a Liberal government, and through the Mulroney years as well in some cases? Or do you ignore their advice, because sure as the sun rises in the east, they aren’t going to turn into free-thinking conservatives just because PMSH lives at 24 Sussex Drive. They will continue to “advise” the same old same old, and ignore the political bias of the new government, which truth be known, does a pretty good job of ignoring its own political bias at least for public consumption.
The actual outcome is that the government just ignores the advice they find unsound, but this being Canada, they probably do put a bit of pressure on the boffins to get them to say the right things — and I know from long experience you might as well try to teach your cat to talk and play chess.
Most people at my level and slightly above in the government pride themselves on giving our directors and their bosses proper and neutral information so they can pass it on to whoever is our boss in Cabinet to make the decision knowing the pro & cons of each option. When the Liberals were in power. I utterly despised them and made sure I was absent when the big cheese came for a handshake tour. That being said I implemented their decisions no matter what I thought of it, as long as the directives were lawful.
However as in every organization there are people who will lick the more undesirable bits of anatomy in hopes for advancement. One of these became our Director, and they asked my boss to perform an unlawful act in hopes of currying favour with the new Minister. My boss refused and suggested if it was so important that the director could sign the approvals. Seems the director was more interested in getting someone else to take the risk of getting caught and for them to collect the brownie points.
Colin, above, has highlighted the fundamental problem that prof Mendes (and many of the folks on this thread) have missed. The PS is not a monolithic organization; it breaks down, essentially, into two fundamentally separate organizations whose priorities align, more or less, with the two aspects of PS ethics that Murray (the Hun) cited. You have a class of ‘worker bees’ focussed on providing what Mendes calls “fearless advice”; and then you have a superordinate managerial class focussed on “implementing decisions”. The goals and ethics of these two groups rarely align. One group produces ‘advice’; the other ‘massages’ it.
(I was going to make a joke here about ownership of the means of production and the inherently bourgeois nature of management, but it might be misinterpreted.)
Here’s the rub: what’s stopping the “fealess advice” from getting to the political decisionmakers? Is it political bias and/or incompetence and/or self-censorship by the expert level ‘worker bees’? Or is it those same qualities on the part of the managerial class based not on any special personal expertise, but on what they think their political masters want (or more likely, don’t want) to hear?
Finally, look at the incentive structure that determines how managers are selected, compensated and promoted, if you can; it varies quite a bit from organization to organization. See if you can figure out what kind of behaviour it rewards: honest brokership? or risk-aversion?
In short, there’s a reason that most senior positions in the US government are political appointments. Every time the White House changes hands, the lickspittles of previous administrations are dismissed with thanks and replaced by individuals who can be trusted to implement the direction flowing from the Executive level of government, i.e. the part which, in both constitutional monarchies and “republics of laws, not men”, is empowered by the exercise of popular franchise to make the frigging decisions. There’s a reason, in short, that the senior levels of the PS are referred to as “the Mandarinate”. All they’re missing are little pillbox caps with buttons on top.
Prof Mendes, sadly, is a typical modern liberal in that he has attitudes and postures, but no actual information. Perhaps he should live up to his august sinecure, do some research, and learn a few things before beaking off about topics he hasn’t fully explored or understood.
The horse head on the bed routine.
“You will except our fearless {Liberal} advice or else!”
Would not be shocked to find that Munir Sheikh and Prof Mendes are good buddies.
This be the same University of Ottawa (run by Alan Rock) involved in the Coulter controversy? The bullpen for washed up Liberal hacks.
Who the HELL does Errol Mendes think he is — or, more to the point, where the HELL does he think he’s living: in a South American dictatorship?
Of course, having suggested in April that Phil Fontaine would make an excellent governor general and being a big-bucks contributor to the Liberal Party of Canada, we know where his politics lie, very much in the entitled left-lib La-La-Land the Librano$ fostered during their 30-year hegemony.
How dare he tell Canadians that the will of the public service, of which I used to be a member, trumps that of our elected representatives in Parliament? But, what would you expect, when his workplace is Ottawa U., Rock’s and Houle’s fiefdom?
Ignatieff got it wrong: This is where the whiff of sulfur is coming from. Mendes has everything upside down and inside out — the default position of the l/Liberal brain.
Real Dangers of climate change. Unbalanced foreign policies and foreign aid stopped. Translation: Climate change, tax payers money is needed to study this. Mandatory sentencing means social workers have less work. Unbalanced foreign policy means how dare you support the Jews. Foreign aid means if you are going to kill babies you have to do it on your dime. “Fearless advice” words fail me.
The United States has a bunch of civil servants giving fearless advice and that seems to be working well.
The fact that such politically active and mouthy people like Mendes and Attaran are tenured at one of our Universities is something to be concerned about.
They seem to have plenty of coverage by a doting agenda driven media as they play up anti government rhetoric at every opportunity.
Alas, that’s democracy, the people have the power to elect a stronger government in the form of a majority.
At this point we need a Conservative majority, there’s no other leader or party fit to govern and that’s quite evident when we have the MSM taking on the role of unelected Opposition, attempting to prop up a wet noodle leader and party by playing to their agenda of gotcha games and smear attempts.
I just hope we can differentiate between senior public servants who behave in this manner and every day people who needed a job one day and happened to take one with a government department.
“What the government can’t do…is to force public servants to develop and promote policies they do not accept as in the interests of Canadians, and then pretend the public service is fully supportive of the ideologically driven policies.”
I don’t recall any reports about Mr. Harper saying “the census guys are entirely on board with this”. The public servants were not mentioned one way or another, until the resignation of what’s his name. And yes, the government can require the public servants to develop whatever policies Parliament wishes, and it’s not up to the servants to comment other than as advisors to elected representatives.
Let’s try a little thought experiment by subtly changing one of Mendes’ statements:
“What the government can’t do….is to force military officers to develop and promote policies they do not accept as in the interests of Canadians, and then pretend the Canadian military is fully supportive of the ideologically driven policies.”
There are good reasons why democracies do not give this kind of “independence” to their military forces, so why is it such a big deal when elected officials try to exercise some influence over non-military civil servants?
The real reason why idiots like Mendes are so opposed to a voluntary census is that this move rolls back the scope of government, even though it does so to a very tiny degree. This is the government’s real crime in the view of these pathetic excuses for academics.
http://www.thehilltimes.ca/page/view/census-08-02-2010
Sorry if someone already posted this link. It gives further insight in how some public servants think.
“Welcome to Soviet Canada,” she (Armine Yalnizyan, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives) said. “Everybody is in lockdown mode, everybody is scared, nobody knows what’s going to happen next. Everybody is aware that the decision is at a crossroads now whether the reputation of the agency and the calibre of its work will be independent as it was in the past. Everyone is just holding their breath, and nobody is talking officially.”
and
This year, MediaCorp Canada recognized StatsCan as one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers, the National Capital Region’s Top 25 Employers, and Canada’s Best Diversity Employer.
I guess that’s why all of them seem to come from places other than Canada. Perhaps that’s why some of them don’t seem to understand the role of the public servant.
“What the government can’t do, if it does not want to torture Canadian democracy, is to force public servants to develop and promote policies they do not accept”
This is the mindset of technocratic dictatatorship or bureaucratic tyranny. We know who is undermining popular will and vox populi in this nation. These people have a dangerous arrogance and presumption of right.
I always said the public service never accepted a Conservative government and actively work to undermine their mandates.
As for Prof Mendes, I can sense the Che tee shirt he wears under his frumpy lecture suits. Another academic quack who dotes on theories and prefers the safe cloistered environment of sinecured academia to the real world of governmental politics. I also sense he has such a warped sense of democracy he’s virtually useless as a reference to any issue pertaining to one.
I’m not sure this is just an eccentric university professor. There is always a general feeling on the part of Eastern Canadians that politicians and ideas from the West are illegitimate and I think it is generally true that we in the west have more in common north south than east west.
There are many excellent comments above. batb is right, this is where he smell of sulfur is coming from.
Prof Mendes’s comments in a very public way show to what extent the Liberal “we have a right to rule” mentality has infiltrated the public media, academia and governmental organs. His comments exemplify the mentality of a Soviet or Nazi style bureaucracy.
The top people in the civil service should be replaced after a regime change so that they are not able to obstruct or undermine the new governments policies.