Responding to changing political preferences is a democratic imperative. Better-resourced bureaucracies should be more able to comply with new political directions, irrespective of their willingness to do so. This paper examines how bureaucratic capacity affects responsiveness. It posits that slack resources (spare organisational capabilities and assets) will:

1. help bureaucracies to detect signals from politicians, develop change programs and secure agreement among different internal constituencies,
2. decrease bureaucrats’ hesitance at over-committing to new policy assignments in volatile environments. This should lead to more precise commitments on timeframes for delivering requested changes, and
3. provide a more-or-less accessible stock of resources for implementing changes while maintaining prior commitments, resulting in more expeditious implementation.

Key findings

• Better-resourced bureaucracies should be more able to comply with new political directions, irrespective of their willingness to do so.
• As bureaucratic capacity is sunk into implementing prior policy commitments, responding to new political signals will depend, much more specifically, on public servants possessing adequate slack resources.
• Possession of slack resources significantly increases the likelihood of bureaucracies consenting to program changes requested by parliament.
• Public servants with slack commit to more precise timelines for implementation.
• Once committed, bureaucracies with increasing slack complete their assignments more expeditiously.