The U.S. Federal Executive in an Era of Change

This article examines changes in the background characteristics, attitudes, and behavior patterns of high-level U.S. federal executives. It also considers the impact of the New Public Management (NPM) movement. The data indicate that despite intense struggles about the role of the public sector, top civil servants remain a well-educated, experienced, and highly motivated group, the members of which compare favorably to top executives in the private sector. The data also suggest that the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978 has been effective in producing a more politically responsive corps of career civil servants, and that administrators (both career and noncareer) are increasingly attuned to the more technical and legal aspects of their roles and less oriented to protecting particular interests or clientele groups. NPM-style changes are still in progress and remain controversial, but it appears that political leaders continue to have an excellent (and increasingly diverse) group of career people to work with and a system that—at least in part due to the CSRA reforms—is more responsive to them than before. The top part of the U.S. bureaucracy may have been bent and reshaped in many ways over the last thirty years, but, despite widely publicized fears, it has not broken.     

Gender Equity: Illusion or Reality for Women in the Federal Executive Service?

With the passage of the Civil Service Reform Act in 1978, the federal government created the Senior Executive Service (SES) and formally committed the federal government to equal employment opportunity, advocating a “federal service reflective of the nation's diversity.” Since then, women have made dramatic progress in the ranks of the SES. This research probes the following questions: Has women's advancement into the ranks of the SES been illusory or real? Are women simply being appointed to token positions to fulfill affirmative action goals? Or do they contribute to governance from real positions of power and influence? Using data from a recent survey of Senior Executive Service members, this research indicates that male and female members of the SES have almost identical responsibilities and, most interestingly, women executives rate themselves as relatively more influential than do their male colleagues.     

美国文官制度的变革与思考

美国文官制度经历了从政党分肥制到现代功绩制的深刻变革，至1978年，卡特政府创建了高级文官制度，在政务官之下、普通文官之上设置高级文官阶层。高级文官作为连接政务官和普通文官的桥梁和纽带，突破了政治与行政的界限，将政治家和官僚的角色融为一体，扮演着既是领导者，又是管理者的角色，在联邦政府中起着承上启下的作用，全面提升了政府的政治和技术回应性。但高级文官中政治任命的非常任高级文官更换频繁，与竞争晋升的常任高级文官和普通文官之间，又产生了新的矛盾和冲突，造成政府优秀人才的流失。从历史的角度，认真总结美国文官制度变革的经验与教训，对于我国公务员制度建设，特别是高级公务员制度建设，具有重要意义。     

WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTION IN THE USA: LESSONS LEARNT AND TO BE LEARNT

Abstract: In the 1970s, both Australia and the United States instituted legal reforms aimed at promoting greater accountability among public servants. Prompted by growing awareness of the need to encourage and protect federal government whistleblowers, Congress enacted whistleblower protection measures in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Although the notion of open government in Australia has never been extended to include whistleblowing by public servants, probing the issue of whether or not United States whistleblower protection can serve as a reform model in the search for more effective legal mechanisms for ensuring government accountability can provide lessons and insights of value to Australian public administrators. Analysis of the role and impact of the Office of the Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board as established under the Civil Service Reform Act reveals many difficulties associated with whistleblower protection. Research has substantiated the jurisdictional ambiguities, administrative and procedural deficiencies and lack of sanctioning power which plague this reform effort. Similar deficiencies also impede the protection of parliamentary witnesses in Australia. Evaluation of whistleblower protection leads to the conclusion that reform models in either country for ensuring government accountability must not be judged solely through examination of statutory provisions. There must also be in place strong stabilising factors such as political unity, economic comfort, social discipline, civic virtue and public service ideology in order to achieve the common public service goal of rendering governmental decision-making more accountable to persons affected by it and open to review by independent decision makers.     

Merit, Management, and Neutral Competence: Lessons from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, FY 1988–FY 1997

Despite the centrality of merit principles to governance in the United States over the past century, scant empirical research examines linkages between institutions, and outcomes in the implementation of merit system protections. We argue that the fate of merit principles depends, at a minimum, on two influences that may compete with neutral competence. The first is partisan responsiveness by counter bureaucracies charged with holding agencies accountable to merit principles. The second influence is the sacrifice of merit in the interest of managerial rerogatives at the agency level. This exploratory study assesses both of these influences within the federal government. Our data consist of personal interviews, analyses of U.S. Merit System Protection Board (MSPB) processes, case loads, and decisions between fiscal years 1988 and 1997, and a brief case study of the Justice Department. We find that the MSPB is largely the neutral and competent agency that Congress intended to create when it enacted the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Less positively, our analysis also reveals that federal agencies vary in how well their personnel actions fare with the MSPB. This finding is especially germane to reinventing-government reforms that decentralize personnel management to agencies or to line operators within agencies.     

Influencing Policy at the Top of the Federal Bureaucracy: A Comparison of Career and Political Senior Executives

Although we commonly assume that bureaucrats influence the policies which govern public behavior, we know very little about the individuals who occupy executive positions in the federal bureaucracy. Following the creation of the Senior Executive Service (SES) in 1978, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) published guidelines detailing the skills and responsibilities required among both career and noncareer members of the SES. Although scholars have focused much attention on relations between these two groups within the federal bureaucracy, their day-to-day responsibilities remain understudied. This study reports results of a survey that was administered to 1,000 members of the Senior Executive Service to determine whether career and noncareer members of the SES have significantly different job responsibilities. Although both groups perform a variety of activities which provide them with numerous avenues to affect government policy, the research findings indicate that noncareer executives are more engaged in carrying out political liaison tasks and that career executives have slightly greater personnel responsibilities.     

THE STATES AND DEREGULATION: THE CASE OF SURFACE MINING

The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA), passed to correct the abuses of surface mining, assigned key implementation roles to the states. While the federal government originally enforced SMCRA, states could operate the program themselves. Once states decided to run their own program the federal government would oversee them to insure they properly enforce the Act. This research examines the enforcement behavior of states in the 1980s. The results indicate that early in the Reagan administration eastern states enforced the SMCRA less stringently than other states. Eastern states increased their level of enforcement later in the 1980s in response to pressures for increased federal oversight from Congress, interest groups and others.     

Federal Employees' Retirement System Act of 1986

In June, President Reagan signed the Federal Employees' Retirement System Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-335), which establishes the Federal Employees' Retirement System (FERS) for employees hired after December 31, 1983. The program, which goes into effect on January 1, 1987, features a defined benefit retirement plan to augment mandatory coverage under social security. It also permits FERS participants to contribute up to 10 percent of their earnings, on a tax-deferred basis, to a thrift savings plan, with partial matching by the Government. This article describes the provisions of the new system, including survivor annuities and disability benefits. It also explains how employees covered under the Civil Service Retirement System may freeze their earned benefits under that program and transfer to FERS during the period July-December 1987.     

From Coercion to Partnership in Federal Partial Preemption: SMCRA, RCRA, and OSH Act

This article examines the experiences of three important partial-preemptionprograms—the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Actof 1977 (SMCRA), the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970(OSH Act), and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of1976 (RCRA)—over the last two decades to improve our understandingof how federal-state interactions have shaped the regulatorypartnership. The evidence we gather suggests that the controlof regulatory programs has shifted over time back and forthbetween the federal government and the states. In the initialyears of these programs, what the Congress intended to be aregulatory partnership was, in effect, almost total federalpreemption of state authority. Under the Ronald Reagan administration,the opposite occurred; federal regulation in many cases becamede facto state regulation as federal officials essentially abdicatedtheir oversight responsibility. By the end of the 1980s, thefederal government began again to assert greater control overintergovernmental regulatory programs. The regulatory relationshipthat emerged is one in which the federal government and thestates share responsibility and authority for the implementationof these programs.     

Searching for a National Policy on the Arts

There have always been United States policies on the arts. Some of the nation's founding fathers envisioned federal support for the arts. Congress maintained the Constitution did not empower it to “encourage” the arts, but enacted legislation addressing acknowledged national concerns that also regulated the arts, employed artists, acquired artworks, and created cultural institutions. These uncoordinated de facto arts policies provided models for future action on arts-related matters. The federal government's failure to address the arts more directly produced a contentious environment for the nation's artists, leaving them to feel disenfranchised. Advocates’ attempting to gain parity for artists and the arts gave rise to a national movement in the 1930s that continued into the 1960s, and constituted the pregovernmental agenda for the National Foundations on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965.     

The influence of the gramm-rudman-hollings act on federal budgetary outcomes, 1986—1989

This article analyzes the impact of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings (GRH) Act on federal budgetary and fiscal outcomes. Rather than portraying it as a two-on federal budgetary and fiscal outcomes. Rather than portraying it as a two-party game between Congress and the president, each with monolithic policy preferences, we view GRH as a multiparty negotiation game among advocates of different programs and agencies. In this game, agencies subject to sequestration and their congressional advocates have an incentive to reach a budget accord, while those exempt from sequestration do not. Consistent with this argument, we find that GRH has restrained outlays for nonexempt programs and that exempt programs have, if anything, experienced more rapid growth. Overall, GRH is estimated to have restrained outlays by $59 billion by fiscal 1989, and to have restrained outlays more effectively after the 1987 modifications in the Act. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act signals another phase in the decade-long struggle between the White House and Congress over public spending priorities. Our final counterfactual analysis suggests that GRH partially returned federal fiscal and budgetary relationships and priorities to those that prevailed before Reagan.     

THE CAREER SERVICE IN THE 1980s: WHAT ARE THE FACTS?

This paper seeks to provide statistics on how the career service has developed within Commonwealth Government administration over the past decade or so. On the basis of trends in these data some speculations are offered on how the career service might look in the 1980s. The views expressed are speculations, not forecasts. In Commonwealth administration, the career service concept has by and large been held to embrace staff employed in the Commonwealth Public Service (CPS) under the Public Service Act, particularly permanent staff. While it is possible to debate the extent of the career service, this paper will confine itself to full-time permanent, temporary and exempt staff of the CPS, employed under the Public Service Act. It thus excludes staff employed under other Acts, although the opportunities for movement of CPS staff to statutory authorities and back again should not be overlooked.     

Civil Service Reform as National Security: The Homeland Security Act of 2002

The events of 9/11 have influenced policy making in public administration. The Homeland Security Act of 2002, which created the Department of Homeland Security, contained language that empowered the secretary of homeland security and the director of the Office of Personnel Management to establish a personnel management system outside the normal provisions of the federal civil service. Why did civil service reform succeed as part of this legislation when previous attempts at large‐scale reform had failed? A case analysis of the enactment of civil service reform in the Homeland Security Act points to theories of policy emergence and certain models of presidential and congressional policy making. In this case, civil service reform became associated with national security instead of management reform. An assessment of the rhetorical arguments used to frame this policy image offers a powerful explanation for the adoption of the personnel management reforms in the Homeland Security Act. This case has implications for understanding how policy makers might approach future management reform agendas.     

Old Wine in New Bottles? An Analysis and Preliminary Appraisal of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982

Highway programs were included in the Reagan administration'sNew Federalism proposals which were designed to return manyfederally supported projects to state and local governments.Shortly after those proposals were presented, Congress enactedthe Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982. The act increasedthe federal highway fuel tax by five cents to nine cents pergallon (of which states receive four of those five cents forhighway purposes). Although devolution of responsibility toaddress state and local needs was a key feature of the New Federalism,an analysis of the effects of the act on Ohio suggests thatthe increase in highway revenues may have skewed states' prioritiesin both their maintenance outlays and capital project selectionprocess.     

Campaign-Finance Reform: A Public Choice Perspective

The Federal Election Campaign Act as passed in 1971 and amended in 1974represented landmark federal legislation. It imposed new restrictions oncampaign contributions and contained path-breaking provisions for the useof public funds to partially finance the campaigns of qualifyingpresidential candidates. The nominal intent of the legislation was torestrain the skyrocketing campaign costs and the feared abuses thatgrowing dependencies on such money engendered. Three decades later, withthe campaign spending ``arms race'' still raging. Congress sought toimpose further constraints on campaign spending with enactment of theBipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA). Competing theories ofgovernment regulation are reviewed to better understand the intent andlikely consequences of the 2002 legislation in particular and campaignfinance regulation in general. A simple model of the campaign spendingprocess highlights the likely causes of the rapid growth in campaignspending. Data and evidence are presented to test hypotheses concerningthe timing of and underlying motivations for BCRA.     

Anticipating future congressional action: Designing a new retirement income system

After federal workers were covered by the social security system for the first time in 1983, the Congressional Research Service began working with congressional committees, particularly the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, on the design of a new federal retirement system made necessary by this coverage. Over a two-year period, the CRS prepared a study that became, in effect, the analytical framework used by the majority and minority of both houses of Congress as they enacted a new system. The analytical tools created by the CRS in doing this study were used during congressional deliberations to analyze specific options developed by committees and members, and to assist with assessment of the implications of compromises necessary to pass the bill and have it signed by the President.     

ADMINISTRATIVE POLICY MAKING: ADJUDICATION BY THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS IN ASYLUM-RELATED APPEALS 1980–1987

This analysis examines the extent to which the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), from 1980 to 1987, complied with a new policy of Congress, set forth in the Refugee Act of 1980, which called for an elimination of bias in favor of aliens from hostile countries. Statistical analysis reveals that the BIA did not enforce the Refugee Act of 1980. I argue that Congress never intended to eliminate this bias since doing so would bring it into conflict with actors within the executive branch (including the President and the State Department) that have traditionally dominated policy-making relating to refugees and asylees. Instead, in the Refugee Act of 1980, Congress allowed these actors to retain control through a broad definition of "refugee" and by failing to clearly specify standards for political asylum and withholding of deportation. Simultaneously, Congress temporarily placated private and public "refugee rights" interest groups with statutory provisions that (presumably) eliminated the hostile country bias in U.S. refugee and asylum admis- sions, and granted increased federal aid to private organizations and units of state and local governments.     

Implementing the Chief Financial Officers Act and the Government Performance and Results Act in the Federal Government

The Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 and the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, along with other legislation passed by Congress, are stimulating major financial management reform in the federal government. This article evaluates reform implementation against nine criteria developed in previous research on this topic. The criteria are accounting system adequacy, congressional intent, ability of Congress to use financial statement data, executive branch implementation incentives, capability of the Office of Management and Budget, utility of financial statements for decision making, use of performance measures in budgeting, coordination of federal organizations charged with implementation responsibility, and executive and congressional support for reform.     

Ideas and action: A cognitive model of the Senate Agriculture Committee

But while the research is being done, what provisions should be incorporated in the Clean Air Act of 1977 (or the Acts of 1978 through 2000, for that matter)? For research won't give us clear answers then either. What constitutes procedural rationality in such circumstances? “Reasonable men” reach “reasonable” conclusions in circumstances where they have no prospect of applying classical models of substantive rationality. We know only imperfectly how they do it. We know even less whether the procedures they use in place of the inapplicable models have any merit—although most of us would choose them in preference to drawing lots. The study of procedural rationality in circumstances where attention is scarce, where problems are immensely complex, and where crucial information is absent presents a host of challenging and fundamental research problems to anyone who is interested in the rational allocation of scarce resources.     

Book Reviews

Book reviews in this article:
At the Margins: Presidential Leadership of Congress , By GEORGE C. EDWARDS III.
The President as Prisoner: A Structural Critique of the Carter and Reagan Years. By WILLIAM F. GROVER.
Regulatory Interventionism in the Utility Industry . By BARBARA R. BARKOVICH.
Private Gain and Public Service: The Association of First Division Civil Servants. By BARRY O'TOOLE.
Ulster: Conflict and Consent. By TOM WILSON.
Guide to the Presidency. Edited by MICHAEL NELSON.
Prime Minister & Premiers: Political Leadership and Public Policy in Canada. Edited by LESLIE A. PAL AND DAVID TARAS.
The Future Of Local Government , Edited by JOHN STEWART and GERRY STOKER.