The Reorganization of the American Foreign Service

Abstract

ON November 13, 1946, the Act of Congress providing for the reorganization of the Foreign Service of the United States became effective as law.2 The Foreign Service Act has two complementary objectives, first, to develop career service marked by high esprit de corps and offering professional opportunities designed to attract the best talent in the nation and, secondly, to develop a disciplined and mobile corps of trained menwho will serve not just the Department of State but the entire Government. But this reorganization has had to be more than refinishing job on the old vehicle, for the criticisms of the Foreign Service have been too sharp and too prolonged to permit of anything less than real effort to search out the fundamental problems confronting the Foreign Service in terms of both its immediate organization and operation and its long-range duties as an effective instrument in the implementation of American foreign policy. As career service, the Foreign Service is of comparatively recent origin. During the period from 1789 to 1855 relatively little statutory control was exercised over the selection of diplomatic and consular personnel representing United States interests abroad or over the definition of their duties. The Acts of March 1, 1855 (replaced by the Act of August 18, 1856) and April 5, 1906 and related executive orders presaged career service through certain desirable changes which were effected in both the diplomatic and consular branches, such as the establishment of schedules of salaries graded by diplomatic or consular post, the classification of positions, the requirement that appointments to positions in the lowest rank in the classified consular service be made by examination or promotion from the unclassified position of viceconsul and that appointments to the higher grades be based on efficiency records.4 These and allied changes after 1906 brought an extension of the merit principle in the diplomatic and consular branches and introduced flexibility in the assignment of their personnel. The pressure of work on the two branches which came with World War I, however, revealed that major structural changes would have to replace the old patchwork before really