Civil Service Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Civil service systems are composed of individuals who attain their positions by virtue of their performance on competitive examinations or by holding of specific qualifications such as a bachelor’s degree. In contrast to elected officials who are expected to be policy advocates, civil servants are expected to embody expertise and neutral competence. Typical citizens rarely come into direct contact with their elected officials— one reason for this is the often brief tenure of these officials. In contrast, typical citizens have a good chance of frequently personally encountering the multitudes of civil servants who carry out government policies. Civil servants are present at the national, state, and local levels and may hold their positions for long periods of time. While the size of the U.S. civil service has been stable for the past fifty years, and has declined as a percentage of the total U.S. workforce, the growth of state and local civil service workforces has been steady.

Government service was originally understood to be the domain of the educated gentry. Then in 1829, with the age of President Andrew Jackson, as the U.S. government vastly expanded and political parties took their largely present-day composition, the spoils system flourished. In such a system, the supporters of the winning political party receive government jobs or other material rewards such as government contracts. Anyone could do a government job, so the reasoning went, and the United States should have a representative bureaucracy that mirrors the people it serves. Many a U.S. president has lamented the performance of individuals whom he put in office. Harlan Hahn wrote, “Several years after he left the presidency, William Howard Taft endorsed the familiar political maxim that the distribution of patronage often breeds ‘one ingrate and ten enemies’” (368).

The term civil service itself came into common usage in the United States following the assassination of President James Garfield by Charles Guiteau. Guiteau, a Stalwart Republican, was seeking a government post in Paris, and he believed that if he killed Garfield, a Mugwump Republican, Chester Arthur (Garfield’s successor and a fellow Stalwart) would appoint Guiteau to his desired position. Instead, Guiteau was executed for his offense, and the spoils system was condemned with the cry, “Spoils equals murder.” President Chester Arthur signed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which was authored by U.S. senator George H. Pendleton (D-Ohio). Three months later, Democratic governor Grover Cleveland of New York signed into law a bill authored by Republican representative Theodore Roosevelt, which established the first state civil service system. Roosevelt would go on to serve as a U.S. civil service commissioner from 1889 to 1895, his tenure overlapping with the second administration of President Grover Cleveland.

The enactment of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, also known as the Pendleton Act, meant that loyalty to particular politicians or political parties would no longer be a prerequisite for government employment. The act prohibited mandatory campaign contributions and outlawed campaign and political party assessments of U.S. government employees. It established the bipartisan, three-member Civil Service Commission vested with rule–making and investigatory authority. Members required nomination by the president and confirmation by the U.S. Senate in order to serve. The legislation institutionalized the competitive entrance examination as the standard requirement for individuals who aspired to become government bureaucrats.

Competitive examinations for civil service positions also have a long history in China and Korea. The National Museum of Korea exhibits detailed elaborations on the nature of examinations that were administered more than a millennia ago. Indeed, opponents of Pendleton’s legislation denigrated its Chinese antecedents.

The civil service system has gradually expanded, in part because many presidents have converted political positions into civil service ones prior to leaving office. This ensures that officials whose policy views and implementation strategies reflect a president’s own preferences can exercise power potentially for years after an administration has ended. President Jimmy Carter, who had campaigned vigorously for the presidency on his record of executive branch reorganization and innovation during his tenure as governor of Georgia, brought major changes to the civil service with his signing of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. This act abolished the Civil Service Commission and replaced it with the Office of Personnel Management and the Merit System Protection Board. It also established the Senior Executive Service in order to reward outstanding performance and facilitate appropriate lateral transfers between agencies. The Office of Personnel Management is tasked with recruiting the most capable person for each position, while the Merit System Protection Board protects the due process rights of government employees.

The Hatch Act, passed in 1939, placed limitations on the political activities of U.S. civil servants. The following year, further legislation extended these prohibitions to many state and local government employees whose agencies were recipients of federal grants-in-aid. Proponents of the Hatch Acts argue that these limitations promote the ideal of a neutral bureaucracy, whose employees are not subject to manipulation by public officeholders. Those opposed to the Hatch Acts counter that one should not have to surrender fundamental rights of citizenship in order to be a civil servant.

A major contemporary issue concerning the civil service is the extent to which it should be supplanted in favor of contracting out government services to private entities. Proponents of the increased contracting of government services typically tout its efficiency, while its opponents are skeptical about such purported savings and decry the reduced accountability that this practice fosters.

Bibliography:

Alexander, Herbert E. Financing Politics: Money, Elections, and Political Reform, 3rd ed.Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1984.
Berman, Evan M., James S. Bowman, Jonathan P. West, and Montgomery Van Wart. Human Resource Management in Public Service: Paradoxes, Processes, and Problems, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2010.
Hahn, Harlan. 1966. “President Taft and the Discipline of Patronage.” Journal of Politics 20, no. 2 (1966): 368–390.
Rosenbloom, David H., Robert S. Kravchuk, and Richard M. Clerkin. Public Administration: Understanding Management, Politics, and Law in the Public Sector, 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009.
Taft,William Howard. Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers. New York: Columbia University Press, 1925.
Theriault, Sean M. “Patronage, the Pendleton Act, and the Power of the People.” Journal of Politics 65, no. 1 (2003): 50–68.
S. Office of Personnel Management. Biography of an Ideal: A History of the Federal Civil Service. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2003.