Bureaucracy in liberal democracies is plural in contrast to populism, which represents the "real people", so populists must reshape it according to their ideological needs. This situation reduce the plurality of the bureaucracy and thereby contribute to democratic decline. For the purpose of the research, we used the descriptive method to define the concept of populism, bureaucracy and the slippage of democracy and their mutual influence. We have presented the strategies, populist management, purposes and goals implemented by populist politics towards the bureaucracy and other independent institutions of public administration. With the case study, we highlighted the strategies, goals and examples of populist management towards the bureaucracy and other independent institutions on the example of Hungary and Slovenia and examined the possibility of a slippage of democracy. We also examined the populist political communication of governments, the Fidesz party and the SDS party. We found that in both selected cases, populisms have similar strategies and ways of populist political management, to achieve the goals of populist policies towards the bureaucracy. The personnel aspect of the two studied populisms was focused on the recruitment of personnel loyal to the implementation of populist politics, which leads to democratic regression when pluralism is eliminated. The subjugation of other independent institutions was deeper in Hungary, which is the result of greater concentration of political power. In the case of Hungary, we found that the depth of changes implemented by populist politics makes it difficult to change the government in the upcoming democratic elections, unlike in Slovenia, where the competitiveness of the elections is not threatened. The work, which intervenes in the study of the functioning of populist politics towards the bureaucracy, aims to emphasize the importance of this issue, which can lead to the deterioration or slippage of democracy through soft methods.
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