Political Appointees and Career Executives: The Democracy-Bureaucracy Nexus in the Third Century

Abstract

The balance between presidential appointees and career executives in governing the United States is a fundamental question of who shall rule.' But it is also a question of governmental and organizational mechanics. The democratic principle that the President along with political appointees ought to direct policy in the executive branch is not in question, but judgments about the most effective way to organize that political control have been changing. In recent years the balance has shifted toward using more political appointees to assure tighter White House control of administration. The western European democracies of France, Britain, and Germany allow only 100 or so new political appointees to each new administration to establish its control of the government.2 In contrast, a new administration in the United States fills thousands of political positions with its own appointees. Major reasons account for this. The United States has a separation of powers rather than a parliamentary form of government, and it does not have the party discipline in Congress that parliamentary systems often enjoy. Neither does it have the same governmental and administrative traditions that matured in Europe over the centuries. In the United States the spoils system developed to assure that a new president's programs were implemented by those sympathetic to his policies. This was done with the Jacksonian assumption that government jobs were so simple that virtually anybody could handle them. The legacy of the reform movement removed most federal government jobs from the spoilsmen by expanding appointment by merit (often by blanketing in) but still left the top tier of positions to presidential discretion.3 After the high water mark of the merit system was reached in the 1940s, the pendulum reversed directions, and the proportion of political appointees began to increase again, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. Though little danger exists that the scale of personnel spoils will be approached again, this article argues that the balance in the United States has shifted too far toward a greater number of political appointees. It argues that recent presidents have come to office with