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The Future of Merit: Twenty Years After the Civil Service Reform Act

43 citations0/0 files storedWoodrow Wilson Center Press , Johns Hopkins University Press eBooks

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Public Policy and Administration Research Public Administration and Governance Public Administration and Political Analysis

Abstract

Passage of the Civil Service Reform Act was controversial, and there is still controversy over its effectiveness. A book of this sort will be well received and anxiously read by specialists in public administration, public policy, and public personnel administration.-H. George Frederickson, University of Kansas The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 was the most far reaching reform of the federal government personnel system since the merit system was created in 1883. The Future of Merit reviews the aims and rates the accomplishments of the 1978 law and assesses the status of the civil service. How has it held up in the light of the National Performance Review? What will become of it in a globalizing international system or in a government that regards people as customers rather than citizens? Contributors examine the Senior Executive Service, whose members serve between presidential appointees and the rest of the civil service. These crucial executives must transform legislative and administrative goals into administrative reality, but are often caught between opposing pressures for change and continuity. In the concluding chapter Hugh Heclo, many of whose ideas informed the 1978 reform act, argues that the system today is often more responsive to the ambitions of political appointees and the presidents they serve than to the longer term needs of the polity. On the other hand, the ambition of creating a government-wide cadre of career general managers with highly developed leadership skills has not been fulfilled. Other contributors helped to frame the 1978 act, helped to implement it, or study it as scholars of public administration: Dwight Ink, Carolyn Ban, Joel D. Aberbach, Bert A. Rockman, Patricia W. Ingraham, Donald P. Moynihan, Hal G. Rainey, Ed Kellough, Barbara S. Romzek, Mark W. Huddleston, Chester A. Newland, and Hugh Heclo. Six former directors of the Office of Personnel Management commented on early versions of these chapters at a 1998 conference.

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2007Civil Service Law in the People’s Republic of China: A Return to Cadre Personnel Management 2019Merit, Diversity, and Performance: Does Diversity Management Moderate the Effect of Merit Principles on Governmental Performance?2014Civil service reform 2013The Rise and Fall of Radical Civil Service Reform in the U.S. States 2016Impact of Performance Appraisal Justice on the Effectiveness of Pay-for-Performance Systems After Civil Service Reform 2003Reassessing the Human Resource Crisis in the Public Service, 1987-2002 2004Protection Versus Flexibility: The Civil Service Reform Act, Competing Administrative Doctrines, and the Roots of Contemporary Public Management Debate 2000Onto the Darkling Plain: Globalization and the American Public Service in the Twenty-First Century

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