The Recruitment and Training of Bureaucrats in the United States

Abstract

reaucracy into account, the formal personnel systems become mere ritual and red tape. The controlling characteristics of the bureaucracy in the United States most closely related to its recruitment and training are that it is (1) highly federalized, (2) highly decentralized within the federalized jurisdictions, (3) highly specialized in its training and its work, (4) highly fragmented in its loyalties, and (5) in our society, neither a firstchoice career nor an exclusive career. In short, the American bureaucracy taken as a whole is markedly pluralistic in its organization and composition; it is diverse in its attachments and its loyalties; and, for many of its members, it provides an episode rather than a career.