Radical Reform Of The Civil Service

Across the globe, governments are ending civil service as we know it. This volume presents the newest research that explores efforts to replace civil service systems with more flexible, non-tenured systems. Featuring both original and previously published essays by many of the leading practitioners and professors in the field of public administration, Radical Reform of the Civil Service asks big questions. Is radical reform of public bureaucracy needed? What is the scope of these reforms? What are the dangers of reform and why is it happening now? The essays in this book should be read by anyone interested in the future of public management.

Understanding the effects of radical change on public personnel systems is critically important both now and in the future to all those interested in the quality of American democracy. Civil service reform is occurring at all levels of government both in the United States and abroad. American Public Service: Radical Reform and the Merit System is a collection of papers that examine the innovations, strategies, and issues found in the contemporary civil service reform debate. Offering diverse perspectives from expert contributors, this book presents matters concerning radical reform and the merit system at the federal, state, and local levels of government. This volume offers fresh insight into the effects of merit system changes on employees. Divided into four sections, this book... · Examines a portrait of contemporary reforms from across the country and concepts to interpret those data · Addresses whether the relaxation of civil service protections against partisan intrusion will result in corruption · Provides examples of ongoing changes and analyzes survey data from state managers · Discusses a variety of key issues, such as the impact on racial inequality of moving from a protected class employment status to an unprotected at-will relationship The book provides a baseline of data on reforms as well as an account of their current promises and pitfalls. Covering topics ripped from the headlines, this text also identifies pressing issues and makes suggestions for the future. Offering a variety of methodological approaches, it is ideal for all those interested in effective governance.

Political scientists explore the development and politics of such reform in the US from Washington's administration to Clinton's. They nestle them into the context of competing political struggles between Congress, the president, and the federal courts to control the federal bureaucracy and define its organization and values. Of interest to students and scholars in public administration and US politics. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Civil Service Reform in the States examines the critical importance of civil service systems in modern government and popular efforts to reform those systems. The book provides an up-to-date analysis and assessment of public personnel reforms undertaken by various state governments since 1990 and the extent to which these reforms have been implemented or resisted. With chapters written by nationally recognized experts on civil service and civil service reform, this book will appeal to public policy makers, practitioners, and students alike.

Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche.

Every time control of the U.S. presidency is passed from one party to another, the entire top layer of the executive branch changes. Thousands of men and women take down their pictures, pack up their desks, and move back into private life, just as others dust off their pictures and move in. The U.S. stands alone in this respect. Nearly every other advanced democracy is managed-save for elected officials and a few top aides-by an elite cadre of top civil servants selected by highly competitive examinations. Hudleston and Boyer tell the story of U.S. efforts to develop higher civil service, beginning with the Eisenhower administration and culminating in the passage of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Arguing that the highly-politicized U.S. system simply hasn't worked, they examine why and how reform efforts have failed and offer a series of recommendations for the future.

The book provides detailed analysis of the structure and operation of the British Civil Service along with a historically grounded account of its development in the period from Margaret Thatcher to the Tony Blair premiership. It assesses continuity and change in the civil service during a period of deep transformation using new archive files, government and parliament reports, primary and secondary legislation. The author takes the evolutionary change of the civil service as a central theme and examines the friction between new managerial practices introduced by government in the 80s and 90s and the administrative traditions rooted in the history of this institution. In particular the author assesses the impact of the New Public Management agenda of the Thatcher and Major years its enhanced continuity during the Blair years. Further changes that involved ministerial responsibility, codification, performance management, special advisers and constitutional conventions are analyzed in the conclusions.

The authors of this book contend that the civil service system, which was devised to create a uniform process for recruiting high-quality workers to government, is no longer uniform or a system. Nor does it help government find and retain the workers it needs to build a government that works. The current civil service system was designed for a government in which federal agencies directly delivered most public services. But over the last generation, privatization and devolution have increased the number and importance of government's partnerships with private companies, nonprofit organizations, and state and local governments. Government workers today spend much of their time managing these partnerships, not delivering services, and this trend will only accelerate in the future. The authors contend that the current system poorly develops government workers who can effectively manage these partnerships, resulting too often in a gap between promise and performance. This short, lively, and bipartisan volume, authored by the nation's leading experts on government management, describes what the government of the future will look like, what it will need to work well, and how in particular the nation can build the next generation of workers required to lead it.