Like all who have served before him, President
George W. Bush will seek to put his stamp on the sprawling
executive branch establishment, which today includes 14 Cabinet
departments, more than 60 independent agencies, and over 1.7
million federal civil service employees. But the President faces
intense pressure from critics of the appointment process, including
the public administration academic community, who assert that he
should reduce the number of appointees.
It
is commonplace for such critics to argue that political appointees
are, at best, taking up space and getting in each others' way and,
at worst, interfering with the expert workings of the finely honed
career civil service. In particular, critics in the public
administration community contend that political appointments have
grown in number for questionable reasons; that political appointees
are less expert than career executives, in part because they are
selected for reasons other than competence; and that other
democracies succeed with far fewer appointees.
President Bush should ignore these
assertions, which rest on misconceptions about how the American
political appointment system works and how the career civil service
personnel system operates. Like most other misconceptions, these
are based on limited data and are sorely in need of historical
context and empirical verification. There is sufficient evidence
in historical analyses, survey research, and interviews of career
and political government executives to demonstrate that the
American federal executive branch, which combines a unique mix of
"in-and-out" as well as career executives, actually works better
and is more effective than the alternatives. Extending the career
personnel system to include additional positions farther up the
civil service hierarchy would do more harm than good. Evidence
suggests, in fact, that it would make more sense to abolish civil
service tenure than to extend it.
President Bush should not only resist
calls to slash the numbers of political appointees; he should also
follow the examples set by Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and
Ronald Reagan and select political appointees who have substantial
and varied experience and who share his political agenda. The
President should take steps to mold his appointees into a team who
will work across traditional agency and departmental barriers to
implement his policies. And he should empower a bipartisan
commission to examine and recommend substantial reform of the
existing civil service system.
THE INCREASING ROLE OF POLITICAL
APPOINTEES
The
growth of the American political appointment system reflects
changes in the political environment of the executive branch.
Within that environment, presidential political appointees have a
vital role that most career executives would not relish playing.
Increasingly, however, misconceptions about how the political
appointment system works are clouding the debate over President
George W. Bush's prerogative to make numerous appointments.
Misconception #1: The number of
political appointees has grown because of a lack of faith in the
bureaucracy's abilities.
Specifically, it is charged, the number of political appointees
tapped to manage government agencies has grown in recent years not
because American Presidents fear that bureaucrats may not handle
their work competently, but because of their disagreements with
agencies over policy and their desire to match the broader
political environment.
Through the first half of America's
history, government jobs were awarded in part to do the work of
government, but also in part to reward and hold together a winning
electoral coalition. Federal jobs were used, at least to some
degree, to reward campaign workers. Save for the New Deal years,
when new agencies were staffed outside the merit system (with no
apparent loss of competence), the numbers of political appointees
declined fairly steadily, from the official development of the
merit system in 1883 to the 1950s. To some extent, the decline in
the numbers of political appointees reflected the interests of the
politicians, who lacked the capacity to staff and oversee an
ever-larger executive branch.
This
changed with the Eisenhower Administration. The New Deal growth of
government had made the very existence of many federal agencies
controversial and public administration more ideological. As
President Eisenhower wrote of the civil service in a letter to
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, "almost without exception,
these individuals reached these high administrative offices through
a process of selection based upon their devotion to the
socialistic doctrine and bureaucratic controls practiced over the
past two decades." The same words could have
been written by President Richard Nixon or President Reagan, though
not by the pre-New Deal Presidents. Accordingly, President
Eisenhower used political appointees to push the executive branch
to implement his ideology. His Administration created the Schedule
C personnel classification for policymaking positions.
Traditionally, partisan supporters were
placed where they could do little harm to government while at the
same time remaining politically active in their local communities.
Such reward-based patronage was concentrated in the U.S. Postal
Service. In the modern presidency, however, patronage moved from
political parties aiming to reward partisans to Presidents aiming
to lead government. Politically appointed positions went from
postal to policy, from noncontroversial departments and agencies to
highly controversial ones, and from the field to Washington.
This
process intensified during the Johnson and Nixon presidencies,
which created a plethora of controversial regulatory and social
welfare agencies. As the controversy surrounding government grew,
so too did the numbers of political appointees. George Mason
University political scientist James P. Pfiffner reports, for
example, that the number of Executive Level I-IV (Senate-confirmed)
officials rose from 221 in 1960 to 590 in 1992 (an increase of 167
percent). Schedule C appointments grew from 911 in 1976 to 1,699 in
1992 (86 percent). The Senior Executive Service (SES) was created
in 1979, and noncareer SES slots increased from 582 in 1980 to 704
in 1992 (21 percent).
These figures suggest a steady increase in
the numbers of appointees through the entire Great Society and
post-Great Society periods, at least until the Clinton
Administration. Of course, more political
positions did not appear at the same time for each agency. The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was created by
President Nixon, was not "politicized" at first, since Democrats
and Republicans agreed on environmental policy. EPA became
politicized when the Reagan Administration attempted to reorient
it. Such politicization involved both increasing the numbers of
political appointees and altering career-noncareer relations in
government.
As
one career executive who served in the EPA lamented to this author
in a 1987 interview on executive branch operations:
Once you work closely with an
Admin-istrator in this new vogue, you get identified. Before, the
people who worked for [Ford Administrator Russell] Train kept
working for [Carter Administrator Douglas] Costle. That appears to
be the trend now, that [Reagan Administrator Lee] Thomas's people
are now identified with him, and they're being placed around the
Agency.
In
contrast, until the Clinton Administration, the U.S. Forest Service
had only a single political appointee, traditionally from its
career SES ranks. Interviews suggest that former President
Clinton's selection of the Chief of the Forest Service and the
Deputy Chief in charge of the National Forest System from outside
the organization represented "politicization," even though these
officials are career federal employees. The Clinton Administration,
particularly Vice President Al Gore, made a legitimate political
decision to change the Forest Service by emphasizing the
preservation mission and de-emphasizing timber harvesting.
President Bush is free to make a different political decision.
Misconception #2: There is no reason
for the number of political appointees to grow as the career civil
service shrinks.
Brookings Institution public administration scholar Paul C. Light
suggests that it is unfair that the number of political appointees
has grown even as the size of the federal civil service as a whole
has stabilized and, during the Clinton years, shrunk. As noted
above, a President makes his political appointments in part to
force change upon career executives. A President who wants to
change an agency is more likely to make larger numbers of political
appointments there.
This
is not the whole picture, however, and the relevant guide to the
number of political appointees is not the size of the executive
branch, but rather the number of political actors with whom a
President must contend. For better or worse, political appointments
are not the only growing employment category in Washington. As Table 1 shows, through the Great
Society period and afterwards, the entire Washington political
class mushroomed.
-
The numbers of political appointees
doubled from the 1960s to the 1990s, but the number of
congressional staff more than tripled over the same period.
-
Political action committee (PAC)
contributions, unmeasurable until the early 1970s, grew by a factor
of seven thereafter.
- The number of associations tripled from
1960 to 1990, and the Washington-based press corps burgeoned as
well.
IS MERIT MERITABLE?
Along with the myths and misperceptions
about the political personnel system are others about the nature
and role of the merit system and what would happen if that system
were replaced.
Misconception #5: If tenure protection
were removed from the executive branch, Presidents would replace
large numbers of career civil servants with political appointees,
with disastrous results.
Superficially, this appears to makes sense. After all, politicians
want to win elections, and one way to continue winning elections is
to reward supporters. As Tammany Hall political boss George
Washington Plunkitt predicted nearly a century ago, without a
spoils system political participation would plummet. The reason:
Unless campaign workers can get government jobs, they will wonder
"what is...in it for them."
The
popular conception of spoils-prone politicians gives a misleading
view of public service, or at least the federal service,
under the spoils system. As numerous scholars
report,
turnover in the 19th century federal civil service after a party
change in Administrations normally affected less than one-third of
the positions, with almost no turnover in jobs that required
expertise. Why was there such stability in a system in which, in
theory, political leaders could replace all the government workers
with their own partisans?
Fears of massive turnover without merit
system controls rest on two assumptions: (1) that politicians do
not care about government service and (2) that they have unlimited
time and capacity to take over government bureaucracies. Regarding
the first assumption, as Michael Nelson has pointed out, even in
the 19th century, more voters sent mail than delivered it. And
successful politicians know that massive turnover in the civil
service will disrupt government service, thus endangering their
reelection.
Regarding time and expertise, scholarship
shows that modern political parties lack the expertise to staff the
executive branch, and modern Presidents do not relish taking up the
chore. Rather, Presidents see political appointment as wading
through a political minefield policed by networks of hostile (and
friendly) interest groups, congressional staffers, and reporters
who are far more numerous and aggressive than they were in the old
days of reward-based patronage. A single controversial appointment
can divert attention from the President's agenda for months or harm
the operation of an agency for years. Even successful appointments
disappoint the politicians and interests that were not selected.
Quite simply, if tenure were removed, Presidents would be unlikely
to raid the civil service because they lack the desire, incentives,
and capacity to do so.
Misconception #6: Tenured bureaucracies
are representative.
Taken as a whole, the American federal civil service is
remarkably representative; yet individual organizations do not
necessarily represent the public will in their stated missions.
Government agencies generally are staffed by people who believe in
their agency's mission; thus, career officials in military
organizations are more conservative than the nation as a whole,
while those in social welfare and regulatory agencies are more
liberal than the nation as a whole.
That
public managers believe in their agency missions is not a bad
thing, but dedication to mission can easily become "groupthink."
Political appointees often serve a vital role in pressing external
views on government bureaucracies to assure that they reflect
changing public needs and demands. This is acknowledged by
many career executives, who often ally with political appointees to
reform their agencies. As one longtime career SES official told the
author:
People say that political appointees don't
support the public interest, but I think that most of the time they
actually have a more strategic view of the public interest, one
less tied to the agenda of the organization. Conversely, senior
careerists have a strategic view of their organization (as opposed
to the notion of the public) tied to its narrower mission. These
views are often seen as conflicting when they actually have every
potential for being mutually supportive and synergistic.
As
Ludwig von Mises wrote in Bureaucracy
over half a century ago, the American bureaucracy is more open to
new ideas than its European counterparts because of the influence
of political appointees. This particular form of American
exceptionalism seems to work rather well. Indeed, the few measures
that have been proffered suggest that the American federal service
works very well compared with the foreign alternatives; and perhaps
as a result, it earns more trust from the public.
Misconception #7: The merit system
works, or at least can be made to work, better than the
alternatives.
This myth seems to be accepted by some personnel specialists,
some public administration professors, and civil service unions,
but by relatively few others. The federal personnel system lacks
legitimacy among government managers--its most important and
knowledgeable audience.
As
University of Georgia political scientist Hal Rainey writes,
comparative surveys show that "[r]oughly 90 percent of the public
managers agreed that their organization's personnel rules make it
hard to fire poor managers and hard to reward good managers with
higher pay, while 90 percent of the business managers disagreed." The
author's 1994 survey of Washington career executives and 1996
survey of Clinton political appointees find overwhelming agreement
among each group that the personnel system is broken. Asked to
agree or disagree whether "personnel rules make it too difficult to
hire personnel," 80 percent of political appointees and 68 percent
of career officials agreed, and more than 30 percent of each group
strongly agreed. Asked whether "personnel rules make it too
difficult to fire personnel," 88 percent of political appointees
and 83 percent of career managers agreed, with more than half of
each group in strong agreement.
Overall, there is considerable pent-up
anger at a personnel system that is too slow and too unresponsive.
As one career executive complained to this author, his office "had
been without a manager for almost a year.... [S]taff people rotated
through on temporary promotions and they were competitors for the
position." There was all manner of hate and discontent and ill will
when the position finally was permanently filled.
It
is not uncommon for people to report waits of over two years to
fill positions, with even longer and riskier time periods needed to
deal with poor performers. In a recent U.S. Office of Personnel
Management study titled Poor Performers in Government, surveys of
federal managers found that they considered few of their
subordinates to be poor performers. The OPM study estimates that
only between 2.8 percent and 4.6 percent of federal employees are
poor performers. This may be an underestimate, since respondents
might be reluctant to admit the presence of poor performers in
their domains to a phone interviewer. Bureaucratic lore suggests
that poor performers concentrate in "turkey farms." Managers of
such places would probably be reluctant to report their status as
such. Nevertheless, the OPM study serves a useful purpose in
strongly suggesting, if not proving, that there are far fewer poor
performers in government than the public suspects and probably no
more than in the private sector.
But
why would the public suspect that there were large numbers
of poor performers in government? And more important, why would
many public managers concur in that belief? I suggest two
reasons:
First, the cumbersome character of
the federal personnel system makes it very difficult to deal with
problem employees when they are found. The OPM study finds that
only 7.5 percent of the managers of poor performers moved to
reassign, demote, or remove those employees, and 77.8 percent
reported that such efforts had no effect. As the interviews of OPM
officials show, managers who take action against problem employees
must be prepared to pay a serious price for doing so in terms of
time and the risk of lawsuits. Perhaps for these reasons, while OPM
estimates that there are approximately 70,000 poor performers in
government, between September 1997 and September 1998, only 159
federal employees were removed by performance-based personnel
actions; another 1,693 were removed for reasons other than
performance, such as breaking the law.
Federal managers put up with poor
performers or try to act informally to improve their work, and
rarely resort to using the federal personnel system because it is
simply too cumbersome. This relative inability to act against a
small number of poor performers may have the effect of making that
small number more vexing to managers who try to solve problems
rather than ignoring them. Such discomfort with the traditional
federal civil service largely explains why the Federal Aviation
Administration, Internal Revenue Service, and other agencies are
moving to create their own alternatives to the merit system.
Second, among both the public at
large and in much of the civil service, tenure lacks
legitimacy. After all, few voters have tenure, so it is not
surprising that citizens begrudge guaranteed lifetime employment to
their public servants, whether those servants are bureaucrats,
teachers, or university professors.
The
movement against tenure is cross-sectional and international.
Notably, tenure is as likely to be attacked by pro-government
Democrats anxious to restore the legitimacy of government as by
Republicans wanting to prune government. In 1996, for example,
then-Georgia Governor Zell Miller, a so-called New Democrat, pushed
through a law making new state government hires "at-will"
employees. Early indications are that the new system has enabled
public managers to separate poor performers more easily and without
undue politicization. It seems likely that, increasingly,
government organizations will adopt new organization models based
on outcomes rather than traditional hierarchies with guaranteed
lifetime employment. Perhaps by embracing more fluid personnel
forms, the federal government can increase respect for the civil
service.
TOWARD VALUES-BASED CIVIL SERVICE
For
over 100 years, public administration theory and practice have
supported government bureaucracies staffed by tenured officials
serving for long periods in order to maximize expertise and
minimize political interference in service delivery. This was
thought to be necessary because politicians otherwise would be
tempted to treat the civil service as their plaything, using
government jobs to reward supporters. As the foregoing discussion
shows, such arguments are questionable. Even during the era of a
federal spoils system, relatively long service in government was
common--particularly in positions requiring expertise--because
politicians wanted government to function and because they lacked
the capacity to take over government agencies.
What
was true in the 19th and 20th centuries is even more true today,
since executive positions in 21st century government will require
considerable expertise and because political appointments will be
made in the full glare of media, most notably The Washington
Post, to be scrutinized by a vast array of interest groups,
congressional committees, and independent counsels. Indeed, it may
be that political factors and capacity rather than legal
constraints on the numbers of political appointees limited their
growth in the past to a fraction of that of congressional staffs
and interest groups.
Further, the evidence suggests that
appointees who do survive the political personnel system are
qualified and do help their agencies navigate the shoals of the
political system--a risky role that most career officials would
prefer not to have. Those who want fewer political appointees in
the executive branch must face facts: Even if the executive branch
were to downsize its political component, Congress would not likely
follow suit. Any President who slashed the number of executive
branch political appointees would be committing unilateral
disarmament in the inter-branch conflict.
Accordingly, a tenured bureaucracy seems
less necessary than ever to assure government outputs and guard
against undue presidential power; but the complex personnel
processes set up to protect the career service from politics have
retarded the efficient management of government. By allowing a
small number of poorly performing employees to continue service,
moreover, the tenure-based civil service system has falsely and
perniciously stigmatized civil servants as too incompetent to
survive without tenure protection.
As
George Mason University political scientist Hugh Heclo pointed out
more than 20 years ago, the term "civil service" has come to mean
cumbersome personnel rules rather than civic institutions. America
can do better. Just as both career and political officials are part
of the civil service, neither career nor political officials have a
monopoly on idealism or on venality. Yet the personnel system is
based largely on the theory that crass motives dominate, especially
for political officials.
For
both career and appointed officials, what is needed is a public
personnel system based less in law and more in norms and values in
support of agency missions and aligned with notions of public
interest. As James P. Pfiffner and Paul C. Light both
suggest, such a public service ethic already exists among
government officials and government contractors. Political
appointees also want to create public value. What is lacking,
however, is a personnel system oriented to permitting officials,
both career and political, to manage well.
In
order to safeguard his own power and, more important, to continue
the effective functioning of the American government, President
Bush should:
1. Resist calls to cut back the numbers
of political appointees, who account for less than two-tenths
of 1 percent of the total civil service. Until such time as
congressional staffs, in particular, are cut back in size, it would
be foolhardy for any President to reduce the numbers of his own
executive branch helpers.
2. Spend substantial time, effort, and
political capital to select as political appointees people of
competence and distinction who share his vision of governing.
As comparisons of the Carter and Reagan Administrations suggest,
more effective leaders appoint people of strength who share their
goals and then empower those appointees to achieve.
3. Make efforts to mold his appointees
into a team to increase their effectiveness and enhance their
ability to cooperate across agency lines. Presidents Reagan and
Eisenhower did this successfully. To the degree that President Bush
can push his appointees to work and think as a team, his
Administration will be more effective.
4. Develop a civil service reform
agenda to enhance the performance of the civil service for his own
Administration and for future Presidents. Rather than react to
the administrative agenda of others, President Bush should ensure
that career government executives, political appointees, and the
public all agree with him that it is time to reassess and
substantially weaken civil service tenure. Accordingly, the
President should empower a bipartisan commission to study
alternatives to the conventional civil service system and submit a
proposal to Congress no later than the middle of his first term.
Several recent U.S. Office of Personnel Management Directors, such
as Scotty Campbell under President Carter, James King under
President Clinton, and Constance Horner and Donald Devine under
President Reagan, have significant knowledge of this issue and
could make worthwhile contributions to such a commission. Experts
such as former Federal Executive Institute Director Curt Smith also
could contribute.