Biography
Michael W. Bauer holds the Chair in Public Administration at the Florence of Transnational Governance at the EUI. Michael studied German philology, history, and social sciences at the universities of Mannheim, Frankfurt am Main, and Vienna before obtaining a Diploma in Social Sciences from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He later earned a Master of Arts in European Political and Administrative Science from the College of Europe in Bruges (Tocqueville Promotion). He completed his Ph.D. in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in 2000.
His academic career includes positions as a Senior Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, and professorships at the University of Konstanz and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He has held numerous visiting and part-time academic positions at institutions across Europe, including ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, the Universidade da Coruña, and the Turkish-German University in Istanbul
His research focuses on European and international public administration, multilevel governance, and democratic bureaucracy. Recently, he has explored the impact of populist government on public administration systems and the ethical responsibilities of civil servants under illiberal rule. He is the Principal Investigator of the Florence team for the EU-funded Horizon research project RADAR (Renewing Administration through Democratic Anchorage Reforms).
In 2023, Michael received the Christopher Pollitt Award for his article “How do international bureaucrats affect policy outputs? Studying administrative influence strategies in international organizations” (IRAS, 2021). He was also recognised for co-authoring the most downloaded article in Governance in 2023 for “Under what conditions does bureaucracy matter in the making of global public policies?” (Governance, 36(4), 1313-1333).
His publications include The European Commission of the Twenty-First Century and Dismantling Public Policies: Strategies, Constraints, and Outcomes (Oxford University Press), as well as
Democratic Backsliding and Public Administration: How Populists in Government Transform State Bureaucracies (Cambridge University Press). His work has appeared in leading journals such as Public Administration Review, Governance, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Journal of European Public Policy, West European Politics, Public Administration, and International Studies Review.