Bureaucrat bashing—the negative views expressed about public servants—is a widespread phenomenon. Does this bureaucrat bashing diminish the performance of public servants, as theoretically expected? We answer this question with a preregistered, original survey experiment among Dutch public servants. Our main results show that bureaucrat bashing does not significantly lower self-reported overall performance. Additional analyses confirm our main results. We discuss how our findings provide valuable insights into bureaucrat bashing and its possible effects in the public sector.
Wesdorp et al. (2026) studied this question.