Limits of Federal Protest

Abstract

The federal civil service is now experiencing its first major retrenchment in forty years. The active buildup of the Vietnam and Great Society years has been replaced by job freezes and Reductions-in-Force.1 The 1970s have ushered in a change in federal priorities. Whereas the Johnsonian Great Society emphasized social change, equity, responsiveness, and representativeness, President Nixon's New Federalism appears to foreshadow a reduced federal social programming role and an administrative model stressing economy, efficiency, productivity, and executive control.2 From a purely administrative perspective, these new priorities may be justified. Marginal and obviously ineffective programs will be eliminated, and perhaps a more finely honed and ultimately more responsive federal government will emerge. Yet just as the Administration is taking stock of the federal social program inventory and administrative apparatus, so it is important for those committed to a different conception of the role of federal intervention in promoting social change to look back and assess the federal experience during the last decade in an attempt to help define new and more viable strategies for change. Here, in particular, we are concerned with one such strategy: the emergence during the last five years of a model of professionalism in the federal service which stresses working openly for changes in agencies' goals, programs, and personnel policies, including resorting to protest to achieve desired changes.3 Federal employee activism should be viewed within the context of a resurgence of overt social conflict and political turmoil manifest in the activities of students, blacks, and poor people,