This, I think, is an indicator that the elected officials (and their direct appointees) have diddly-squat to do with the governance of the country. The UK is governed almost entirely at the whim of the civil service, and I can imagine that something similar holds for all other countries.
Governing a country is a hard job and to expect ministers, whose briefs change every year or two, to do a good job is ridiculous. So they rely on the civil service, who have years of their careers based around governance over individual topics.
You can see this, for example, in the way that UK governments are almost always more authoritarian than oppositions. As soon as they become under the jurisdiction of the civil service, opinions change and the agenda of the previous 'government' is openly advanced regardless of what the new party said in opposition. Once you're actually in Whitehall, I could imagine that your world view changes as you become immersed in a very closed system. The current government came into power claiming to be wanting to repeal the liberty-removing legislation that the previous government imposed. And here they are a few years on, misusing that legislation, defending it and wanting to impose more of their 'own'.
Governing a country is a hard job and to expect ministers, whose briefs change every year or two, to do a good job is ridiculous. So they rely on the civil service, who have years of their careers based around governance over individual topics.
You can see this, for example, in the way that UK governments are almost always more authoritarian than oppositions. As soon as they become under the jurisdiction of the civil service, opinions change and the agenda of the previous 'government' is openly advanced regardless of what the new party said in opposition. Once you're actually in Whitehall, I could imagine that your world view changes as you become immersed in a very closed system. The current government came into power claiming to be wanting to repeal the liberty-removing legislation that the previous government imposed. And here they are a few years on, misusing that legislation, defending it and wanting to impose more of their 'own'.