Jos C.N. Raadschelders, Theo A.J. Toonen, Frits M. Van Der Meer - The Civil Service in The 21st Century - Comparative Perspectives (2007) PDF

The Civil Service in the
21st Century
Comparative Perspectives
Edited by
Jos C.N. Raadschelders, Theo A.J. Toonen
and Frits M. Van der Meer
The Civil Service in the 21st Century
Also by Jos C.N. Raadschelders
The Institutional Arrangements for Water Management in the 19th and

20th Centuries (editor).
Government: A Public Administration Perspective
Handbook of Administrative History
Also by Theo A.J. Toonen
Polder Politics in the Netherlands; Viscous State or Model Polity?

(editor with F. Hendriks)
Civil Service Systems in Comparative Perspective (co-editor with A.J.M. Bekke
and J.L. Perry).
Public Infrastructures Redefined (editor with L. Roborgh and R. Stough)
Policy Implementation in Federal and Unitary Systems: Questions of Analysis
and Design (co-editor K. Hanf)
Also by Frits M. Van der Meer

Western European civil service systems (editor with H.G.J.M Bekke)
Administering the summit (editor with J.C.N. Raadschelders)
The Civil Service in the
21st Century
Comparative Perspectives
Edited by
Jos C.N. Raadschelders
Professor and Henry Bellmon Chair of Public Administration, University of
Oklahoma, USA
Theo A.J. Toonen

Professor at the Department of Public Administration, University of Leiden,
Netherlands
Frits M. Van der Meer

Associate Professor in the Department of Public Administration, University of Leiden,
Netherlands
Editorial matter, selection and introduction © Jos C.N. Raadschelders, Theo
A.J. Toonen and Frits M. Van der Meer 2007. Individual chapters © their
respective authors 2007.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The civil service in the 21st century : comparative perspectives / edited by
Jos C. N. Raadschelders, Theo A. J. Toonen, Frits M. Van der Meer.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1–4039–9719–5 (alk. paper)
1. Civil service–Europe. 2. Europe–Politics and government–21st century.
3. Comparative government. I. Raadschelders, J. C. N. II. Toonen, Th. A. J.
III. Meer, F. M. van der (Frits M.), 1957–
JN94.A67C585 2007
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne
Contents
List of Tables and Figures vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
1 Civil Service Systems and the Challenges of the 21st Century 1

Jos C.N. Raadschelders, Theo A.J. Toonen and
Part I: Regional Developments in Civil Service Systems 15
2 Civil Service Development in Central and Eastern Europe
and the CIS: Swimming with the Tide 17
Tony J.G. Verheijen and Aleksandra Rabrenovic
3 Western European Civil Service Systems: A Comparative

Analysis 34
Frits M. Van der Meer, Trui Steen and Anchrit Wille
4 Anglo-American Systems: Easy Diffusion 50

John Halligan
5 Explaining Civil Service Reform in Asia 65

John P. Burns
6 Africa: Rehabilitating Civil Service Institutions –

Main Issues and Implementation Progress 82
Ladipo Adamolekun
Part II: Civil Service Systems and Multi-level
Governance 101
7 National Civil Service Systems and the Implications
of Multi-level Governance: Weberianism Revisited? 103
Caspar F. van den Berg and Theo A.J. Toonen
8 Historical Legacies and Dynamics of Institutional

Change in Civil Service Systems 121
Philippe Bezes and Martin Lodge
9 Public Service Systems at Subnational and Local Levels of

Government: a British–German–French Comparison 137
Sabine Kuhlmann and Jörg Bogumil
v
vi Contents
10 Middle Level Bureaucrats: Policy, Discretion and Control 152

Edward C. Page
11 Reforming Human Resource Management in Civil Service

Systems: Recruitment, Mobility, and Representativeness 169
Per Lægreid and Lois Recascino Wise
Part III: Civil Servants and Legality, Efficiency, and
Responsiveness 183
12 Law and Management: Comparatively Assessing the
Reach of Judicialization 185
Robert K. Christensen and Charles R. Wise
13 The Constitutional Responsibility of the Civil Service 201

John A. Rohr
14 Civil Service Systems and Responsibility, Accountability and

Performance: A Multi-dimensional Approach 216
Gerrit S.A. Dijkstra
15 Governance and Civil Service Systems: From Easy Answers to

Hard Questions 231
B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre
Part IV: Beyond Civil Service Systems? 245
16 Is Past Prologue to 21st Century Civil Service Systems?
Exploring Historical Frames for Discovering Lessons About
Institutional Futures 247
Richard J. Stillman II
17 Political–Administrative Relations 263

Luc Rouban
18 Political (System) Reform: Can Administrative Reform

Succeed Without? 279
Jos C.N. Raadschelders and Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc
Conclusion 297
19 Civil Servants in the Enabling Framework State of the 21st
Century 299
Index 316
Tables and Figures
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1: Trust in civil service in 12 Western-European
countries, 1981–2000 (%) 45
Chapter 4
Table 4.1: Selected diffusion cases 1980s–2000s 57
Chapter 5
Table 5.1: Economic growth, quality of public institutions,
and corruption of selected Asian states 67
Table 5.2: Public sector reform capacity: Institutional veto
points, bureaucratic autonomy and reform results
in selected Asian countries in the 1990s 68
Table 5.3: Moon and Ingraham’s PNT and public sector
reform in selected Asian countries in the 1990s 78
Chapter 6
Table 6.1: Civil service and other public sector institutions 87
Table 6.2: Examples of variations in the scope of civil
(public) service in SSA 87
Table 6.3: Distribution of some SSA countries by performance
in civil service rehabilitation efforts 91
Chapter 7
Table 7.1: Number of policy officials employed by the
Permanent Representations at the European Union
of four EU member states 107
Chapter 9
Table 9.1: Local government systems (traditional profiles) 140
Table 9.2: Local public employment, general public
employment and general employment in country-
comparative perspective, 2000/01 142
Table 9.3: Development of local public employment in
country-comparative perspective 145
vii
viii Tables and Figures
Chapter 17
Table 17.1: High level of trust in elected politicians and civil
servants (%) 275
Chapter 18
Figure 18.1: Levels of political and administrative system
reform 282
Notes on Contributors
Ladipo Adamolekun is professor of public administration, indepen-

dent scholar and part-time professor of management at the Federal
University of Akure, Nigeria.
Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc is a professor of public administration

at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, a senator in the Netherlands
Parliament, and a member of the Council of Europe Parliamentary
Assembly.
Philippe Bezes is a researcher at the Centre d’Études et de Recherches

de Science Administrative (CERSA) of the Centre National de la
Récherche Scientifique (CNRS) CERSA, Paris, France.
Jörg Bogumil is a professor of comparative urban and regional politics

at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.
John Burns is a professor of public administration at the Department of

Politics and Public Administration, The University of Hong Kong.
Robert K. Christensen is an assistant professor in the Department of

Political Science at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA.
Gerrit Dijkstra is assistant professor at the Department of Public

Administration, University of Leiden, the Netherlands.
John Halligan is professor of public administration at the School of

Business and Government University of Canberra, Australia.
Sabine Kuhlmann is an assistant professor in politics and government

in Germany and Europe at the University of Potsdam, Germany.
Per Lægreid is a professor at the Department of Administration and

Organization Theory University of Bergen, Norway.
Martin Lodge is a Lecturer in political science and public policy at the

Department of Government and the ESRC Centre for Analysis of Risk
and Regulation, London School of Economics and Political Science.
ix
x Notes on Contributors
Edward C. Page is Sidney and Beatrice Webb professor of public policy

at the Department of Government of the London School of Economics
and Political science.
B. Guy Peters is Maurice Falk professor of American Government at the

Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh, USA.
Jon Pierre is a professor of political science at the Department of

Political Science, University of Gothenberg, Sweden.
Jos C.N. Raadschelders is a professor of public administration, manag-

ing editor of the Public Administration Review, and Henry Bellmon Chair
of Public Service at the Department of Political Science, University of
Oklahoma, USA.
Aleksandra Rabrenovic is a consultant for the World Bank, Belgrade,

Serbia.
John A. Rohr is a professor of public administration at the Centre for

Public Administration and Policy, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
State University, USA.
Luc Rouban is Director of the Centre National de la Récherche

Scientifique (CNRS) at the Centre de Recherches Politique de Sciences
Po (CEVIPOF), Paris, France.
Trui Steen is an assistant professor at the Department of Public

Administration, University of Leiden, the Netherlands and a fellow at
the Public Management Institute, University of Leuven, Belgium.
Richard J. Stillman II is a professor of public administration at the

Department of Public Administration, University of Colorado at Denver,
and editor in chief of the Public Administration Review.
Theo A.J. Toonen is professor of public administration at the

Department of Public Administration, and Dean of the Faculty of the
Social Sciences, University of Leiden, the Netherlands.
Caspar F. van den Berg is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Public

Notes on Contributors xi
Frits M. Van der Meer is an associate professor at the Department of

Public Administration University of Leiden, the Netherlands.
Tony Verheijen is a public sector management specialist at the World

Bank.
Anchritt Wille is an assistant professor at the Department of Public

Charles Wise is professor and director of the John Glenn School of

Public Affairs, Ohio State University, USA.
Lois R. Wise is a professor of public administration at the School for

Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, USA
Acknowledgements
Jos Raadschelders would like to thank the Department of Public

Administration, University of Leiden, and the Henry Bellmon Chair,
College of Arts and Sciences, and OU-foundation for their support of
the third phase of this project.
1
Civil Service Systems and the
Challenges of the 21st Century
Introduction
During the past decades’, civil service systems (CSS) have come under
intense scrutiny. The role and position of the civil service as core actors
in the public sector has been seriously questioned by political pundits
and other actors in society and academia. Allegedly, the central posi-
tion of civil servants in the political–administrative and societal
systems is eroding. It is argued that the supposed monopoly of the civil
service in public service delivery has gradually broken down. Some
visionaries even expect the demise of the civil service as we know it
(Demmke 2004; 2005). Perhaps this particular prophecy is grossly exag-
gerated, sooner reflecting the author’s wish than an empirical fact. Yet,
it cannot be denied that, due to a variety of reasons, CSS have increas-
ingly been influenced by a range of internal and external pressures
prompted by changes in the institutional context. These internal and
environmental changes will be examined in this volume and will be
introduced in this chapter. Taken together, these changes supposedly
amount to a new, more fragmented order in the public domain gener-
ally referred to nowadays as multi-level governance. In this supposed
new order, governments and CSS have to find their place. Although
there appears to be some common understanding in the scientific com-
munity with respect to the nature of these wide-ranging change
processes, the analysis of the actual consequences for CSS has received
less attention.
In this book various aspects of these challenges and change processes
will be probed and the findings will serve as a basis for the final
chapter. This publication is rooted in a research project, Civil Service
System in Comparative Perspective, that started in 1990. Back then,
1
2 The Civil Service in the 21st Century
empirically grounded and theoretical information was scarcely avail-

able on this topic (Bekke et al., 1996; Perry, 1999). This deficiency in
empirical research was problematic given the widely perceived urgency
to reform public services, and this project was started to remedy this
deficiency. The first phase of the project was to develop an analytical
framework to guide empirical research. In 1996, Hans Bekke, Jim Perry
and Theo Toonen’s first volume, Civil Service Systems in Comparative
Perspective, was published and this contained a conceptual framework
for civil service research. It developed a neo-institutional approach
that stressed the historical dimensions and the embeddedness of these
systems within their particular political and societal contexts. On
the basis of this framework (see also Raadschelders and Perry, 1994) the
second phase of the project could start. This involved an examination
of a large number of civil service systems. The results were published in
a four comparative studies by Edward Elgar (on Central and Eastern
Europe: Verheijen, 1999; Western Europe: Bekke and Van der Meer
2000; Asia: Burns and Bowornwathana, 2001 and Anglo-American
countries: Halligan, 2003). The consortium leading this research effort
has been fortunate to attract scholars from all over the world. Only
Africa was not included in the second phase of empirical studies (see,
on that continent, Adamolekun, 1999). We partially rectify this by
including a chapter on Africa in this volume (by Adamolekun). As for
Latin America, two of the papers at the 1997 conference at Indiana
University, Bloomington, were published in 1999 (Perlman on
Nicaragua; Oszlak on Argentina).
This volume serves as the third phase of this project and offers
reflections on developments in various world regions, seeks to identify
the major challenges that CSS will confront in the 21st century, and
what this implies for these institutions. In this opening chapter, we
provide a general introduction to pressures and challenges confronting
CSS presently (Part II). Central to this section is the discussion of the
neo-institutional definition of civil service systems as used by Bekke,
Perry and Toonen (1996) that analyses CSS at three different levels and
characterizes CSS change in terms of processes of de- and re-institu-
tionalization. We then discuss in more detail the four sections of this
book and the various chapters in each (Part III).
Pressures and challenges confronting civil service systems
Change, continuity, and diversity characterize the development of the

civil service in the past two centuries. It is most common to date the
The Challenges of the 21st Century 3
start of wide-ranging and profound changes in (mainly) the environ-

ment of government organizations in the early 1980s. These environ-
mental changes necessitated or even dictated a fundamental overhaul
and reforms of CSS (Kickert, 1997; Peters and Pierre, 2000; 2001; Pollitt
and Bouckaert, 2004; Ferlie, Lynn and Pollitt, 2005). The list of envi-
ronmental changes is impressive.
Internationally, there are the redesign of the global (economic)
world order with the fall of many communist systems, the rise of new
economies in developing countries, the growing effects of globaliza-
tion, transnational economic and demographic movements, efforts at
controlling cross border movement and constraining, for example,
international terrorism, etc., are only a few among the many interna-
tional change processes that diminish the dominance of the unified
nation state (Farazmand and Pinkowski, 2006). However, we should
also be aware of counter trends. Accelerated information exchange and
increased accessibility of information have, paradoxically, made nations
and world regions more aware of their differences. Indeed, while
globalization made some fear the possibility of losing national and/or
regional identity, a fairly strong popular sentiment, nothing of the sort
has happened. Also, we have to remember that governments have
always operated in an interdependent international environment and
that globalization and state activity increased simultaneously. In that
perspective globalization has not systematically undermined state
control (Krasner, 2001: 234–236).
National environmental changes include ever increasing calls and
demands from a more active and educated citizenry asking for ‘voice’
and tailor-made solutions to social problems, increased awareness of
the influence of parallel societal and governmental decision centres,
and rapid information exchange. Hence, the suggestion that also
nationally the (monopoly) position of central government is seriously
undermined. At the same time, though, the existence of multiple
policy and decision making arenas or networks has made government
and its CSS more aware of the intermediary role no one else can play.
In other words, more than ever before, civil servants have become
brokers among a wide range of non-profit and private stakeholders.
While in a variety of policy areas governments still take the initiative
(cf. the active state concept), it is the government of the enabling state
that has come to the surface (Page and Wright, 2007).
These international and national developments are captured in
the conceptual shift from unified, national state government to multi-
level governance. Before the late 1980s and the 1990s, the concept of
governance was hardly used in public administration and political

science literature.1 Since then, public administrationists and political
scientists have embraced this fashionable concept, and often more for
its normative connotation rather than for its analytical potential.2
They should more consider a historian’s perspective, which will sooner
downplay the novelty of phenomena than declare the coming of a new
age (Peters and Pierre, 2004).
Coming from the World Bank report on Sub-Saharan development
in 1989 (World Bank, 1989) the concept of good governance empha-
sizes the interplay between state and civil society with regard to deci-
sion-making and service delivery in the public domain (Santiso, 2001).
Although the use of the concept in public administration and political
science might be comparatively recent, from an empirical and histori-
cal point of view its content and occurrence are certainly not (see van
den Berg and Toonen, this volume). Several examples come to mind.
In consociational states such as Germany and the Netherlands, govern-
mental and third sector actors at national, regional, and local levels
have worked together in the development and implementation of
policy and the provision of services since, at least, the 16th century.
But, private actors may also operate independently from public actors,
as is the case with, for example, the establishment of private schools
and hospitals, with charities, and with the public utilities concessions
in the second part of the 19th century. The expansion of the welfare
state did not make these initiatives redundant, although in some coun-
tries, for example France and perhaps the United Kingdom, the role of
national government had become more important than in others (such
as, e.g., the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden).
The multi-level governance concept resembles closely the strengths
of network theory, that is, focusing attention on the interdependence
between and substantial cooperation among various public, semi-
private, private, and non-profit actors in public service delivery. But,
this focus on horizontal relations and processes, often overlooks the
effects of power differences and the role that formal institutions and
jurisdictions still play (Peters and Pierre, 2004).
In this chapter, multi-level governance refers to the intertwinement
of public decision-making and service delivery mechanisms and actors
at local, regional, and nationwide levels of government and society.
Private actors, citizens, interest groups, enterprises, etc., are considered
as important as public sector actors, although the latter continue to
have the final authority to make binding decisions in matters of collec-
tive or societal interest. Some may suggest that multi-level governance
directly strikes at the very existence of civil service systems, given

public service delivery through policy networks, decentralized gover-
nance networks, public/private partnerships and a cooperation between
non-governmental bodies, consultants and government. Ipso facto, the
unified bureaucratic career civil service is challenged and perhaps even
approaching its demise.
A life without civil services and civil servants is difficult to conceive
since public sector organizations need people. As Richard Rose observed:
‘public employees in very real sense put flesh on the barebones of gov-
ernment’ (as quoted in Bekke and Van der Meer, 2000). Who are these
civil servants and in which institutional arrangements do they operate?
Most discussions are largely focused and often obsessed by a particular
manifestation or even local definition of civil service. Some West
European public administration scholars consider CSS as legal-rational
constructions characteristic for the 19th century emerging within a
particular political–administrative and legal framework and often char-
acterized by idiosyncratic national features (Page and Wright, 1999;
Demmke, 2004; 2005). In this perspective, CSS is conceptualized as a
traditional career system, fitting a particular set of state traditions, and
– irrespective of country – responding in a similar way to similar pres-
sures irrespective of national contexts. This perspective, however, is
seriously impaired and we must, instead, differentiate between CSS as a
neo-institutional concept and CSS as an organization.
In the Bekke, Perry and Toonen volume (1996), CSS were defined as
institutions (i.e., rule complexes) that mobilize human resources in the
service of the state. These rule complexes then become manifest in a
particular organizational design. Hence, CSS is an institutional arrange-
ment and not just an organizational structure or career system. As an
institutional arrangement, that is, the deepest level of analysis, it
includes constituating values such as Rechtsstaat principles. These
values and principles are manifest in, inter alia, the design of specific
decision making procedures (including rules, e.g., about the involve-
ment of career civil servants in setting policy directions). This consti-
tutes an intermediate level of analysis. At the most visible level of
analysis, CSS includes rules of human resource management (e.g., the
notion of internal labour market). The actual substance (in terms of
rules) of these CSS and their organizational manifestation varies across
nations and over time. In this perspective, the emergence of multi-level
governance might be regarded as a change in rule structure and sub-
stance, thus creating, first, a different institutional environment for
and, second, possibly changing the rule structure and substance of CSS.
Neither is inconceivable. For instance, efforts to establish the Rechts-

staat principles in Central and Eastern Europe and in many developing
countries provides a different institutional environment for civil ser-
vants and has consequences for the internal features of CSS (see
Verheijen and Rabrenovich, as well as Adamolekun, this volume). Add-
ing into this environmental complexity is that governments and their
CSS are not isolated but aware of the changes and reforms each experi-
ence. The exact design and developmental route of CSS is conditioned
by particular societal and political–administrative contexts.
Construction and the plan of the book
From what has been said above, we can distill the main elements of
our study. First, the importance of considering the existence or absence
of variation regarding both the design and reform of civil service
systems. Second, the importance of the (discovery of the) a multi-level
governance context for existing civil service systems both on a macro
(system or parts thereof) and micro (the individual civil servants) level.
Third, the normative dimension and the internal inconsistencies
relevant to CSS have grown in importance. Fourth, CSS needs to be
considered in relation to its immediate institutional/organizational
environment: the political system and its office holders
This book is thus divided into four parts. In Part I, we examine
current issues and changes affecting the civil service systems that were
included in the civil service project. Thus, we will examine the state of
affairs in Central and Eastern Europe, in Western Europe, in Anglo-
American countries, and in Asian countries. In addition to this, a
chapter on Africa is included, and this fills an important gap in our
knowledge. The binding theme in Part I is the public sector reform
dimension and the effects on the different civil service systems.
Obviously, this includes attention for the historical perspective, since
the impact of the past is as relevant as the influence of contemporary
changes. Tony Verheijen and Aleksandra Rabrenovic discuss rapid
changes and their effects in Central and Eastern European civil service
systems (Chapter 2). They specifically consider the usefulness of the
legalist continental European model, the performance focused Anglo-
American model, and the corporatist South Asian model, and then
assess the feasibility of new public management (NPM)-style reforms in
that part of Europe. Next, Frits M. Van der Meer, Trui Steen and
Anchrit Wille examine change and continuity in Western Europe and
how various countries have coped managerialist-type reforms in the
light of their specific systems and models (Chapter 3). It is intriguing to

read how in several countries a trend can be seen of lesser reliance
upon a neutral civil service, while in other countries attempts are
under way to increase civil service neutrality. John Halligan focuses
attention on what he calls the easy diffusion in the case of the Anglo-
American systems (Chapter 4). While he points to the degree to which
these systems are able to adopt easily from each other, there are
national variations. It appears that, presently, NPM is not as pervasive
as it used to be John Burns considers the reform experience in six
southeast Asian countries (Vietnam, China, Singapore, Korea, Japan,
Hong Kong) (Chapter 5). These six countries share a Confucionist tra-
dition, that is, they operate a strong interventionist state. It appears
that in states with weak civil societies reforms have been more success-
ful than in states with strong civil societies. Finally, Ladipo
Adamolekun studies the experiences in Africa with an emphasis on the
past 15–20 years (Chapter 6). He categorizes reform efforts in various
states into four major groups (advanced reformers, committed reform-
ers, hesitant reformers, and beginners/non-starters). Reform outcomes
vary with the degree of political, social, and economic turbulence. The
major focus of reform has turned to the influence of culture and gover-
nance on CSS and their relation with the various groups in society.
In Part II, we go beyond the dominant view of civil service systems
as only a personnel systems at the national level by pointing to the
larger (institutional) environmental and to differences in rank and in
level of government. Traditionally, civil service (system) research
tended to focus on the civil service as a labour organization positioned
at the national level and using a government-centred approach.
Increasingly, in the past decade, attention is shifting from a hierarchi-
cally state centred perspective concerning government to a multi-level
approach captured by the concept of governance. This shift also places
civil servants in an entirely new light: they are not just subordinates,
quiet yet persistent experts (cf. ‘Yes, Minister’), or policy drafters, but
also network managers. Therefore, ample attention will be given to the
emergent perspective of multi-level governance.
Caspar van den Berg and Theo Toonen suggest that multi-level gov-
ernance rests on three pillars: lack of a single centre of authority, the
involvement of non-state actors in policy making and implementation,
and interaction in the public realm is not so much guided by constitu-
tional arrangement but, instead, is fluid, informal, and horizontal
(Chapter 7). They discuss several trends that currently strengthen
multi-level governance and suggest that these potentially result in two
contradictory trends: politicization of the core bureaucracy as well as a

depolitization of administrative bodies. How influential this multi-level
governance structure is, becomes clear in the chapter of Philippe Bezes
and Martin Lodge, in which they examine exogenous and endogenous
influences upon the dynamics of administrative change (Chapter 8).
Could it be that too much attention is given to external factors, such as
societal environment and institutional arrangements, and too little to
factors internal to CSS such as the influence of minor reforms becom-
ing more influential later (the displacement effect), the introduction
of new layers in the existing decision-making structures, and the
challenge of replacing a rapidly aging and soon retiring middle- and
higher-level civil service? Both chapters 7 and 8 address macro-level
issues.
The next three chapters in this section are more focused on micro-
level issues. Chapters 9 and 10 bring two groups of ‘forgotten’ civil ser-
vants to the forefront, while chapter 11 focuses on the traditional, but
no less important, topic of CSS as a personnel system. One group or
category of civil servants that is systematically overlooked in compara-
tive civil service research is that working at subnational levels of gov-
ernment. Jörg Bogumil and Sabine Kuhlmann have made a start filling
that void by comparing English, German, and French local govern-
ment civil servants (Chapter 9). They are the backbone to the entire
political–administrative systems because it is at their level of govern-
ment that most public services are provided and can be tailored toward
specific local needs. How have NPM reforms influenced local govern-
ment’s capacity for service delivery? Another group of civil servants
that escaped research attention are the rank-and-file in the middle and
lower levels of an organization. Edward C. Page’s chapter explores the
role of specialist/expert civil servants in policy making (Chapter 10).
For various reasons, their influence is extensive. Does this influence
their relation with the political leadership, and in what sense is that
relation different from that between the career generalists at the top
and political office holders? Civil servants are generally recruited for
particular expertise and, in the course of their career, routed through
various line and staff positions. The internal labour market of any
CSS is highly regulated and standardized. Lois Recasino Wise and Per
Lægreid point out that differences between the public and the private
sectors with regard to the personnel function are declining (Chapter 11).
Yet, there are some clear differences as well. For instance, in the
public sector the emphasis on efficiency and accountability is more
controversial, clashing, inter alia, with seniority and loyalty. But, how
can CSS balance flexibility and accountability with rerpesentativeness

and equity?
To balance flexibility and accountability with representativeness and
equity represents a challenge that cannot be addressed in a mech-
anistic fashion. The enhanced discretion that civil servants as public
managers may seek with regard to personnel decisions potentially
diminishes political control. This is why in Part III of this book nor-
mative aspects pertinent to CSS and the effects of reforms upon value
systems are explored. In particular, the focus is on legality, efficiency,
and responsiveness. Civil service reforms have often been pursued and
defended for reasons of public sector efficiency, as anti-corruption
measure, and as an effort to enhance responsiveness. In many analyses,
civil servants have become more active over time because of the expo-
nential growth and complexity of public service delivery. At the same
time, though, the emergence of multi-level government has prompted
a much more active role of civil servants. What consequences has this
had for the role of civil servants in the assessment and defence of
public sector values? This question will be answered by way of examin-
ing specific issues, such as the balancing of legality with efficiency, the
degree to which civil servants have and/or ought to have policy-
making discretion and at the same time being held responsible for
policy, and the extent to which civil service performance can and
ought to be measured. The immanent tension between government
(i.e., the structure) and governance (i.e., the action) serves as the
conclusion to this part.
In Chapter 12, Charles Wise and Rob Christensen examine the
potential conflict between law and management and, especially, the
judicialization of public policy-making. Increasingly, judges and courts
are ‘invited’ or assume policy-making responsibilities, thus comple-
menting, substituting, and competing with legislators. In their compar-
ative analysis, they contrast common law systems with civil or Roman
law systems. They also consider intergovernmental relations and the
influence of international judicial bodies. To what extend do national
legal traditions vary and influence the degree of judicialization? How
are CSS influenced by this judicialization? One could, of course, argue
that judicialization should not matter that much if and when civil ser-
vants’ responsibilities are clearly grounded in a constitution. Yet, and
obviously, law and practice are not the same. Comparing the American,
French and English CSS, John Rohr argues that American civil servants
have the best chance of serving as constitutional actors, because of
their oath to the US Constitution and this despite the fact that their
social status is generally less than that of their British and French col-
leagues (Chapter 13). Does social status of civil servants matter when it
comes to civil servants’ responsibilities? Judicialization and constitu-
tional responsibilities are revisited by Gerrit Dijkstra in his reflection
on responsibility, accountability and performance (Chapter 14). He
carefully argues that any unidimensional approach is simplistic.
Indeed, in recent years, the traditional vertical approaches to this issue
(professional-ethical – cf. Friedrich; political-institutional – cf. Finer,
and political-societal – cf. judicialization) have been complemented
with the more horizontal and programmatic approach characteristic
for performance measurement and management. Is this a viable alter-
native to the more trarditional, hierarchical approaches to accountabil-
ity? Whatever the answer, a civil servant/manager can only function
properly and adequately if sensitive to the societal environment. This
sensitivity is not just one of responsiveness to societal needs and prob-
lems but also one of properly and adequately managing the interaction
political and societal actors. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre focus on the
Weberian, the NPM, and the governance perspectives upon managing
the interaction with the environment (Chapter 15). In the light of the
increased intertwinement of public, non-profit and private actors, they
suggest to focus tertiary education in public administration more on
the bargaining, collaboration, and multi-level governance features of
today’s government and not only on the public law skills of old. Is
knowledge of law less important today to a civil servant than, say,
social, business management, and language skills?
In Part IV titled ‘Civil Servants in the Political Environment’, we look at
the implications of civil service reform for political–administrative rela-
tions, for politics, and for the political–administrative system at large in
the 21st century. First, we assess what the impact of the reforms summa-
rized in Part I, and further analysed in terms of consequences in Parts II
and III. Then we consider the degree to which political system reforms
might be complementary to civil service reforms. Finally, recent literature
on political–administrative relations further underlines the increased
importance of civil servants in the development and implementation of
public law and government policy.
Richard Stillman attempts to glean lessons from the events leading
up to and happening since the introduction of the Senior Executive
Service in the United States (Chapter 16). While this only represents
one case of reform, and that limited to the top of the career civil
service, it does emphasize a variety of commonsensical insights useful
anywhere. At the same time, his discussion also shows how much
institutional tradition and culture matter. Can we draw lessons from the
past for the future? Of those advanced by Stillman, we only mention
that for reform to be successful time is needed, and more specifically a
period that encompasses several administrations/cabinets. This brings
the role of politics and political office holders to centre stage. Reforms
of CSS have undoubtedly influenced political–administrative relations.
The question is: in what way? Are civil servants more subordinate to
politics than before because of financial restraints, budget cuts, and the
triumph of managerial values? Luc Rouban addresses this question and
paints a much more nuanced picture than often found in literature
(Chapter 17). It appears that politics intervenes both more and less,
dependent upon issue salience. However, the nature of that interven-
tion varies with whether NPM-type reforms were imposed (i.e., top-
down NPM reform) or voluntarily embraced (i.e., bottom-up NPM
reform). The matter of whether NPM reforms were imposed or em-
braced takes attention to the political system itself; more specifically,
to the degree to which civil service and administrative reforms can
succeed without political (system) reform. This question is considered
by Jos Raadschelders and Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc (Chapter 18).
Is the political environment as important to success or failure of
administrative reforms as it is to the success or failure of public policy?
(see also Van der Meer, 2005/06).
In the concluding chapter, we revisit the various topics in this
volume and organize that chapter on the basis of the civil service
definition used in this project: Mediating institutions for the mobilization
of human resources in the service of the state in a given territory. We also
offer a neo-Weberian perspective upon the role and position of the
state, and thus of civil servants, in contemporary society. It is in that
neo-Weberian perspective that we encompass both NPM and gover-
nance approaches to understanding civil service systems. The civil
service of the 21st century needs no less.
Notes
1 For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, historians’ use of the concept of
governance dominated. See, e.g., B.P. Wolffe, The Royal Demesne in English
History: the Crown Estate in the Governance of the Realm from the Conquest to
1509 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971).
2 The concept of governance has become quite popular and has a normative
ring to it. It is considered superior to hierarchy, underappreciates the need of
formal institutions, and is biased toward process. We define this concept in a
neutral manner later in this chapter.
References
Adamolekun, Ladipo, Public Administration in Africa. Main Issues and Selected
Country Studies (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999).
Bekke, Hans A.G.M. and Frits M. Van der Meer (eds), Civil Service Systems in
Western Europe (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2000).
Bekke, Hans, James, Perry and Theo Toonen, Civil Service Systems in Comparative
Perspective (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).
Burns, John P. and Bidhya Bowornwathana (eds), Civil Service Systems in Asia
(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2001).
Demmke, Christoph, European Civil Services Between Tradition and Reform
(Maastricht: EIPA, 2004).
Demmke, Christoph, Are Civil Servants Different Because They Are Civil Servants?
Who Are the Civil Servants – and How? (Maastricht: EIPA, 2005).
Farazmand, Ali and Jack Pinkowski (eds), Handbook of Globalization, Governance,
and Public Administration (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Taylor & Francis, 2006).
Ferlie, Ewan, Lawrence Lynn Jr and Christopher Pollitt (eds), The Oxford
Handbook of Public Management (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Halligan, John (ed.), Civil Service Systems in Anglo-American Countries
Kickert, Walter, Public Management and Adminsitrative Reform in Western Europe
Krasner, Stephen D., ‘Abiding Sovereignty’, International Political Science Review,
22(3) (2001), 229–51.
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In James L. Perry (ed.), Research in Public Administration (Stamford, CT:
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European States. A Comparative Analysis of Top Officials (Oxford: Oxford
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Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
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Administration. In James L. Perry (ed.), Research in Public Administration
(Stamford, CT: JAI Press, 1999), pp. 189–231.
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1999).
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St Martin’s Press, 2000).
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Governance (Bristol: Policy Press, 2001).
Peters, B. Guy and Jon Pierre, Multi-level Governance and Democracy:
A Faustian Bargain. In Ian Bache and Matthew Flanders (eds), Multi-level
Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 75–93.
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parative Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
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Part I
Regional Development in Civil
Service Systems
2
Civil Service Development in
Central and Eastern Europe and
the CIS: Swimming with the Tide?
Tony J.G. Verheijen and Aleksandra Rabrenovic1
Introduction
The comparative study of civil service system development in Central

and Eastern Europe (CEE) (Verheijen, 1999) painted a sober picture of
the state of development of professional civil service systems in the
region. The analysis was largely limited to Central and Eastern
European states, including a study of Russia. These were considered the
front runners of reform among the transition states, and, with the
exception of Ukraine, they moved early (in 1993) toward a legal frame-
work for managing the civil service. There was little to analyse other
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries.2 In summary,
the analysis found that states struggled to overcome the legacy of
politicized and discredited state administrations left by the previous
regime, that civil servants tended to be demoralized and that civil
service suffered from ‘negative selection’, that political will to invest in
the creation of civil service systems was absent, with the exception of
the Baltic States, and that up to then the EU had devoted little atten-
tion to the development of functioning administrative systems in the
Candidate States. Further analyses of civil service development in CEE
countries, for instance in Baker (2002), Goetz (2001) and Verheijen
(2000; 2001) highlighted similar trends. A more recent study on civil
service development under coalition governments (Peters, Vass and
Verheijen, 2005) draws a more encouraging conclusion. Analyses of
developments in CIS countries, with the exception of Russia and
Ukraine, remain remarkably absent from the literature.
The two key questions addressed in this chapter are the ‘what’ ques-
tion on the substance of the reform agenda and the ‘why’ question on
the motivation. They are interesting particularly in view of the overall
17
reform debate in public administration: Do most states appear to go

back to their (mostly continental European) roots in creating new civil
service systems or will we see the emergence of a new mixture between
traditional notions of civil service in the (continental) European sense
and the Anglo-American new public management (NPM)-based
models?
What kind of civil service systems: Politico–administrative

relations, internal labour market and management
structures
In the development of civil service systems in CEE countries’ much dis-

cussion is devoted to the application of ‘models’. The applicability of
NPM approaches in the region has been subject to serious political and
academic discussions, often with indecisive results. However, in most
instances NPM methods have been limited to reforms in service deliv-
ery and management systems in the administration. In the develop-
ment of civil service systems, however, states have mostly stayed close
to continental European systems or to systems strongly enshrined in
legislation and borrowing heavily from pre-communist traditions. This
approach has created interesting reform hybrids. Thus, it is important
to see civil service reforms in the overall perspective of administrative
reform programmes, since looking at them in isolation provides only a
partial impression of the nature of reforms. In the following discussion,
attention is therefore also given to the question of the socio-political
context of the reform, in particular to politico–administrative relations,
the type of internal labour market created for the civil service, as
defined in new legislation, as well to how civil service development is
integrated in overall approaches to administrative reform.
Politicians and civil servants, an uneasy partnership continues

Overall dynamic
The creation of a stable and functional politico–administrative inter-
face continues to be a challenge for most CEE countries and even more
so for CIS states. While many examples of contemporary civil service
personnel management reforms are linked to the introduction of NPM
tools (e.g., decreasing tenure, making terms and conditions more
equivalent to those found in the private sector, especially for the top
level positions) most CEE and CIS countries are still trying to achieve
just the opposite. The emphasis in CEE and CIS states is about system
building, and the creation of a unified, professional and impartial civil
Development in Central and Eastern Europe 19
service, which would be able to bear the burden of the transition

process. In this sense, the creation of a professional and politically
neutral senior civil service is of special importance, since overt politi-
cization resulting in a high turnover of staff significantly undermines
sustainability of any reform effort.
Current senior management arrangements in most CEE and CIS
countries are still fairly politicized and do not allow a permanent
senior civil service to develop. Frequent government reshuffles have
resulted in the turnover of a substantial number of senior civil ser-
vants, with the majority usually being replaced after arrival of the new
minister (Verheijen, 2001). This has created serious problems for the
effective management of ministries and has had an adverse effect on
the continuity of both policy-making and implementation processes.
Interestingly, in many cases, civil service laws have failed to break this
pattern, even though decent civil service legislation has been adopted
in a majority of post-communist states both in CEE and the CIS. There
have also been (exceptional) cases of relative continuity, for instance in
Latvia, where changes in the civil service were mainly due to civil
servants departing for economic reasons. However, these remain an
exception to the rule.
Over the past couple of years, most CEE and CIS countries have
undertaken new waves of reform in the politico–administrative inter-
face. Numerous attempts to reorganize relations between politicians
and civil servants ranged from either full de-politicization of top level
posts (Ukraine, Poland), or their moderate de-politicization (most ex-
Yugoslav states), to the creation of a defined political area in the
administration (Hungary, Lithuania, Bulgaria). After relatively quick
adoption of different de-politicization models in civil service laws,
all three groups of countries as well as the CIS have faced numerous
problems in implementation, due to strong political pressures for
continuation of the politicization.
The complexities of coalition governments

The emergence of coalition governments upon (still) fragile political
party systems, has exacerbated the problems in the administrative
systems of CEE and increased politicization trends. In more advanced
civil service systems, coalition governments may permit much greater
autonomy and power to the civil service than in majority party
regimes. The coalition form of government in emerging civil service
systems generally provides chances for overt politicization and has an
adverse effect on efficiency of a government’s decision-making process.
This raises additional concerns for possibilities of establishing a func-

tioning equilibrium between politicians and civil servants.
The establishment of subsequent coalition governments in CEE has
generated the need to create a system of checks and balances between
parties, due to low levels of mutual trust. In this sense, two main
systems of politico–administrative relations could be distinguished:
(1) system of common governance, in which political appointments in
the civil service combine political management from one party with
senior civil servants from different parties and, (2) a system of joint
governance, in which distinct ministerial portfolios are divided among
different parties that tend to appoint supporters to key senior positions
(Peters, Vass and Verheijen, 2005). Both arrangements are obviously
detrimental to the idea of developing a professional civil service.
The existence of coalition politics in most CEE countries has had an
adverse effect on developing a professional and impartial civil service.
In the coalition form of government, a pattern of politicization may
even be more visible given that, due to coalition government instabil-
ity, the party may only have a short time in office and will want to
have maximum impact on policy as well as producing patronage
positions for supporters. In the long run, this pattern of recruitment
institutionalizes a weak civil service with fewer opportunities for real
advancement. In turn, this means that the civil service may find it
extremely difficult to develop a high calibre of personnel to be able to
provide guidance and support to the complex governance processes.
Emerging internal labour markets

An issue closely connected to political–administrative relations is
whether a civil service system should be ‘open’ or ‘closed’. Tradition-
ally, most CEE and CIS states3 operated closed career models, based on
continental European traditions, with entry through examination and
life-long careers with gradual career advancement. Even though civil
service systems in the traditional sense were abolished during the com-
munist regimes, this principle largely remained in place. It was in some
ways even reinforced by the use of the so-called ‘reserve’ system, which
established for each position who would be the next in line once an
incumbent would leave.4 Administrative institutions basically became
individual employers of clerical workers, who would usually spend
their whole career in one institution, with gradual wage growth based
on years of service. However, in most ways the employment system in
the public sector was the same as in other parts of the economy, and
wages were also largely aligned.
The transition drastically altered this picture. The dramatic growth of

the private sector since the mid 1990s led to rapid changes in employment
conditions. The private sector was able to offer much better wages, even
though labour legislation reform eliminated job security. This created an
environment where younger people had a choice between a low paid, but
relatively secure career in a largely demoralized state sector5 (also con-
fronted with increased politicization of appointments), in the public sector
or well-paid positions in an increasingly dynamic private sector.
This context is important to understand the nature of emerging civil
service systems in CEE, and is becoming increasingly relevant to CIS
countries as well. The design of civil service systems became a compro-
mise between politicians’ demands for flexibility and the need to
provide security, but driven by the growing understanding (by the late
1990s) that eroding the quality of state institutions would damage
both EU membership ambitions (for non-CIS countries) as well as com-
petitiveness. This should be considered in combination with a past
where systems were strongly anchored in the continental European tra-
dition of a law-based career civil service.
New laws, what do they establish

New legislation regulating employment conditions in the civil service
has been adopted from Estonia to Tajikistan, and in a large number of
states it appears that the initial flurry of law drafting and re-drafting
has started to settle. The 1990s mostly saw the adoption of legis-
lation ‘on paper’, which neither had the support nor credibility to be
implemented. The new generation of laws (mostly adopted during
1998–2002) seems to fare better, and ongoing discussions on new legis-
lation in Southeastern Europe gives reason to also believe that the time
is right for the adoption of more permanent framework laws for the
civil service. Finally, in the CIS, the new Russian Federal Civil Service
Law is being rapidly followed by the adoption of region-specific laws,
existing laws in Armenia and Kazakhstan are being implemented and
older legislation in place in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is
undergoing fundamental revisions likely to be lasting. Thus, even if
legislative work is far from complete, it is possible to sense a direction
in the development of civil service employment conditions.
The models of civil service pursued in the region vary significantly,
especially on issues such as civil service management, wage systems
and top-level appointments and career management. Therefore these
issues are discussed in separate sections. At the same time, a number of
tendencies are visible.
Classical models remain the rule. Legislation underpinning all emerging

civil service systems in CEE and CIS countries is based on classical conti-
nental European principles, creating a ‘grid’ of categories and classes of
civil servants, with gradual advancement inside each category through a
series of increment steps. There has been some interest in more liberal
approaches (e.g., the Swedish ‘market value’ model) with individual
salaries based on market value assessments, but all civil service systems
eventually were based on the classical grid system. This may seem conser-
vative, but taking into account recent civil service history, in which rules
and procedures did not count for much, the move to ‘bring order’ was
important. There is general consensus that managerial approaches to civil
service management cannot be introduced unless the systems are
grounded in a clear and non-ambivalent foundation.
Increasing reliance on open competition in recruitment. The 1999 volume

highlighted the problem of recruitment systems: even in a more
advanced country such as Hungary, advertising vacancies was not
mandatory, let alone open to competition (Gyorgy in Verheijen, 1999).
In other states, competition for vacancies was not mandatory, and if it
existed in law no proper procedures were in place, and competitions
were often done ‘by documents’. This has fundamentally changed.
Virtually all new civil service laws in the region now make open com-
petition the default method for recruitment, even in many instances
for top-level positions. While this method is still mainly used for entry-
level positions (because most others continue to be filled by internal
recruitment), and some states, such as Armenia and Slovakia, have
reversed articles that stipulated all positions should be filled by open
competition,6 the principle of open competition for entry-level posi-
tions, as well as incidentally for higher-level positions, is now firmly
established.
This development has spread as far east as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Both started experimenting with competition in 2005. One problem
that remains in this regard is oversight. The lack of strong central agen-
cies (see below) still makes the process susceptible to subjectivity, but
establishing the principle is an important step forward. The other
problem that remains to be addressed is improving job description.
New job evaluation and classification are at an early stage of develop-
ment in many states.
Performance driven civil service? Performance appraisal and assessment

are highly controversial in the mostly egalitarian environment of post-
transition states. Differentiating pay based on appraisal is often seen as a

‘Western’ method and not culturally suitable for systems in the region.
Instead, especially CIS states continue to rely on the old ‘attestation’
method, whereby once every three years the suitability and qualification
of office holders are assessed against usually rather vague criteria. The
latter process is highly unpopular among staff, who generally consider
this a tool for politicians to get rid of staff they do not consider loyal.
Removing the existing attestation process in favour of a more modern
performance appraisal system has proven to be difficult, and unfortu-
nately especially CIS states (Russia, Ukraine in particular) have introduced
performance appraisal as an additional assessment tool, which only
increases red tape and the risk of subjectivity in personnel management.
However, a gradual move away from the old methods of evaluation
and attestation has become apparent, and new legislation adopted in
most instances creates the legal basis for a performance appraisal
process. Apart from being viewed with some reservations by staff, the
problem with the introduction of performance evaluation systems has
been that individual performance logically needs to be tied to organi-
zational objectives, and few countries (except Latvia and Lithuania)
that experimented with advanced strategic planning systems since the
late 1990s have developed place systems for defining these priorities.
Reassessing ‘merit’. Gradual career development/salary increments

based on ‘years of service’ was a guiding principle in CEE and CIS civil
service systems. This principle of seniority is also present in most con-
tinental European career systems. However, in the context of large
salary differentiations between the public and private sectors, the
gradual career/wage growth principle creates strong disincentives for
young staff to remain in the civil service. This, in turn, has created lop-
sided civil service systems in which one finds a large number of young
staff (who stay for 2–3 years to gain experience) and a large number of
end-career officials. The most productive age group is least represented
(World Bank, 2003a; 2004a).
This raises the question how career paths for well-performing or
simply talented officials could be defined. One of the possible options
would be consideration of ‘fast-track’ career systems. This approach
(cf. UK practice) places talented young staff, selected by competition,
on a special career track that leads to faster advancement to more
attractive positions. The introduction of this type of system was piloted
in Slovakia in 2003 and is being considered in Kyrgyzstan as well as in
some Russian subjects of the federation. The Slovak pilot was highly
successful when introduced, with an application rate of 30 candidates

for each position, but an evaluation of the system has not yet been
conducted. Other initiatives are still in the design phase.
It is obvious that addressing competitiveness gaps between public
and private sectors is crucial to building viable civil service systems,
especially as it is unlikely that wages in the civil service can catch
up with those in the private sector. The introduction of some incre-
mental and some radical innovations in this regard will be one of the
determining factors in the creation of professional civil service systems.
Civil service management: continued strong ministerial autonomy

The development of civil service systems traditionally presupposes the
creation of an integrated horizontal management system to guarantee
system coherence, as well as the development of a management unit that
would safeguard this coherence. While not all civil service systems follow
this model, it is generally seen as preferable. Even those systems that are
highly decentralized are usually anchored in a set of binding conventions
and rules.
The CEE and CIS countries have developed civil service systems that,
with few exceptions,7 remain highly decentralized. Ministerial auton-
omy remains strong. Attempts to impose centrally managed systems
have either failed or suffered from a gradual watering down of author-
ity of the central management units.
Central civil service management institutions have found it extremely
difficult to take root in the ministry based systems of CEE and CIS
countries. This is partially due to tradition, but also to a reaction to the
centrally controlled personnel policies of the Communist Party under
the previous regime. Even where there was a strong political impetus to
establish central agencies, they have found it difficult to retain their
position or remit. Without a stronger central management and moni-
toring system, however, discrepancies in the interpretation and imple-
mentation of civil service laws will continue to pose a serious risk to
their development as coherent and professional institutions.
The issue of wage systems: a key emerging question

The reform of wage systems has in recent years emerged as one of the
single most important issues in the development of civil service
systems in the region. The opaque and subjective nature of systems
currently in place is one of the most important disincentives for young
talented professionals to join or remain in the civil service. Some of the
key characteristics of wage systems generally include:
• Rigid advancement in pay, tied mainly to years of service

• A complex system of allowances and bonuses, in many instances
making up to 65 percent or more of total pay
• Low base pay used as a political smokescreen
• Pay depends more on where one works than on what function one
performs
It can be safely argued that at least two of these features tend to occur
across the board.8 The first two features highlighted above are mostly
remnants of the previous system of governance. The low level of base
salaries was compensated by an elaborate system of monetary and non-
material benefits, including free holidays, medical care, housing, etc.,
and advancement based on years of service was the main feature of
career progress in former communist systems. These features remain
particularly strong in FSU states, where even reformed systems retain a
significant number of bonuses and allowances, the allocation of which
has little connection with performance and often continues to consti-
tute a sizeable proportion of actual wages.
Wage system assessments conducted in recent years call for the need
to develop wage systems based on European principles, such as trans-
parency,9 rewards according to level of responsibility or complexity of
work and equal pay for equal work. Reforms have been initiated in
several states but these have often been incremental in nature (Russia,
Ukraine) or slow to be implemented. More positive examples are
Lithuania, which has introduced a more transparent wage system
based on job complexity (World Bank, 2004b), and Latvia, though the
Latvian system has been adversely affected by the decision not to pub-
licize the level and conditions for pay of performance bonuses for
senior officials. This generated strong suspicions among citizens.
Hence, where there is some movement in the establishment of more
merit-based and transparent pay systems, good examples remain few
and far between. Wage system reform thus continues to lag behind
other elements of civil service development and in this continues
to put achievements of the overall reform process at risk. Therefore,
wage system reform remains among the most important elements of
reform.
Conclusions: Internal labour markets and senior executives in

construction
The difficulties in establishing a stable politico–administrative interface
in CEE and CIS states raises the question of what could and should to
be done to create a better working partnership between politicians and

civil servants?
The experience of numerous reform efforts has pointed to unrealistic
expectations of achieving major outcomes through restructuring
politico–administrative relations simply by passing civil service legis-
lation. It looks that securing outcomes of reform activities in this area
requires specific alliance building with political parties and interest
groups to provide sufficient incentives for joint tackling of patronage
and politicization (World Bank, 2003c). The solution for now seems to
accept the reality and allow certain levels of moderate and managed
politicization, rather than to insist upon the introduction of the classi-
cal British model of separation of political office holders and career
civil servants.
The contours of new systems are now clearly emerging, but review-
ing key elements of internal labour markets in the civil service leads to
the conclusion that some of their building blocks are still to be
strengthened. Important steps forward include increasingly merit-
based systems across the region, as well as the emerging acceptance
that performance matters, can be measured and should be rewarded in
a transparent manner. The fragmentation of labour markets remains a
point for concern. If competition and performance are to work, a larger
pool of candidates has to be considered than merely those in (usually
small) ministries. However, stovepipes have been extremely hard to
break down and horizontal management systems difficult to establish.
In addition, in a low wage environment it is understandable that inter-
nal recruitment is given preference over external recruitment.
However, on incentive grounds, this further limits the impact of merit
and performance principles. Thus, where there is certainly a positive
movement in the direction of creating merit-based systems, systems
will need to open up, at least internally, if the quality of civil services is
to really improve.
Drivers of reform: benchmarking and competitiveness

issues
Discussions of civil service reform generally identify three drivers:

strong traditions, changes in economic development trends, and/or
external factors (e.g., Dimitrova, 2002; Rabrenovic and Verheijen,
2005). We consider here mainly the latter two potential drivers and
acknowledge that traditions and values can also play an important
role, especially in states emerging from the Hapsburg tradition. But
tradition is mainly visible in the direction and not so much in the

substance of reform.10
Europeanization, common values, and benchmarking

Any discussion of the impact of European integration on public adminis-
tration systems would have been rather futile 15 years ago. Adminis-
trative and civil service systems were the exclusive domain of the member
states, which individually applied a policy of strict ‘non-interference’ in
relation to each others’ public management systems. This has changed
fundamentally with the completion of the Internal Market and Monetary
Union. Indeed, the quality of administrations has become a point of dis-
cussion between member states. The prospect of accession of a large
group of CEE states, with (perceived) weak public administration systems,
added incentive to politicians in EU states for engaging in discussions
about administrative quality at European level.11
Two separate but related assessment and benchmarking systems were
subsequently developed in the context of the EU. First, the ‘baseline
assessment’ system. This reviews the quality of civil service and public
management systems based on a set of qualitative indicators, related to
six core functions that public management systems are expected to
fulfil.12 This system is used to assess administrative readiness for EU
membership, but has also been used widely beyond the direct EU
accession context as a basic benchmarking system for establishing
whether public management systems meet minimum institutional and
legal standards. Second, the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), a
quality management (self-)assessment system, establishes whether
public management systems in individual institutions are meeting best
practice targets in nine core competency areas that are essential for
high-quality policy management and service delivery. Both systems
were elaborated through interaction between EU officails, member
state experts and one external organization (OECD/SIGMA for the
baseline system and EIPA for CAF). In the case of the baseline assess-
ment system input from candidate states to the design was also sought,
both at expert and government level.
Both instruments were originally designed for a specific purpose (mea-
suring readiness of candidate states in the case of the baseline-assessment
system and improving EU policy implementation capacity in the case of
the CAF). There have been some interesting side effects, though:
(a) the development of a broad discussion about ‘European values’ in

public administration;
(b) the emergence of competition between states (initially mostly

between candidate states, but increasingly between member states)
on issues of quality of public administration.
These are rather recent developments and it is still too early to assess
their real impact upon the development of public administration
systems in Europe. However, the speed at which the discussion on
European values has developed from a single OECD paper to a widely
joined discussion among academic and practitioners, including gov-
ernments outside the immediate circle of EU candidate states, shows
that this may give a European sense of direction to reform processes
that have long been seen as driven by ‘imported’ NPM principles.
Much in the same way, the CAF has been embraced both by the more
‘managerial’ Northern European and English-speaking states as well as
by continental European states such as Belgium and Austria and
appears to have helped fill the need for a benchmarking approach that
different European traditions can identify with.
The fact that states appear to be comfortable with the benchmarking
systems designed and consider them an expression of administrative
values they can associate with, creates a serious potential driving force
for civil service reform in a wider European context. The experience
with the most recent accession process provides clear proof of this.
Politicians in CEE states, often showing little interest in civil service
reform before the benchmarking system was created, started to show a
strong interest once EU regular reports identified ‘front runners’ and
‘laggards’ in civil service reform. This especially in states that felt less
sure of being included in the first wave of Eastern enlargement. Beyond
this, states such as Ukraine self-adopted the benchmarking system to
emphasize their European credentials.
The benchmarking systems currently hold value mainly for EU states,
the close circle of candidate states, and others that aspire to eventual
membership, but have established a clearer sense of the kind of public
management and civil service system is needed to be part of the
‘European Administrative Space’.
Competitiveness and investment climate: the governance and

growth discussion
A second driving force for reforms in CEE and CIS countries is the gov-
ernance and growth linkage. Initially, discussions of this emphasized
the negative relation between poor governance and growth, as analysts
tried to explain a series of crises in transition states in the late 1990s
(most spectacularly in Bulgaria, but also in the Czech Republic and the
Baltic States) based on weak and/or corrupt governance structures. In
recent years, the governance and growth debate has moved from
explaining reversals in growth patterns to a discussion of proactive
approaches, that is, whether improving the quality of governance can
help attract outside investment. The need to create better conditions
for attracting outside investment has recently been used as an argu-
ment by reformers (particularly in resource-rich states, e.g., Russia and
Kazakhstan) that seek to diversify their economic structures and attract
foreign investment. In addition, Armenia, for instance, linked adminis-
trative reform to World Trade Organization (WTO) accession, arguing
that trade liberalization coming with WTO membership requires states
to compete more with business climate and investment policies,
thus creating the need for investment in public administration
development.
The link between governance (and especially foreign direct invest-
ment: FDI) and growth is made more frequently, and explored in a
rapidly growing body of literature. Unfortunately, the analytical work
on governance and growth continues to be limited mainly to large
multi-country regression studies (World Bank, 2005a). They are dif-
ficult to use in an individual country context. Still, the attention gov-
ernments devote to the publication of, for instance, the World Bank
composite governance indicators,13 shows that this linkage is increas-
ingly taken serious by policy-makers. This can be further illustrated by
the recent debate on the adoption of the Administrative Reform
Concept and Action Plan in the Russian Federation. This was based on
the argument that for Russia to diversify its economy and attract FDI, a
serious improvement in the quality of governance would be the main
prerequisite. Similar discussions have surrounded the debate on civil
service and wage system reform in Kazakhstan, which, even more than
Russia, is at risk of suffering from the ‘Dutch disease’ (World Bank,
2005b) brought about by a strong dominance of the oil industry. Thus,
some of the movement on the administrative and civil service reform
agenda can be explained by the emergence of this particular school of
thought and its increasing influence on government policies.
The WTO accession argument is of a similar nature. While WTO
accession, unlike EU membership, does not impose specific require-
ments on administrative and civil service systems, it is clear that states
do need to build capacity in key policy areas (including standardiza-
tion, certification, customs, etc.) if they are to benefit from WTO mem-
bership. Kyrgyzstan, for instance, joined the WTO early but did not
benefit much from membership due to its lack of progress in (in part)
administrative reform. Armenia is a case in which WTO membership
(in part) inspired administrative and civil service reform that are at
least in part driven by the need to sustain economic development.14
Conclusion
Drivers of administrative and civil service reform in CEE and CIS states
are varied and diverse. In states that joined the EU or aspire EU mem-
bership, the EU-driven benchmarking and assessment approaches have
been a major impetus for reform. In states further removed from the
European mainstream, the main drivers for reform are economic inte-
gration and globalization as well as the perceived linkage between eco-
nomic development and good governance. The two sets of drivers are
often mutually reinforcing: CAF was defined in the context of the
development of the Lisbon competitiveness agenda, as a self-standing
but connected mechanism in furthering the European competitiveness
agenda, while EU benchmarking systems have been applied in states
and regions well beyond the immediate circle of states aspiring for
EU membership. What is clear is that the almost parallel emergence of
the ‘governance and growth’ school and the development of bench-
marking systems in the context of the European integration process
have given a strong impetus to administrative and civil service reform
and helped to define and move forward the reform agenda over the
past seven years.
CEE and CIS systems: how do they connect to global

developments?
What can the emergence of new civil service systems in CEE countries
teach us about the usefulness of different models? The clash between
the Anglo-American custom-based and management-driven civil service,
and the continental European formal and rule-driven system, has been
clearly visible in debates during the past 15 years in the region. The tra-
ditional continental model is much more alive than economic analysts
make us believe. While performance measurement and management
quality have been key elements of the debate on the development of
new civil service systems, the main focus was legal frameworks, norms,
new systems of politico–administrative relations, and other traditional
European notions. This may come as a surprise, in particular if one
considers the dominance of NPM paradigms at the time that new civil
service systems were formed in the region (Verheijen in Peters and
Pierre, 2003). Instead what we see is a blend of continental European

structures with a slowly added dose of performance management.
Some states have shown an interest in the more corporatist Southeast
Asian models, but this has mostly been limited to Central Asia and, in
a minor way, Russia.
The two explanations usually provided for this development are
twofold: CEE countries are returning to pre-communist traditions and
those processes influenced by a mainly continentally minded European
Commission. But there is more to the story. In systems with a high risk
of politicization and with limited, declining resources, stabilization is
more urgent than innovation. The values of continental systems, with
their emphasis on law and security, proved more suitable to the needs
of transition states than notions of flexibility, performance and man-
agement. The fact that the discussion on performance and manage-
ment issues at this time, when new systems have finally started to
settle, is reviving, only serves to further emphasize this point. It adds to
the notion that managerialism is not a good recipe for systems in flux,
and that countries in transition most of all need broadly accepted
rule-based civil service systems before considering wider innovations
(Verheijen and Coombes, 1998). In fact, the brief history of the cre-
ation of civil service systems in CEE and CIS countries seems to prove
that the lessons of the public administration classics of the 19th century
are as relevant as ever.
Notes
1 The views and opinions expressed in this chapter are the personal views of
the authors only.
2 Even though the very concept of the CIS has been overtaken by political
reality (Turkmenistan and Georgia have effectively left the organization and
others may follow), the term is used in the context of this chapter to indicate
the 12 states of the former Soviet Union that initially formed the CIS in 1991.
3 It should be noted that most of the Central Asian and Caucasus states have
no or limited own experience in statehood.
4 In parallel with the ‘Nomenklatura’ system operated by the Communist
Party.
5 See Verheijen in Peters and Pierre (2003) for a more elaborate discussion.
6 In Slovakia, this proved unmanageable, because all recruitment became
blocked, in Armenia both considerations of manageability and incentives
played a role.
7 Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Poland have experimented with strong central
agencies.
8 See, for instance, World Bank/DFID (2004a), World Bank (2003b),
and World Bank, Tajikistan (2006), World Bank PEIR wage studies on
Kyrgyzstan (2004) and Kazakhstan (2005), Wage system assessments for

Armenia (World Bank, in progress), Ukraine (World Bank/DFID, 2004b) and
Lithuania (World Bank, 2004). Fiscal Cost of Reform study on Russia (World
Bank, 2005).
9 Usually expressed in having a base pay to real pay ratio of 80 percent or
more.
10 One possible exception here is Serbia, where traditions and values played a
major role in the definition of the Administrative Reform Strategy adopted
in 2004, while the EU accession dimension was relatively underplayed at
the time.
11 For more extensive discussions on the subject, see Dimitrova (2002),
Verheijen (2003; 2004) and Goetz (2001).
12 On policy management, civil service, internal financial control, public
expenditure management, external financial control and procurement.
13 See <http://info.worldbank.org/governance/kkz2004/gov2001map.asp>.
14 Armenia continues to be one of the fastest growing economies in the world,
and has sustained this for the last four years.
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3
Western European Civil Service
Systems: A Comparative Analysis
Frits M. Van der Meer, Trui Steen and Anchrit Wille
Introduction
According to available geological information, Europe started off as a

collection of smaller tectonic plates situated somewhere in the south-
ern hemisphere. Slowly drifting northwards, forces of nature moulded
these smaller entities over time into the continent we know. On the
basis of this historical geological information, we are relatively safe to
presume that Europe has, at least, a geographical identity. Comparing
civil service systems during earlier phases in the Civil Service project, it
was more or less implicitly taken for granted that Western Europe pos-
sesses more than a geographical distinctiveness from other regions. In
Bekke and Van der Meer (2000) extensive attention is paid to the
historical institutional dimension of Western European civil service
systems. The historical paragraphs highlighted many common features
in the development of Western European civil service systems, without
underestimating existing national particularities. Most Western
European civil service systems show continuous reform efforts. Using
the framework developed by Bekke, Perry and Toonen (1996) we assess
(the implications of) recent empirical research.
The changing position of civil servants within the framework of gov-
ernment is first examined with attention for the changing personnel
size of the civil service, the legal status of public employment, reward
systems and other HRM policies and practices. Our analysis confronts
processes of (de)bureaucratization with the spread of new managerial
approaches. We then discuss the relevance of representative bureau-
cracy from an empirical and a normative perspective. Equally impor-
tant is attention for bottom up politicisation (i.e., the political activity
of civil servants themselves) and top down politicisation (i.e., a variety
34
Western European Civil Service Systems 35
of mechanisms used in the political system to control the civil service).

We then consider public opinion about the various civil service systems,
before drawing some conclusions about reform in Western European
civil service systems.
The changing position of civil servants within the

framework of government and the management of human
resources
In the past two centuries, most European countries have adopted com-
prehensive legal frameworks for their civil service systems. This was a
long and arduous process since legislation was adopted in a piecemeal
manner. Arguments of political expediency has often been at odds
with producing comprehensive (and often) codified schemes. The drive
for more codified civil service legislation started in 1794 in Prussia with
the inclusion of ample provisions in the Preußische Allgemeine
Landrecht. A recognizable separate act dates from 1805 when the
Hauptdienstpragmatik über die Dienstverhältnisse der Staatsdiener was
adopted in Bavaria. Codification came relatively late, for example, in
the Netherlands (1929), Belgium (1930) and France (1946). The United
Kingdom still lacks a statutory civil service act, although a draft civil
service bill was presented to Parliament in 2004.
In continental legal thinking, enshrining rights and duties of civil
servants is traditionally seen as one of the cornerstones and critical
manifestations of the Rechtsstaat. Regulation regarding civil servant’s
duties implies a standardization of previously – at least partially –
autonomous civil servants (particularly those working in field agencies
and collegial organizations) by government centres through the
emphasis of hierarchical lines. Standardization concerns both the exis-
tence and enforcement of a code of behaviour based on ethical norms,
as well as the legal rights that protect civil servants against arbitrary
interventions and behaviour of his political superiors.
The adoption of civil service laws constituted a bureaucratic revolu-
tion almost similar to the current impact of new public management
in the northwest corner of Europe. Crucial to civil service laws has
been the reform of personnel management into a more objective
system of recruitment and selection securing the hiring of qualified
and skilled civil servants. This included an aversion to appointments
on the basis of (political) nepotism, but not necessarily the inclusion of
political merit criteria (Van der Meer and Raadschelders, 1998). Regu-
lations have been refined and expanded in order to limit the room for
discretion and thus avoid, according to the dominant view, what was
seen as abuse or arbitrariness. The personnel management system thus
became increasingly bureaucratized and civil services slowly acquired a
protected and professional nature (Raadschelders and Rutgers, 1996).
The introduction of civil service legislation limited political and man-
agerial abuse and flexibility. These self-limitations, however, explain
the reserve of some governments in the past to embark on issuing inte-
grated civil service acts while governments presently desire to limit
existing civil service rights.
Since the late 1970s and the early 1980s, criticism has increasingly
been directed at perceived bureaucratic rigidities in personnel manage-
ment regulations and practices. These rigidities were perceived as frus-
trating the efficiency and effectiveness and to hinder reform. The
introduction of more flexibility was considered all the more important
given rapid changes within and in the direct environment of govern-
ment. Large budgetary deficits, social-economic tensions accompanied
by political-ideological resentment against big government and bureau-
cratic interference led to calls for smaller (more effective and efficient)
government. This stimulated a fundamental reappraisal of the place
and role of the public sector within society and consequently to a reap-
praisal of public personnel management (Bekke and Van der Meer,
2000; Peters and Pierre, 2001; 2004).
The preferred solution to remedy these bureaucratic rigidities was to
introduce more flexible labour relationships. The need for reform was
argued by a coalition of political office holders, top civil servants and
political science and public administration experts. A new managerial
way of thinking gained the upper hand, labelled ‘new public manage-
ment’ (NPM) and was very much advanced by the backing of interna-
tional (reform) agencies as the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
World Bank and supportive publications of administrative scientists.
This idea of modernizing personnel management in the public sector
has led to a wide array of human resource management initiatives
relating to changes in the legal status of civil servants and the intro-
duction of new payment schemes, mobility schemes, management
development plans and training programme.
While this new managerialism pertains to problem definitions and
policy intensions, it does not necessarily involve real life reforms.
There are wide-ranging discrepancies between countries with regard to
the popularity of reform issues and the actual level of implementation.
NPM was, and is still, particularly popular in the British Isles, the
Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Flanders and Austria. In

other Western European countries its popularity has been remarkably
less, for example, in France, Germany and Italy and other Southern
European countries.
Fundamental questions have been raised regarding the need for
keeping a distinct public approach to government employment issues.
Should public sector employment be enjoying a public law basis or
should it be integrated in the private sector system? This particular
question is of course only pertinent to the public law countries exclud-
ing the UK. Although the public law status has been formally retained
on important issues, the public nature of the system has decreased.
Labour negotiations, pay settlements, social security and benefits have
often been made compatible with private sector arrangements limiting
the previous high level of job security in the public sector. A distinc-
tion has to be made between a right of tenure and a right to a particu-
lar job. Measures as the introduction of limits on the time a (top) civil
servant is placed in a particular position have been introduced in
Belgium, the Netherlands and other countries (Demmke, 2004; 2005).
However, increasingly the public law status is reappraised, since it is
considered to be relevant for safeguarding the public interest and
maintaining ethical standards (Shim, 2001; Van der Meer, 2002).
Redesigning personnel management systems has involved pro-
grammes directed towards a reduction of the size of public employ-
ment and towards breaking the civil service monopoly in public service
delivery. Through a combination of downsizing, privatization, public
tendering and contracting out it was thought possible to end public
service monopoly and to introduce competition. Deconstructing the
remaining public sector through a combined process of territorial
decentralization and agencyfication constituted an additional option
to erode public sector power. An important component of personnel
policies after the 1980s was the downsizing. As a large percentage of
government expenditure has to do with salaries, an ambition was
formulated to do ‘more with less’ leading to cutback programmes. It
is extremely difficult to interpret the statistics. Apart from real sub-
stantive staff reductions that have been realized at the expense of par-
ticularly industrial and civilian military staff, actual results are difficult
to read due to changing definitions and reorganization within the
public sector. The latter has been particularly the case due to processes
of agencyfication and (quasi) privatization. Furthermore, civil servants
working in a policy advisory capacity, senior implementation roles or
administrative oversight functions have more or less successfully been
isolated from the effects of these operations. What might well be the
common denominator behind the cutbacks is that policies were pri-
marily led by a concern to reduce government costs as visible in the
budgets, rather than resulting from a real assessment of actual person-
nel needs. Not surprisingly then, these reforms did not (only) lead to a
‘leaner’ government, but to a more fragmented and opaque public
sector.
Apart from the size issues one of the central elements in Western
European HRM reforms has been the so-called decentralization of HRM
responsibilities from centralized staff organizations to line departments
and agencies, and the further devolution within departments and
agencies to line managers. Within Western Europe, northern countries,
especially Sweden, but also Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and the
UK have taken steps in this process of devolution, while the issue does
not seem to carry much priority within Southern European countries.
Yet, even the Northern European countries are believed to have only
marginally dismantled the very core unity of the civil service. Con-
tradictory even, initiatives are now underway to create so-called shared
service centres in which technical HRM functions are organized.
Furthermore, the management of the senior civil service remains under
central influence or is actually centralized, as was the case in the
Netherlands in the 1990s. In addition, decentralization processes as
such do not actually guarantee greater flexibility and variety in person-
nel systems. In some countries with decentralized HR authorities, line
ministries and agencies do not have flexible schemes at all, but run
similar systems in practice (Shim, 2001).
Although NPM may have found its way in numerous HRM reform
efforts, in most countries except the Scandinavian countries, the
formal career systems have not been diminished in importance,
although some reform efforts have been made (sometimes in vain) to
offset possible inflexible side effects. One should keep in mind,
however, that in many countries corps constructions have remained in
force for traditional corpslike structures such as the Foreign Office, the
military and the police. Likewise, senior civil service career systems are
in place or have been introduced. This demonstrates that, due to the
inherent importance attached to esprit de corps and the demand for a
civil service professionalism incorporating ethics and political sensitiv-
ity, the limits of NPM are found.
Reform initiatives may have ‘deprivileged’ civil servants in terms of
opening the civil service to a certain extent, they do not show an
overall success story in leading to a new management of public sector
personnel. The gradual introduction of flexible reward schemes,

including merit pay, has been put on policy agendas. It has to be said
that many of these initiatives are at the moment either in their early
stages of implementation or have produced disappointing results
(Bekke and Van der Meer, 2000). The pay systems in, for example, the
Netherlands and the UK can at best be situated somewhere in between
‘the traditional and the new model’, while Sweden is one of the excep-
tions for having introduced a system where traditional seniority or age-
based increments no longer are a major part of civil servants’ pay and
pay determination is decentralized and even individualized (Willems et
al., 2005). The difficulties in introducing ‘new’ pay systems can be
explained by either outright resistance (see, for instance, the Italian
case) or by a shortage of financial means and political determination.
In a situation of financial austerity merit pay seems difficult to
implement.
Interesting enough, although ample time has been spent on the
development of a new vision on managing public sector employment
and adapting the civil service to a private sector paradigm, new doubts
have emerged in the reform heartlands. Recent policies try to remediate
negative side-effects of the cruder NPM versions (Steen et al., 2005).
A major concern is the need to appraise the fundamental values
embedded in civil services and preserve public sector ethos. Although
this is to a certain extent a concern situated at the core of an intense
theoretical debate (cf. Du Gay, 2000; 2005), there is evidence of
redirection in thought and a rediscovery of the publicness of the civil
service by reemphasizing ethical standards in the civil service, through
the use of ethical codes, the incorporation of ethical standards in civil
servants’ training programmes and the provision of protection to
whistleblowers (Shim, 2001).
Bureaucracy: representativeness, diversity and inclusiveness
Representative bureaucracy has a long history. The main question

relates to the social background of those bureaucratic positions of
power either at the administrative summit or in a street level capacity.
Research invariably confirms the gap between the composition of the
civil service and society at large. Bekke and Van der Meer (2000) argued
that important factors for understanding the level of actual representa-
tiveness are, inter alia, the homogeneity of a country, the educational
system, the relevant constitutional and legislative framework, the role
and perception of the state, and the territorial system of the state.
With the exception of the Scandinavian countries and the Irish

Republic, most Western European countries are characterized by social
cleavages. From a policy point of view we find two different approaches
for dealing with these: The French versus the rest. In the French case,
there is no room for policy directed towards a representative bureau-
cracy, particularly not in terms of language, religion or class. The
meritocratic and unifying nature of the French is considered incompat-
ible with possible sectional interests. The national character and
quality control on education should as much as possible prevent
inequalities in this respect. Issues, such as feminization, are considered
in a framework different from the representativeness issue. Equal
opportunity is seen as a formal prerequisite. However, in the French
case this requisite is to be placed in a meritocratic bureaucratic context
rather than a representative context.
In other countries, we see ample variation when concentrating on
delivering equal opportunities for, for example, women and minorities.
Active policies directed to create ‘mirror-image’ representativeness are
rare and often considered violating the equal opportunity principle. To
a certain extent, Belgium has been an exception because of the lan-
guage dimension. The scale and influence of policies to increase the
inclusion of females, and in some cases ethnic minorities, by using
instruments like positive discrimination, are limited, but such policies
do exist in police organization in order to promote the perception of
legitimacy by target groups. Such arguments are voiced, for instance, in
the UK regarding the composition of the Northern Ireland police force.
In some cases representativeness is considered an instrument to
reinforce a weak national state. Deep social cleavages, especially those
associated with geographical, language and religious and cultural dif-
ferences, are able to undermine a shared national identity given the
primary feeling of group loyalty. Western European civil service
systems provide ample interesting cases how in recent times repres-
entativeness is used to ensure a stronger national unity or at least to
stop national disintegration. An example is to be found in the Belgian
case (Hondeghem, 2000). Representative bureaucracy is seen as an
important instrument to ensure a balance of power between different
groups and to help the preservation of the Belgian state. Belgium is cer-
tainly not a homogeneous country with linguistic, religious and polit-
ical cleavages. Representativeness of public institutions is considered a
policy that accommodates the various sectional interests. Every group
gets more or less what it is proportionally entitled to. The dispersion of
the territorial system of the country is another important factor for
explaining an increasing level of representativeness. Regionalization

and federalization are instruments to promote the level of repre-
sentativeness by transferring power to the ‘regional’ authorities given
a high level of regional homogeneity (e.g., Spain, Italy and the
United Kingdom).
Politicization and political control in European civil

service systems
Although the belief is widespread that the public sector has politicized,
it is difficult to substantiate this assertion given the many meanings of
the term. Politicization is a convenient umbrella term. The politiciza-
tion of civil service systems can refer to the (changing) number of
(party) political appointments, (party) political behaviour as well as
political sensitivity of civil servants (Van der Meer and Raadschelders,
1998). Hojnacki (1996) argues that civil service politicization implies a
violation of the principle of political neutrality. But this view is based
on the unsubstantiated claim of an administrative past in which neu-
trality was the norm. Also, the term political neutrality is not unam-
biguous. An ‘apolitical’ and ‘neutral’ civil service has to operate in an
environment that is highly political defined (Page and Wright, 1999).
According to most contemporary and Weberian (Page, 1992) defini-
tions, politics is not limited to certain persons, institutions or to spe-
cialized arenas in which an action takes place. Politics can be defined
as the process that determines ‘who gets what, when and how’
(Lasswell, 1936). In this sense, many public servants are involved in
politics, even if they stay clear of party politics. The pattern regarding
the demarcation between political and the administrative systems in
the 19th and 20th centuries, however, has been, in a formal sense, to
shield the civil service from overt party-political control in order to
enhance its efficiency and to ensure its fairness (Peters and Pierre,
2004; Van der Meer and Raadschelders, 1998).
We distinguish between bottom-up and top-down politicization
(Peters and Pierre, 2004). Bottom-up politicization pertains to the
increase of political activity by civil servants. Given the extensive scope
of the politicization concept, this can include party-political allegiance
and behaviour, a policy-oriented attitude and the awareness of the
political context of public service delivery. There are countries where
some (senior) civil servants are still forbidden to be (active) members of
political parties (e.g., the UK and Ireland). In the majority of the
remaining countries (e.g., Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden)
there is an increasing tendency for civil servants to be party members.

There are usually limitations for active political participation at the
level of government where one is employed. Civil servants who do so
have to vacate the job temporarily or permanently. Regarding the
policy-oriented attitude and the awareness of the political context of
public service delivery, there has been a definite trend (with the poss-
ible exception of the Italian civil service) towards a more politicized
situation, although this progress has been mitigated by the rise of man-
agerial attitudes in government with proclaimed emphasis on technical
rationality.
Top-down politicization involves an increased level of control
exerted by government over bureaucrats. Top-down politicization
occurs when political office holders try to ensure that opinions and
behaviour of public servants are (made) compatible with their own
policy preferences. According to Van der Meer (2002), there is an
extensive repertoire of politicization methods:
1 The political appointment of public officials using:

(a) a spoils system;
(b) formalized political discretion to appoint top civil servants;
(c) informal political appointment of permanent civil service posi-
tions;
(d) political advisers;
(e) ministerial cabinets.
2 Alternative external sources of advice and expertise by
(a) consulting external personal advisers;
(b) hiring of consultants;
(c) using of advisory bodies and public expertise institutions;
3 The deconstruction of a monolithic and integrated ‘bureaucracy’ by
(a) slimming down ‘bureaucracy’;
(b) creating competing advisory or implementation offices;
(c) creating a supervisory bureaucracy;
4 Changing administrative values
(a) manipulating or creating a service ethos;
(b) adapting legal provisions.
These methods aim at breaking down a perceived civil service mono-

poly on power. With the exception of appointing power through a
formal spoils system, all of these methods are used (with are poss-
ible exception of Spain and Greece). However, their use depends on the
acceptability in a given national political–administrative and in the
wider societal institutional context. The formal political appointment

of top civil servants is considered not done in the UK, the Netherlands,
Denmark, and Norway. Nevertheless, sometimes informal nominations
take place. In Finland, opposition to the high levels of party political
appointments in the 1970s and the 1980s led to a decrease of these in
the 1990s. Similar criticism has been targeted in Sweden, where only a
small percentage of senior civil servants are appointed on a (party)
political basis. To put the prefix ‘party’ between parantheses is not
without reason. Many of the appointments are based on the desire to
have compatibility of policy ideas between politicians and top civil ser-
vants, rather than merely a shared party-political background. Political
appointments are formally accepted in many southern countries and
in Germany, which has known political appointments to the civil
service since the 19th century (Goetz, 2000); ministers may require per-
manent secretaries and heads of divisions to take ‘temporary retire-
ment’ and they have been replaced with qualified persons of their own
choosing. These policy-sensitive functions were excluded from the
tenure protection provisions, when during the 19th century, new civil
service legislation was developed. The same mechanism is used on a
larger scale in France. However, even in these cases, ministers are not
completely free and willing to change high-ranking personnel.
The use of ministerial cabinets is characteristic in southern civil
service systems (e.g., Belgium, France and Spain). In the north, ministe-
rial cabinets are formally abhorred by politicians and the general
public (even to a formal degree by the policy-makers in the ‘cabinet’
systems). Nevertheless, in northern countries there has been a surge in
the use of political advisers, operating as a functional equivalent of the
ministerial cabinets. The proliferation of advisers under Tony Blair in
the UK is exemplary for the creation of quasi-ministerial cabinets.
Apart from utilizing internal political sources of support, (tradition-
ally) alternative external sources of advice and expertise are extensively
used. Examples are the hiring of consultants, external personal advisers
and the use of advisory bodies and public expertise bodies. Polit-
icization can manifest itself in structural terms by deconstructing a
monolithic and integrated ‘bureaucracy’ through slimming down
‘bureaucracy’, creating competing advisory or implementation offices
and setting up a supervisory bureaucracy. In the UK, the Next Steps
programme was partially instituted as a form of reorganization through
which politics could gain control. Similar arguments have been voiced
in the Netherlands regarding introduction of independent agencies.
However, in Germany and France structural reforms to this effect have
been limited. Neither of these countries has significantly dismantled

central civil service controls, nor have they created flocks of new quangos
to take over functions formerly under direct political oversight (Pollitt
and Bouckaert, 2004). On a more fundamental level, there is an inherent
weakness in this structural approach as it is not all that clear who benefits
more from deconstructing integral bureaucracy: politicians or bureau-
crats. Much depends on who is able to control the interorganizational
exchange, what powers remain and who is most equipped to take up a
leading role in the multi-level governance play (see Page and Wright,
2007).
Another aspect of politicization has been the attempt of politicians
to change the behaviour or culture of the public service into a more
responsive set of actions, beliefs and values by manipulating or creat-
ing a service ethos and/or adapting legal provisions. One of the central
objectives of civil service legislation was to define civil servant behav-
iour and responsibilities towards politics and the general public. In so-
called NPM countries politicization has found its way through an
attempt to influence the behaviour and the culture of the civil service.
More and more the emphasis has shifted to civil servants’ ability to
make policies work. This resulted in increasing numbers of ‘can do’
civil servants and a civil service opening up to outside appointments.
We have shown some of the most important top down politicization
methods, but the room for it is limited due to internal bureaucratic
conflict and a potential loss of (external) legitimacy. Politicization can
produce negative effects by increasing the gap between the top and the
rank and file. It may lower the legitimacy of the top in the eyes of the
latter (Bekke and Van der Meer, 2000; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004). Trying
to solve this tension by extending political appointments to a lower level
can lead to a vicious politicization cycle and may even create an extensive
spoils system. It is interesting to see a trend in the UK, Germany, Ireland,
the Netherlands and Sweden to diminish the reliance on ‘neutral’ civil
servants, while in Austria, Belgium, Greece and Spain (abortive) attempts
have been made to decrease the politicisation of the senior levels of the
civil service by breaking away from clientele relationships and creating a
more proficient senior civil service that can be trusted. The word ‘trusted’
is the motivating force in both reform directions.
Public opinion on civil service systems
Government and the civil service system generally suffer from a nega-
tive image. In the past 20 years, many West European governments
have intensified efforts to improve their public service delivery and to

make government more responsive, transparent and accessible. The
question, however, is whether these efforts resulted in a better image of
government among citizens.
Figure 3.1 shows shifts in public confidence towards European civil
services between 1981 and 2000. The countries started from different
positions in 1981 and this picture remains more or less constant
through time. Trust in the civil service remains relatively low in Italy
and Germany, while in Iceland and Ireland one finds the highest levels
of confidence. Yet, these figures do not appear to correlate with the
volume of reform for these countries. Figure 3.1 presents a mixed
pattern with no clear trend. It is thus impossible to determine whether
reforms to have contributed to higher trust levels in civil services. In
Germany and Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Ireland and Iceland the trust
figures rise; whereas the figures drop in the Netherlands, the UK,
Denmark, France, Finland and Northern Ireland.
How is it possible that efforts to reform the public sector are not
reflected in more positive scores of citizens towards civil service
systems, and that they even have resulted in declining levels of trust?
A recent evaluation of long-term data found clear evidence of a general
Figure 3.1 Trust in civil service in 12 Western European countries, 1981–2000

(%)
% 60
50
40
30
1981
20 2000
10
0
Ita G N Fi U D S B F N I I
ly er et n K e n we e l r a - I r c e l r e l
m h e la n m d gi nc e an an
a n rl d a r e n u m e la n d d
y an k d
ds
Source: European Values Studies, see <www.europeanvalues.nl>.

erosion in confidence of nearly all important public institutions (par-

liament, legal system, civil service) in most industrial countries
(Dalton, 1999: 63). The declining levels of trust in the civil service
would thus fit a general pattern of declining public confidence in the
performance of government institutions that emerged the past two
decades. Another answer can be found in the huge problems of inter-
pretation of broad survey data. Public opinion is a complex issue, with
no easy or straightforward link between the failure or success of gov-
ernment reforms or performance, on the one hand, and the perceived
legitimacy of the politico–administrative system, on the other hand. As
often argued, opinions on overall governmental performance or levels
of trust do not necessarily relate to opinions on much more concrete
and specific issues. Citizens can easily harbour negative general feelings
towards government while at the same time being reasonably content
with many of the public services they actually use (such as housing,
unemployment, schooling, taxes, social security, pensions). General
(dis)satisfaction with government is strongly connected with how
people feel about the overall state of the nation. Moreover, most
people are capable of simultaneously maintaining a spectrum of atti-
tudes towards the state apparatus, distinguishing between different
groups of actors and between different services. The public distin-
guishes between political leaders and civil servants, and the bulk of
their distrust is directed at the former. Citizen responses are, hence,
highly context-specific and need to be interpreted in a similar fashion.
Consequently, macro-level perceptions are not necessarily reflected at a
micro-level.
Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004) argue that it is rarely possible to ascribe
shifting general views of the public to specific changes in the
politico–administrative system. The commonly held hypothesis of a close
relationship between better performing public services, increased satisfac-
tion among the public users and, in turn, more confidence in govern-
ment is fundamentally flawed. Bold statements, for example, ‘the public
has lost its confidence in public services’, ‘they want less bureaucracy’, or
‘they are demanding higher quality’, on closer inspection frequently turn
out to be open to questioning and are as such inadequate as a foundation
for designing specific programmes of reform.
Conclusion
Most Western European governments have engaged in civil service

reform in recent decades. Many reforms have been politically and
budgetary motivated, but there are some cases where civil servants
themselves played a major role in introducing reform. Also, the direc-
tions and the intensity of reform vary across countries. Differences
between the northern and southern part of Western Europe can be
linked to different stances towards the managerialism promoted by
NPM. However, taking into account also the possibility of diversity
within an administrative system, this does not mean that countries
that are less enthusiastic about NPM do not engage in profound reform
of its civil service system.
What has become clear is, that despite a lot of efforts, reform often is
confined to paper exercises or leading to mystifications surrounding
data and figures. There are, for instance, ample HRM policy initiatives
but less real life reform. Reform initiatives may have de-monopolized
the civil service in opening employment to outsiders to some (small)
degree, but these reforms have in general not led to a fundamentally
altered system of managing public sector personnel. It has been stated
that the public service has become more politicized, with civil servants
being more open to the political dimensions of their function and
increased control exerted by government over bureaucrats through
changing structures, culture and/or people in the civil service system.
The words trust is central to the reforms and can explain the difficulty
in depoliticizing the civil service through neutralizing appointments.
Our analysis has focused on conflicting demands involving the need
for (legal) civil service protection and the incorporation of public
sector ethics, the change from a legal to a managerial form of pro-
fessionalism, and the political demand for the introduction of a larger
degree of flexibility in the personnel system.
Civil service protection is related to professional autonomy within
the context of the rule of law. This protection can not only diminish
political interference, but also the level of system flexibility. As a result,
a drive for flexibility has reinforced a more or less European wide
movement to adopt a managerial form of civil service professionalism
and fundamental questions have been raised about the actual need for
the public (law) nature of public sector employment. Although the
public law status is been retained in most cases, public labour and
social security arrangements have been made more in accordance with
those existing in the private sector. However, overemphasizing flexibil-
ity in recent reforms might impair the ethical norms embedded in the
protected service. The public law status is again slowly considered as
relevant for protecting the public interest, safeguarding core values of
civil service and preserving or creating a public sector ethos.
Reform has mainly been formulated from a managerial frame of

mind set. It is sometimes argued that we live in a managerial state in
which civil servants have the political supremacy. The latter assertion
can be doubted particularly where it concerns the political aspects of
civil service dominance. Building on the conception that generic man-
agement does extent over policy borders, managerial competencies are
preferred over professionalism based on a specific knowledge and han-
dling of policy fields (Steen and Van der Meer, 2007). With this
increasing supremacy of the managerial perspective less attention is
focused on the policy and appraisal dimensions of the senior civil
servants’ work. As such – and in contrast to politicization trends – the
managerialisation of the senior civil service causes a bottom-up style of
depoliticization. The emphasis on technical rationality within the
managerial approach can endanger the importance attached to what
Hood (1991) calls the theta values embedded in the Rechtsstaat norms.
A ‘managerial vicious circle’ could come into existence when in most
systems further managerial solutions are seen as the way out of the
problems posed by the conflict discussed above. The demand for a civil
service professionalism incorporating ethics and political sensitivity
show the limits of NPM. The conclusion might well be that we should
look for reappraising the uniqueness of civil service, rather than
blindly trust in ongoing managerialization.
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4
Anglo-American Systems: Easy
Diffusion
John Halligan
This chapter addresses the diffusion of public management within

Anglo-American countries. In examining public sector change, one can
focus on internal and external explanations, the nature and efficacy of
the communication processes or interpretations of the meaning of the
consequent change. For the purposes of this chapter, the focus is on
diffusion, and alternative explanations do not figure much. The nature
of the processes is also somewhat incidental except for its role in facili-
tating change and enforcing the identity of this group of countries.
There are several types of diffusion relationship – between levels of
government, private and public sectors and between countries, the
focus here (Halligan, 1996).
The extent of the implementation of concepts and techniques trans-
mitted through diffusion requires analysis of the factors that mediate
reform initiatives in practice in order to examine cross-national varia-
tions, the differential take-up of ideas and the impact on a set of rela-
tively homogeneous countries. The chapter suggests that complex
processes have been operating including patterns of convergence and
divergence over time. Three questions are raised: the identity of the
Anglo-American group and how this facilitates diffusion; the capacity
for diffusion within the group in practice; and the results of diffusion
as mediated in different contexts.
Identity of the Anglo-American group
These five countries constitute a coherent set because of their common

tradition and historical and continuing close associations and inter-
actions. The ‘old Commonwealth’ – or the ‘Westminster democracies’ –
forms a natural group of industrialized democracies with institutional
50
Anglo-American Systems: Easy Diffusion 51
roots in the British tradition. The Anglo-American group is regarded as

reasonably homogeneous for analytical and comparative purposes. The
assumption is that this comparability results from a shared heritage,
even though the countries are in many respects heterogeneous (Peters,
1998).
The relationships can be envisaged at two levels, the broader Anglo-
American and the narrower Anglophone (or Westminster), the only
difference being the omission of the United States from the latter.
There are two interpretations of the core features of the US system in
relation to democracies such as the United Kingdom: one emphasises
the similarities and accordingly categorises the system as Anglo-
American; the second focuses on the differences (Lijphart, 1984).
The central factor differentiating this Anglo-American tradition has
been the lack of a well-developed concept of the state. The tradition of
Continental Europe has a basis in the idea of the state and its auto-
nomy from society, whereas a more fluid view of the relationship
between state and society has existed in the UK. For the United States,
the state’s connection with society is arguably stronger than in the
others (Wilson, 1998), because the professional civil service is over-
shadowed by term political appointees who can reinforce the lack of
autonomy.
Observers of Continental Europe who are sensitive to the existence
of different state traditions recognize ‘Anglo-Saxon’ as a distinct and
meaningful category, whereas others simply address the Westminster
system or model (Aucoin, 1995; Lijphart, 1984). This would normally
be the group included here – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the
United Kingdom, and possibly stretched to the United States. There
are, then, several interrelated approaches, the narrow view focusing on
those where Westminster principles prevail, in particular, the fusion of
the executive and the legislature under responsible government, the
broader position covering countries derivative of the British tradition.
Beyond institutional traditions, several factors continue to reinforce
the identity of the Anglo-American group. The continuing patterns of
interaction – historically formed and culturally supported by language
and heritage – are highly important. There has been a long tradition of
studying the export and transfer of British institutions, within the
Empire and later the Commonwealth, and sometimes more systematic
and comparative research into Westminster countries. Endogenous
communication patterns influence members of this group through
two channels: networks and bilateral relations between countries. The
formal networks derive from relationships developed between Britain
and its colonies and maintained following decolonization. Alliances for

defence and war – most recently, Afghanistan and Iraq – are entrenched
features involving members of the group. The Commonwealth has pro-
vided a mechanism of communication among Canada, Britain,
Australia and New Zealand with a basis in a common language, cul-
tural legacy and institutions (Patapan, Wanna and Weller, 2005).
Location and institutions also feature. The antipodean countries of
Australia and New Zealand have closely linked pathways, and Canadian
development has reflected proximity to the United States, although
both pairings involve at least one major difference in governmental
structures. The combination of federalism and Westminster has linked
Canada and Australia, whereas unitary government has produced a
special bonding between Britain and New Zealand (the latter depicted
as the perfect example of the Westminster model: Lijphart, 1984).
One question in transfer concerns countries’ inclination to look
abroad and their preparedness to borrow. Large countries such as the
UK and the United States have been less inclined than small nations.
The age of reform has been something of a leveller in that all the coun-
tries in this group have studied each other’s reforms, and their borrow-
ing pattern has exhibited endogenous features.
Reaffirming group distinctiveness through public sector reform

The 1980s to the 2000s have been an active period of civil service reform
internationally. Administrative change of great magnitude occurred as
reform was rediscovered as viable and even effective. For several
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
countries the main indicator that things were different was that reform
was comprehensive, in contrast to past incrementalism. Despite sub-
stantial variations between countries in the process, type and impact of
the reforms, there were strong similarities between some programmes,
especially among Anglo-American countries, with early parallels drawn
between the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada (Pollitt,
1990; Savoie, 1994) and Australia, New Zealand and the United
Kingdom being grouped because they adhered more to precepts of
‘new public management’ than other OECD countries (Hood, 1996). At
the peak of the OECD’s fixation on NPM, the Anglo-American experi-
ments were upheld as the ideal (OECD, 1995).
The emergence of this distinctive set of reforms was a product of a
pattern of interaction that accorded legitimacy and relevance to ini-
tiatives within an administrative tradition that facilitated rapid trans-
mission and acceptance of ideas and practice. The early identification
of new public management – a somewhat imprecise (and changing)

ensemble of reforms – came from British writers who first discerned the
trend under Thatcher (Pollitt, 1990). In addition to the major reforms
in Britain (e.g., privatization and executive agencies), individual country
programmes gained international significance with New Zealand’s
‘public management model’ and the United States’ ‘reinvention’ being
influential. The reform movement therefore served to reinforce the
notion of the Anglo-American group’s identity as distinctive and
contrasting with that of other countries.
Variations within Anglo-American systems

From the outside the commonalities look strong, but within this group
substantial variations are apparent in governmental institutions: three
are federal systems and two are unitary systems. Presidentialism is
represented by the United States, in contrast to the parliamentarism
of the others. The Australian and Canadian constitutions combine
federalism and responsible government on Westminster lines.
In terms of fundamental features of civil service systems, there are
variations between the traditional open (United States) and closed
models of recruitment, the associated role of the career service, and
modes of accountability. They also have different-sized public sectors,
those in Australia and the United States being relatively small, the rest
falling in the middle range for the OECD. The breadth of the spectrum
is most obvious with political–bureaucratic relations: the United
Kingdom being at one end with strong separation of the two realms;
the United States occupying the opposite end with a mix of political
and professional appointments. The United States has remained
unique in some respects, while neighbouring Canada has occupied an
intermediate position for some purposes between its North American
neighbour and the others.
The claims of United States ‘exceptionalism’ should be recognized but
not overstated. Its governmental institutions are unusual and have conse-
quences for public policy. It has a civil service that is denied a significant
policy role in government and for its reliance on external political
appointees. There are reasons for accepting the argument that the United
States is different but not comprehensively unique (Wilson, 1998).
Capacity for diffusion within the group
The historical movement of management ideas and government inno-

vation between Anglo-American countries has been reinforced during
the recent period of intensive reform, although the historical dom-

ination of the United Kingdom and the United States has been less
apparent in this reform era.
Historical development
The five systems generally exhibit patterns of development that are
generally similar for five broad phases: colonial administration;
clarification of the roles of elected representatives and representative
institutions; development of civil services as systems (personnel and
business efficiency); the administrative state; and contemporary reform
(Halligan, 2003b). The parallels are fairly striking in terms of the
developmental phases, although the timing and length of the phases
vary with the time lag between the emergence and implementation
of a concept in the country of origin and in other countries can be
decades for 19th-century reforms or years for late 20th-century
reforms.
The post-colonial period was distinguished by the domination of
elected representatives and the prevalence of different forms of patron-
age. The developmental roles in the New World and the Antipodes
created opportunities for pork barrelling. At the same time, there was
clarification of the roles of elected representatives and the control
of representative institutions including acceptance of ministerial res-
ponsibility. The Northcote–Trevelyan report of 1854 was pivotal for
the development of civil services in all Anglo-American countries, and
implementation of its principles continued for the next half-century.
The move to establish a professional service in the 19th century was
largely a reaction against the excesses of patronage and eventually pro-
duced a central personnel agency for implementing standard principles
across the service and the career service based on merit.
At the same time differences began to appear. For the United States,
a turning point was the Pendleton Act of 1883, which was influenced
by the British reforms following Northcote–Trevelyan but produced
results that were American in character, in particular the open service.
The US rejection of base-grade entry was in contrast with systems
evolving a closed career service, while political appointments were
maintained for senior positions. In these respects the United States
diverged from the others. Yet none accepted the British concept of an
administrative class based on the generalist who had undergone dis-
tinctive education and recruitment, and each country was to acquire
features shaped by both individual experiences and the circulation of
ideas among them.
After the turn of the century all systems further developed their civil
services. Actions ranged from country-centred initiatives (e.g., a new
federal service in Australia) to those with broader implications, includ-
ing a renewal of activity led by the two largest systems, which had
moved early towards new civil service arrangements. In several coun-
tries there was a focus on efficiency (spurred in part by scientific man-
agement), review, reorganization and rationalisation until the 1920s.
A dominant phase of the 20th century saw institutionalization of the
new civil service systems. This has been termed the ‘administrative
state’ by Americans, reflecting the growth of the public sector, and the
more pervasive influence of decisions by civil servants on policies and
programs affecting public life. This coincided with the expansion of
civil servants’ entitlements and continuing debates about equity or
efficiency and swings in practice.
The current reform era was initiated in Thatcher’s Britain, although
the US Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 played a role and official
inquiries in several countries laid the foundation for much of what fol-
lowed. The reform agenda was picked up and extended in various ways
by Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s and by the United States’
National Performance Review in the 1990s (Halligan, 2003b).
As a result of incremental change over time and the impetus of
recent reform, many historical differences between the systems became
less important, while new ones emerged. The relatively closed systems
became more open; the concept of the generalist was picked up by the
United States; political appointees were exercising influence over
Westminster systems; and systems’ differing capacities to effect change
were producing new divergences.
Process of diffusion
The long history of the transfer of ideas and reforms between the five
countries started with the transplanting of British institutions into its
four colonies during the 18th and 19th centuries. The subsequent
dominant pattern reflects explanations centred on hierarchical dif-
fusion: the larger or more developed countries adopt new policies at an
earlier stage. A basic principle in communication networks in the dif-
fusion literature concerns the development of relationships between
units with similar characteristics, and decisions about whether to adopt
a particular innovation are largely dependent on the experience of
comparable systems that have already adopted it (Halligan, 1996).
The historical links have been based on bilateral relations between
countries with similar cultural and linguistic traditions and with
communication networks centred on the British Commonwealth. It

has been standard practice to scan the activities of other countries: new
British and US reforms received particular attention, but Australia and
Canada (federal countries of similar size) have monitored each other.
Another way of approaching the question of diffusion patterns is to
examine countries’ propensity to look externally and their prepared-
ness to borrow the innovations of others. Some countries – notably the
United Kingdom and the United States – have traditionally operated as
a repository of a distinctive form of government that exports institu-
tions and is relatively impervious to external influences. Small nations
such as Australia and New Zealand have been more externally oriented
because of colonially induced reactions and an inclination to scan the
experience of larger kindred systems and the broader international
environment (Halligan, 1996).
The age of reform has been a leveller in this regard: all the countries in
the Anglo-American group studied and borrowed from each other’s
reforms, the processes of institutional isomorphism operating within the
group. At various stages of their reform programmes, all the countries
have examined others’ experiences – even the United Kingdom and
the United States paying attention to Australia and New Zealand when
they were perceived to be exemplars of reform in the 1990s. The US
Government Performance and Results Act 1993 borrowed from Australia,
a ‘leading-edge’ country, and other Commonwealth countries (Breul,
2006). Other examples include reinvention, privatization and the
New Zealand public management model. The 1990s trend towards
‘agencification’ centred on separating policy formulation from imple-
mentation, the most influential example being the British executive agen-
cies, although the impact within this group was variable.
A readily documented case was the introduction of a senior executive
corps as a means of freeing-up traditional systems and facilitating reform
(Halligan, 1996) (Table 4.1). The ‘senior executive service’ originated in
the United States as a scheme for developing executive management
reflecting private sector practices and including capacity for redeploy-
ment and performance appraisal. The first senior executive services were
in Australia, New Zealand and the United States in the late 1970s and the
1980s (cf. Canada’s somewhat different ‘management category’). The
second-generation experiments with the concept of a senior corps
included the United Kingdom’s ‘senior civil service’) in the mid-1990s.
Performance management is a complex case that has become of great
relevance in the 2000s (Bouckaert and Halligan, 2006). The early his-
tory of performance measurement centred on the United States with a
Table 4.1: Selected diffusion cases 1980s–2000s*
Source Direct recipients Diffuse impact
Performance US (early); UK Australia, Canada,

management (1980s–90s) New Zealand
Senior executive US Australia, Canada, UK
service New Zealand
Privatization UK Australia,
New Zealand
Agencification UK New Zealand Australia, Canada
Political
responsiveness
• Westminster-style Australia UK Rest
• US-style US
Horizontal UK Australia,
New Zealand,
Canada
Reform models Reciprocal
Note: * Illustrative rather than exhaustive.
second generation of performance measurement activity emerging with

post-Second World War experiments in performance budgeting and pro-
ductivity. For the United Kingdom, two decades of experimentation
occurred before it became a growth industry with the Financial
Management Initiative, which focused on objectives and measuring
outputs and performance. Following the general flowering of perfor-
mance measurement, the 1990s were years of performance expansion and
management consolidation and all countries were actively designing per-
formance management systems. The transition to more developed forms
of performance management occurred during the past decade.
Results of diffusion: how easy at the impact end?
In reforming their civil services, the five countries have come from a
fairly common base – with some notable variations – in moving away
from traditional features. Their reform agendas have had common ele-
ments that reinforce their identity, among them the emphasis on per-
formance management, the development of a senior corps, and the
focus on leadership.
The traditional system of several countries was distinguished by a

high degree of differentiation from the broader environment through
the closed career system. The reform era produced a shift from the
closed service and an erosion of the characteristics associated with
internal markets. There has been a move towards greater use of exter-
nal markets in the form of contractual staff. Civil services were now
more open systems, with jobs regularly advertised externally and
lateral entry commonplace. Mobility between sectors increased consid-
erably. Civil services confronted labour market fluidity and greater
mobility between public and private sectors. An alternative trend was
the move towards greater internal differentiation of the single internal
market, with its standardized provisions across the civil service. The
largest service, the United States, became increasingly specialized
through separate systems for different sectors and agencies, while
Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom devolved responsibil-
ities to chief executives and agencies (Ingraham and Moynihan, 2003;
Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004).
A long-term move towards centralizing political direction was ap-
parent, the United States setting the precedent with its Civil Service Act
1978. Fluctuations in the roles of central agencies have been apparent,
but management decentralization has dominated, at least until recently.
The roles of central agencies were pared through delegation of respon-
sibilities, followed by a significant empowering of line agencies
through expanded roles. High levels of ‘devolution’, occurred first in
New Zealand and then in Australia, with departmental heads acquiring
responsibilities for employing staff and conditions of service. The
pattern remained mixed, however; central agencies continued to
have stronger roles in Canada, where central control dominated until
the late 1980s (Aucoin, 1995), and there has recently been a reconsid-
eration of the centre–agency balance in Australia, Canada and New
Zealand.
Several types of reform have been selected according to their sig-
nificance in terms of reform across the systems. The use of market
mechanisms became an important element of new public management
internationally in the 1990s, although the extensive application of
market principles was still confined to a small number of countries, the
main cases being in this group: contracts and competition, contracting
out and outsourcing, and experiments with internal markets, have all
been emphasized. Privatisation has been one of the more widespread
reforms and was used extensively in the United Kingdom and in some
countries, particularly Australia and New Zealand. The United Kingdom
also ranks highest for outsourcing of government services in OECD,

with significant increases overall for this group, the United States
increasing by one-third in the previous decade (Blöndal, 2005;
Halligan, 2003a).
The five countries have a strong focus on results and performance,
but there are still variations in the commitment to and application of
such principles. Performance management is one indicator of varia-
tion. The evolving performance management systems place greater
reliance on fixed-term contracts, performance agreements (often indi-
vidualized), and reward systems that include performance pay.
Of the international models of political–bureaucratic relations, the
United States and the United Kingdom have represented distinctive
models at opposite ends of a spectrum ranging from high political
influence through overt appointments to separation of the two spheres.
The mainstream model for the group derives from traditional West-
minster. This has been an era in which politicians’ influence has been
growing internationally not only in the United States, but also to
varying extents in the other systems, particularly Australia and
Canada. In terms of ‘politicization’ – the use of measures designed to
gain influence over civil servants – the five systems range from the very
high (US), through Australia to low/medium (New Zealand and the
UK). While the movement has been towards greater influence, the
levels and devices used vary considerably, the United States depending
on political appointees while Australia has relied on political advisers
in ministerial offices. The other countries have moved more slowly or
changed less, yet have experienced an expansion of political influence
in different ways. The influence of advisers and ‘irregulars’ has grown
in the United Kingdom with greater reliance on appointees to strategic
positions. The expansion of political management has been reported in
Canada with concentration of power at the centre, growth of minister-
ial staff influence, personalization of appointments, and politicization
of public communications (Aucoin, 2006).
Downsizing has become a fairly universal component. Some form of
‘programme review’ was a method commonly adopted by governments
internationally for containing or contracting their public sector, a
prominent case in the 1990s being Canada. One indicator of downsiz-
ing of the public sector is trends in public sector outlays relative to
GDP (OECD, 1997). The highest point in the reform era (since 1985)
can be compared with the figures for the end of the 1990s. The larger
public sectors were subjected to the greatest contraction. Australia and
the United States continued to record percentages in the 30s while
Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom were in the 40s band,
in all cases trending down (Halligan, 2003b).
There are of course many cases of initiatives that have not travelled
between countries even where they were confronting common envi-
ronmental challenges. The Australian response to external threat was
to build coordinating units within current structures, particularly
within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. The idea of cre-
ating a US Department of Homeland Security was explicitly rejected.
Patterns of public management change across generations
Sustaining change over the long term is subject to conflicts among

internal objectives and interruptions from external interventions as
political and global factors apply (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004). Internal
and external explanations assist in interpreting the transition between
the NPM world of the 1990s and the 2000s when fresh agendas sug-
gested new forms of governance. Despite different patterns of change
between countries reflecting local factors and reform cycles they were
confronting similar issues, but would they move in unison?
Internal factors were dominated by movement within the public
management reform cycle as the excesses and limitations of NPM were
responded to. Features such as disaggregation, devolution, outsourcing,
and multiple services providers supported specialization but encour-
aged fragmentation and reinforced vertical silos. Governments that
had driven neo-liberal reforms confronted their limitations, the contra-
dictions of complex reform programmes and continuing performance
issues, and were producing refinements and revaluation of the worth
of the public service (Gregory, 2006; Halligan, 2006; Richards and
Smith, 2006). There were also other domestic policy issues that required
strategic and integrated government responses involving multiple
agencies and levels of government.
External pressures were overshadowed by external threat in the
2000s – the impact of 9/11, the commitment of Anglo-American forces
in Iraq and terrorist attacks – with issues of security and terrorism dom-
inating both the domestic and international landscape. The challenges
of counter-terrorism, protection of borders and domestic security trans-
formed life and identity in several countries, and motivated integration
though central coordination and control.
Despite the regularly grouping of Anglo-American countries as dis-
tinctive expressions of NPM, such categorizations disguised differences
in pathways as well as the limitations of a NPM focus. The countries
that have pursued comprehensive programmes of civil service reform –

the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand – being the clearest
cases. Canada and the United States have fitted the category of par-
tially reformed systems, at least until the 2000s produced a renaissance
at the centre. The patterns of convergence and divergence can be illus-
trated by looking at the two North American and other Westminster
countries separately.
Implementation of reform has been problematic in North America
because of insufficient political commitment and excessive political
conflict. In recent years much effort has gone into reversing this posi-
tion. Canada is distinguished by its early acceptance of and innovation
with management ideas, but the lack of assurance in implementing
them (Halligan, 2003a; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004). By the mid-2000s,
a serious response had occurred. Canada now has a developed per-
formance management framework that is being refined as part of a set
of initiatives covering roles of central agencies, human resource man-
agement, and a management and accountability framework. The level
and efficacy of implementation remains unclear at this stage. These ini-
tiatives seem promising, but the impact remains unclear as the system
reaches a turning point about moving to a more mature phase of open
and devolved public management.
The US programme of ‘reinvention’ in the 1990s, the National Per-
formance Review, produced modest results, and failed to produce a
durable framework (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004). The United States has
been a ‘laggard’ in reform because of divided government: it is difficult
for a president to implement civil service reform because Congress can
intervene in organizational restructurings. The Government Perform-
ance and Results Act 1993, however, produced a performance legacy
now appropriated by the executive to better define and integrate the
management focus (Ingraham and Moynihan, 2003; Kettl, 2005).
The triumvirate of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom
have been identified with new public management (Hood, 1996; Pollitt
and Bouckaert, 2004). The products of decades of reform have become
clear: the more stark manifestations of new public management have
less prominence and a set of distinctive trends have emerged with
commonalities across these countries. The synthesis of elements sug-
gests that system integration and performance are central to the pre-
vailing approach of the mid-2000s producing an amalgam of new
elements and design features derived from previous models.
Australia and New Zealand have moved towards integrated gov-
ernance with a commitment to whole-of-government agendas; a
rebalancing of centre and line; a rationalization of public bodies; and

performance around outcomes and improved delivery. There has been a
strengthening of the centre, new horizontal relationships, reform correc-
tions and realignments of different components. The commitment to
integration and whole of government is designed to counter the empha-
sis on vertical, functionally constituted departments (Halligan, 2006;
2007; Boston and Eichbaum, 2007). There experience has parallels in
Britain where coordination and integration dimensions have been appar-
ent under Blair for a decade in a complex system of unitary government
dominated by an elaborate performance management apparatus for steer-
ing public management, integrating central government and controlling
priorities and performance of regional and local government.
The paradigm change of the 1980s and the 1990s has now been sub-
stantially succeeded. The trends of the mid-2000s moderate some
public management features or represent new agenda. There is renewed
interest in enhancing capacity, greater performance oversight, improv-
ing delivery and strengthening the state. The Anglo-American systems
have achieved more change in their public sectors than most interna-
tional reformers, but success in implementing reform has not brought
resolution of the need to change, but laid the foundation for more as
they continue to evolve with definable new approaches in the 2000s.
Conclusion
The strength of administrative tradition (Peters, 2003) has been under-

scored by this Anglo-American case. The countries have a high pro-
pensity to absorb management and policy ideas from each other. In
the 2000s, a high commitment to performance management has
become a defining feature of the group. It is also clear that localist
responses to internal and external pressures mediate the use of these
ideas, and that change must normally occur within existing institu-
tions, lending support to arguments for path dependency (e.g.,
Richards, 2003). The ‘easy diffusion’ of innovation is still subject to a
range of implementation factors in each country context.
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5
Explaining Civil Service Reform
in Asia
John P. Burns
Introduction
Scholarly accounts of civil service (or public sector) reform in Asia gen-
erally emphasize the limited scope of the reforms (Cheung and Scott,
2003: 1–24). Indeed, Asia, of all continents, has seen the lowest levels
of downsizing (ibid.: 11). Efforts to privatize, they argue, have also
been stalled. Studies of specific Asian countries, such as Japan, con-
clude that the reform process has been hesitant and slow and that little
of substance has actually changed (Beeson, 2003: 26). Real reform of
the civil service in Vietnam, to take another example, has been ‘very
slow’ (Painter, 2003: 225). In general, scholarly accounts conclude that
in spite of ambitious public sector and/or civil service reform pro-
grammes not much has happened.
A problem with this picture is that by attempting to be so inclusive it
misses significant variation among Asian states that is best captured by
comparing a group of similar cases. In this chapter, I start with Asia’s
Confucian states (here defined to include China, Japan, Singapore,
South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam) and examine civil service/public
sector reform in them as they evolved along two different paths: the
developmental and the socialist state paths. Confucian societies value a
strong competent interventionist state and, at least initially, authori-
tarianism. Developmental states (Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and
Taiwan) were the product of public sector reform that focused on insti-
tution building and intimate relations between an elite, meritocratic
bureaucracy and business interests in the pursuit of industrialization
(Johnson, 1982; 1999). The formula was effective under certain con-
ditions, especially authoritarianism, but less effective as these states
democratized and became more tightly linked with the world
65
economy. Under these conditions the developmental states have found

difficulty carrying out further public sector reform. The socialist states
(China and Vietnam) have been deeply embedded in society because of
their choice to pursue social transformation. They adopted economic
development as a principal policy objective much later than did
the developmental states. Still authoritarian and poorer than the develop-
mental states, the socialist states have implemented substantial public
sector reforms to rebuild state autonomy and capacity under market con-
ditions. I seek to explain the recent and different public sector reform out-
comes that have characterized these developmental and socialist states.
Public sector reform capacity
According to Knill, reform capacity is a function of the general capacity

for executive leadership in the system, the institutional entrenchment
of administrative structures and procedures, and the influence of the
bureaucracy on policy-making (Knill, 1999: 115). General capacity for
executive leadership is affected by the number of ‘institutional veto
points’ provided by the political system and is affected by the degree to
which ‘administrative structures and procedures are entrenched in a
broader institutional framework’ (ibid.: 115). Finally, the influence of
the bureaucracy on policy making is the extent to which ‘adminis-
trative actors are able to shape the outcome of policy formulation and
implementation in line with their interests’ (ibid.). In so far as polit-
icians and bureaucrats are ‘interlinked’ the capacity for administrative
reform goes down. This means that systems with bureaucracies that are
more autonomous from politicians have less capacity to reform. Con-
versely, in those systems with strong political executives (where there are
fewer veto points and interlinkages) the capacity for reform is greater.
Based on Knill’s framework we might hypothesize that those countries
with high reform capacity would have significant reform achieve-
ments. External pressures for reform (globalization, IMF pressures, etc.)
and the availability of reform ideas (NPM, etc.) ought to push those
countries with high capacity to actually carry them out. This notion
ignores domestic political considerations which I argue in this chapter
are critical for understanding reforms actually implemented.
In order to evaluate this hypothesis, we need some understanding
of how to determine ‘significant reform achievements’. With a great
deal of arbitrariness, I have chosen three measures: (a) economic
growth (measured as GDP annual growth from 1990 to 2003); (b) the
incidence of corruption (measured by Transparency International’s
Civil Service Reform in Asia 67
Table 5.1: Economic growth, quality of public institutions, and corruption of

selected Asian states
GDP/ GDP Annual GDP Annual Corruption

per capita Growth Growth Perception
(PPP) 2000, 1975–2003 1990–2003 Index
US$ (%) (%)
Japan 26,640.03 2.4 1.0 6.9

Singapore 21,194.29 4.9 3.5 9.3
Taiwan 18,000 NA 3.3 5.6
(2002 est.)
South Korea 16,969.33 6.1 4.6 4.5
China 3,842.41 8.2 8.5 3.4
Vietnam 1,877.04 5.0 5.9 2.6
Sources: World Development Indicators 2002 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2002); Human
Development Report (New York: United Nations (UNDP), 2005); Global Competitiveness
Report, 2004–05 (World Economic Forum); Transparency International, Corruption
Perception Index (2004).
Corruption Perceptions Index); and (c) significant downsizing (defined

as cutting the total number of public sector employees by 20 percent or
more in a relatively short period, say five years). The first measure
assumes that public sector reform is related to economic growth and
that states that undertake reform are likely to improve the rate of
growth. Some countries in Asia, such as Singapore, explicitly adopt
such logic. Still, we must recognize that economic growth is a product
of many factors, not only public sector reform. The second measure
may be seen as a proxy for civil service management reform outputs.
Insofar as civil service reforms have been implemented, I would expect
lower levels of perceived corruption.1
The third measure may be seen as a proxy for many different admin-
istrative reforms such as contracting out and privatization, structural
reorganization, reorganization of work, redefining the scope of the
state and so forth. We may take a significantly smaller public sector as
an indicator of these reforms, the output of which may be difficult to
measure directly.
Applying Knill to our Asian countries, we find some unexpected
results (Table 5.2). Arguably the countries with only moderate reform
capacity (China and Vietnam) have shown the greatest results in terms
of growth and smaller public sectors, while the country with the
Table 5.2: Public sector reform capacity: Institutional veto points,

bureaucratic autonomy and reform results in selected Asian countries in the
1990s
Country Number of Autonomy of Predicted Reform Result

Institutional Bureaucracy Reform
Veto Points Capacity
China Moderate Low Moderate (a) High growth

(b) Highly corrupt
(c) Significantly
smaller public
sector
Vietnam Moderate Low Moderate (a) Moderate growth
(b) Highly corrupt
(c) Significantly
smaller public
sector
Korea Moderate Relatively Low (a) Moderate growth
low (b) Relatively low
corruption
(c) Modest
downsizing
Japan Many High Low (a) Low growth
(b) Relatively low
corruption
(c) Modest
downsizing
Taiwan Many Low Low (a) Modest growth
(b) Relatively low
corruption
(c) Modest
downsizing
Singapore Few Low High (a) Modest growth
(b) Very low
corruption
(c) Very little
downsizing
(symbolic)
Source: Based on Knill (1999).
highest reform capacity (Singapore) has shown only modest, largely sym-
bolic results. If we take incidence of corruption as a measure of results,
however, then the outcome is not surprising. The country with the
highest reform capacity (Singapore) has the best results, as predicted.
The socialist states: China and Vietnam
The need for social transformation in China and Vietnam meant the
party/state took control over virtually all aspects of public life and
obliterated the boundaries between state and society (Vogel, 1969;
Schurmann, 1971). The revolutionary state operated through institu-
tions of central planning for a command economy. State planning
commissions, led by the Communist Party, aggregated plans and deter-
mined production targets for economic and social agencies in virtually
every sphere, from industrial undertakings to universities and hospitals
(see Barnett, 1967; Harding, 1981). Chinese culture and institutional
arrangements required consensus and inhibited horizontal communi-
cation, placing a premium on bargaining (Lieberthal, 2004: 191–2) and
exhibiting a number of pathologies, including ‘blocked leadership,
minority veto, [and] control by the organized (which in China gener-
ally means powerful bureaucracies)’ (Lampton, 1992: 37). Numerous
veto points weakened the power of the political executive. Having
adopted a policy of aggressive economic development, authorities in
both China and Vietnam had little choice but to undertake reform of
their public sectors.
The reforms with the greatest impact have been those that
(1) decentralized power over management of the economy to local
governments; and (2) forced thousands of state-owned enterprises into
the market. In the early 1980s, the central government decentralized
power to manage the economy to provincial and county governments.
Powers previously held centrally, such as authority to approve foreign
investments and to grant tax concessions were handed over to local
governments. The centre also created special economic zones along
the coast to encourage foreign investment. These reforms all boosted
investment and economic growth especially in China’s coastal
provinces.
The second reform, forcing SOEs into the market had major con-
sequences for government revenue and for employment. As a result of
the declining profitability of SOEs, government revenues in China fell
from more than 35 percent of GDP to a low of 10.7 percent of GDP in
1995. Only when a new tax sharing reform was introduced did govern-
ment revenues begin growing again and stood at about 15 percent of
GDP in 2000. The impact of SOE-reform on public employment was
even more dramatic. From 1995 to 2003 public employment fell from
112 million employees to 68.8 million, a decline of 40 percent (see
National Bureau of Statistics, 2005: 122). In relatively short order the
public sector shed 44 million jobs without causing massive instability.

Rapid economic growth has been the key to accomplishing this
task. This is a remarkable result and clearly demonstrates the growing
autonomy of the Chinese state.
Other public sector reforms in China have included government
restructuring and civil service reform. Neither has had the dramatic
impact of the public sector downsizing, however. In wave after wave of
structural reform (1988, 1992, 1998) the central planning apparatus was
merged, downsized, and then abolished altogether. Ministries in charge
of each area of economic activity were stripped of their production func-
tions (these were corporatized or privatized2) and turned their govern-
ment regulatory functions over to first the State Economic and Trade
Commission (itself abolished in 1998) and then to the State Planning and
Development Commission. The impact of civil service reform, including
institution building, new regulations and various management reforms
(Burns, 2005) is even more nebulous. Although civil service capacity
clearly increased, so too did corruption (see Transparency International,
2004), evidence that these reforms have had only a modest impact.
Public sector reform in Vietnam has followed a similar track and
included economic decentralization and moving SOEs into the market.
Driven by the growing demands of marketization and globalization,
authorities pushed to reform the SOEs. From 1986 to 1994, many
smaller SOEs were restructured through mergers or liquidation. As a
result the number of public sector workers fell by 35 percent (Painter,
2003: 214). Further restructuring during the 1990s saw the number of
SOEs decline from about 12,000 in 1990 to 5,300 in 2000 (ibid.).
Although the process of reforming the country’s state-owned enter-
prises has demonstrated weaknesses in Vietnam’s reform capacity (such
as ambivalence about how to proceed with SOE reform), the huge
number of public sector workers laid off from their positions indicates
the growing autonomy of the state.
Authorities have also implemented institutional restructuring and
civil service reform but ‘changes on the ground have been very slow to
happen and the signs suggest a less than whole-hearted commitment
to effective implementation of many of the [reform] proposals’
(Painter, 2003: 225). Within the civil service monitoring, inspection,
and supervision remain weak and the civil service system as a whole
evidences ‘a high level of personalism and patronage’ (ibid.: 222).
Vietnam ranks 102nd on the 2004 corruption perception index,
undoubtedly an indicator of weaknesses in this aspect of public sector
reform (see also Table 6.1).
Because of numerous veto points and a dependent bureaucracy the

administrative reform capacity of the two socialist states was relatively
weak, yet remarkably achieved a smaller public sector.
The developmental states

Among the developmental states Japan and South Korea remain the
archetypical examples of states with ‘embedded autonomy’ that have
had difficulty pushing public sector reform. Both have entered into
periods of democratization or at least de-concentration of power
within the political executive. As a result government has become a
matter of putting together coalitions. Gone was the stable rule of either
the military (Korea) or a single dominant party (the LDP in Japan lost
power in 1993). These changes have increased the number of veto
players within the political executive thus frustrating reform in both
countries. A move toward pluralism and democracy has also character-
ized Taiwan. I turn now to a brief discussion of each of these states.
Japan
The Japanese political system is organized in a way that frustrates the
political executive. First, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan’s
current ruling party, is composed of institutionalized factions that
provide financial support for faction members and bargain among
themselves for leadership positions. Which faction leader becomes the
leader of the LDP (and thus perhaps the prime minister) depends on a
bargain worked out among the various faction leaders (Painter, 2003:
241–2). This sort of structure institutionalizes veto points. Second,
within Japan’s LDP, policy cliques (zoku) of sectorally organized groups
that bring producers and bureaucrats together, increase the number of
veto players considerably. The cliques develop close ties to private busi-
nessmen and civil servants. They are seen as the experts in the policy
sector. They are also important instruments for distributing spoils
within the party and are part of a vast network of money politics and
corruption that characterizes the political system (Beeson, 2003: 33;
Painter, 2005: 242). Factions and policy cliques play a key role in the
LDP and help to disable the political executive. Third, in Japan politi-
cians are recruited in large numbers from among retired bureaucrats
and this ensures that the political executive is weakened in its struggles
with the bureaucracy (Beeson, 2003: 32–3).
In spite of this institutional setup, there has been no dearth of
administrative reform policies, programs, and plans. The First and
Second Provisional Civil Service Reform Councils in 1961 and 1981
have had limited success but did manage to cut the civil service by
5 percent and reorganize some central ministries. The participation of
senior civil servants as members of the Councils allowed them to ef-
fectively protect their interests (Painter, 2003: 243–4). The LDP’s loss of
power in 1993 allowed further public sector reform on to the agenda.
Struggles over structural reform of the Ministry of Finance lasted for
years and only culminated in 2000 when a new bureau, the Financial
Services Agency, took over some MOF duties. Generally public sector
reform in Japan has been characterized by delay, reluctance to reform,
gridlock, and opposition from the bureaucracy (Painter, 2003: 242–3;
Beeson, 2003; Nakamura, 2003: 37). Struggle over public sector reform,
however, has not prevented some privatization of public assets, such as
the Japanese National Railways in 1987, and the huge postal savings
system which includes the largest banks and insurance companies in
the world and other businesses starting in 2006.
South Korea
The Korean political system is usually described as president-led (Moon
and Ingraham, 1998; Jung, forthcoming). During the heyday of the
Korean developmental state the President (Park Chung Hee) installed
in a military coup, presided over a coherent power center that was able
to impose reform on the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy in Korea
depended on the president for privileges, including organizational
growth, greater job security, and cabinet appointments (Jung, forth-
coming). Jung concludes that bureaucrats in Korea came to see that
their ministries’ ‘political power solely depended on President Park’s
favor’ (Ibid.) Hence, there were few veto points, and presidential rule
was the norm.
As a result of democratization, new players have emerged on the
scene. Korean presidents who depended on coalition governments,
such as Kim Dae Jung, have seen their position vis-à-vis the bureau-
cracy weakened considerably. In these conditions, the number of veto
points has increased and the president’s power over administrative
reform process has weakened. The fact that reform of budget and per-
sonnel functions had to be negotiated among coalition members in
1998 demonstrated the debilitating impact of coalition government on
the president’s powers.
Without exception Presidents have come to power with public sector
reform programs (Painter, 2003: 248). These have included some cuts
to the civil service (50,000 were cut under Chun) and major structural
reorganizations (ibid.: 248). Arguably the most significant structural
reform was the demise of the pilot agency, the Economic Planning
Board, which personified the Korean developmental state. A cohesive
political executive in 1994 was able to quickly merge the Board with
the Ministry of Finance with little opposition from the bureaucracy
(perhaps because the new Ministry of Finance and Economics was even
more powerful than either agency was before) (Jung, forthcoming).
Reform initiatives have come from the political executive in Korea
which has been able to impose its will on the bureaucracy in spite of
considerable bureaucratic resistance. The number of veto points varied,
but has perhaps been somewhat fewer than in Japan. The capacity of
the bureaucracy to resist in Korea has also been somewhat lower than
in Japan.
Taiwan
Since the mid-1980s, public sector reform strategies in Taiwan have
been designed in the context of democratization. When opposition
forces coalesced into the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 1986
and many non-governmental organizations emerged, the relationship
of the state to society changed fundamentally. The authoritarian state
no longer imposed its will on society. State–society relations had to be
negotiated. Clearly the state in Taiwan was losing autonomy, becom-
ing more embedded in society. As a result calls to modernize the state
structure became more insistent (Cheung, 2003: 100).
The democratization of Taiwan in the 1990s has expanded the
number of veto points considerably, thus undercutting the capacity of
the political executive to carry out administrative reform. The election
of DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian to the Presidency in 2000 while the
traditional ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT), still held control of
the legislature, resulted in stalemate in many areas, including adminis-
trative reform.
Unlike the governments of Japan and Korea, the traditional post-
1947 leadership in Taiwan (the KMT) used SOEs as key instruments of
industrial development3 (Evans, 1995: 55). In the 1950s, Taiwan’s SOEs
accounted for over half of all fixed industrial production. It fell in the
1960s, but expanded again in the 1970s (Wade, 1990; Evans, 1995:
55–6). As Wade points out, unlike Japan and Korea, the private sector
was largely absent from policy networks dominated by the KMT. To a
large extent, Taiwan’s network of strategically placed SOEs each with
its own set of relations with private firms, compensated for the lack of
a well-developed network of ties between the state and the private
sector (Evans, 1995: 56).
Authorities in Singapore have adopted a similar strategy in some

respects, relying to a large extent on government-linked corporations
(GLCs), which partnered with multinational corporations to grow the
economy. In the mid-1980s, there were more than 500 GLCs. After
some privatizations (1991) 419 remained providing ‘an important
support for the Singapore economy’ (Cheung, 2003b: 139). In both
states, these public companies, whose leaders were appointed by the
government, linked the state to the private sector. We should not,
though, exaggerate the lack of embeddedness (Evans, 1995: 56).
Perhaps because of the bureaucracy’s relative autonomy, public
sector reform in Taiwan has been modest. Not until the 1990s, when
the KMT came under serious challenge from the DPP, did the political
executive consider reform of Taiwan’s ‘anachronistic’ public adminis-
tration (Cheung, 2003a: 90). The administrative institutions until then
had been transported from mainland China. Only in 1987, for exam-
ple, did authorities lift martial law on Taiwan. Despite the political
differences between the two rival parties (and now a third party, the
New Party, which broke away from the KMT when it lost power in
the late 1990s), the political elites appear to share a broad consensus
on the issues of public sector reform.
As we have seen the KMT established SOEs to fuel its drive for industri-
alization. Under the rule of the KMT, appointees to positions in SOEs
came from the party, ex-generals, and retired civil servants. The party
used SOEs to ‘tame the indigenous Taiwanese private entrepreneurs who
had to depend on public enterprises for credit and raw material supply
(such as steel and petrochemicals products)’ (Cheung, 2003a: 101).
The growth of SOEs and the core state in the 1950s and the 1960s,
meant that by 1965 some 14 percent of the work force was employed
by the state sector. Since the 1970s, however, the relative size of
the state sector declined to 12.5 percent of employees in 1977 to
11.8 percent in 1993 (Jian, 1996). By 2001 Taiwan’s SOEs contributed
about 10 percent of GDP, down from 15–16 percent in the 1960s and
1970s. In the same year the 31 main SOEs employed about 185,000
people (Council for Economic Planning and Development, 2002).
SOEs have also contributed from 7 to 10 percent of government net
revenues, although since 1996 the trend has been declining (ibid.).
Taiwan’s political elite, both KMT and DPP, agree that SOEs should
be privatized. Labour unions and some legislators have opposed the
policy, but with little success (Council for Economic Planning and
Development, 2002; Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions, 2005). By
the end of 2002, some 27 SOEs had been privatized and 13 small-scale
state-owned factories shut down. The state still retains shares in the priva-
tized companies although the policy has been to eventually achieve com-
plete divestment. Another 17 SOEs are scheduled for privatization by
2007 (Council for Economic Planning and Development, 2002).
I have no data on the impact of privatization on employment in
Taiwan. Labour unions claim that thousands have lost their jobs as a
result of privatization (Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions, 2005).
Aggregate studies of the impact of privatization that include Taiwan,
however, appear to suggest that the privatized companies are more
profitable and efficient, but they do not address the long-term impact
on employment.4
Elite consensus also exists on the nature and content of public adminis-
tration reforms, such as de-politicizing the civil service, one the one hand,
and more managerial reforms, on the other hand. These have included
downsizing, pay reform, performance management, and contracting out.
Bureaucratic resistance to these changes has thus far been minimal
(Cheung 2003a: 100, 112) but progress in these areas has been slow.
Singapore
The political system of Singapore is structured to enable the People’s
Action Party (PAP) to dominate elections and indeed for much of the
past 40 years or so since Singapore became independent, the PAP has
held all but a few seats in the legislature (Worthington, 2003). Since
the PAP took power in 1959, the party actively fostered the unity
of the political and bureaucratic elite in a ‘power sharing pact’ that
is the foundation of the PAP’s social control and policy capacity
(Worthington, 2003: 20–1). The inner core executive of PAP ministers
and higher civil service is effectively fused. This arrangement and the
suppression of any effective political opposition means that few veto
points exist to constrain the political executive.
The autonomy of the Singaporean state has allowed it to design
and implement public sector reforms with a more or less free hand.
As Worthington and others have pointed out
‘the penetration of the state into civil society is such that Singapore
is unique in [non-socialist] East and southeast Asia in the extent to
which its managerial state is able effectively to engineer the eco-
nomic, cultural and political behavior of its society. This has
resulted in a state which has been described as a curious cross
between the Leninist cell system and the Confucian Chinese
Mandarinate.’ (Worthington, 2003: 2)
Singapore’s public sector reforms have included incremental changes

to budgetary processes and institutions, some privatization (mainly
corporatization), modest personnel reforms, and reforms to make the
government more citizen-oriented. The highly publicized Public
Service 21 (1995) focused on ‘soft’ reforms such as improving staff
well-being, suggestion schemes, and so forth and achieved few mea-
surable results (Cheung, 2003b: 140–3; Li, 2005). Thus, while the
state in Singapore has the autonomy and therefore the capacity to
initiate sweeping public sector reform, authorities have not seen the
need.
The autonomous state in Singapore arguably remains in the best
position to carry out civil service reform, unencumbered by pressures
from civil society. Yet, in the absence of significant external or internal
pressure for reform, the results measured in terms of a smaller public
sector have been modest. Singapore has, however, scored significant
achievements in terms of our other measure, perceptions of corruption.
Our review of reform capacities reveals that arguably the least cap-
able (China and Vietnam) have achieved the greatest results (shrinking
the public sector) while the state with the most capacity (Singapore)
has achieved relatively little. If we measure reform results to mean cor-
ruption free, then the state with the highest capacity has achieved the
most. I turn now to an explanation of these reform results.
Discussion: Public sector reform results
Our discussion of civil service reform in Asia’s Confucian states has

mainly focused on the relationship of the political executive to the
bureaucracy. I have identified various veto points that tie the hands of
the political executive and have examined the relative autonomy of
the bureaucracy. I have also highlighted the ties of the state to civil
society. In the paragraphs that follow I further develop this idea.
Moon and Ingraham offered the political nexus triad (PNT) as an
explanation of reform results. PNT is ‘an interactive power structure
that is formed by the processes of politicization in which politicians,
bureaucrats, and citizens communicate with each other and attempt to
protect and increase their political and administrative power’ (Moon
and Ingraham, 1998: 78). This approach brings in civil society, which
includes citizen political participation, institutionalized interest group
activities (business, labour union) and non-institutionalized political
demands (such as political protests). Moon and Ingraham argue
that the nature of the relationship between politicians, bureaucrats
and civil society on the one hand and politicization, on the other,
‘contributes’ to the impact of administrative reform.
State policy on trade unions is illustrative of the generally repressive
nature of state–society relations in the socialist states. In China and
Vietnam, for example, all autonomous trade unions were abolished
when the Communist Party came to power. The party organized workers
into officially sanctioned unions, over which the party maintains tight
control. Attempts to organize autonomous trade unions in China have
been met with repression, including the arrest, indefinite detention,
and exiling of trade union leaders (see He, 2003). In Singapore, labour
is also subordinated to the state. The National Trades Union Congress
(NTUC) has a symbiotic relationship to the state and is incorporated
into it. The strategy in Singapore has ‘allowed the political and bureau-
cratic executive to be projected into and assume control over the unions
thus removing workers from any control over policy’ (Worthington,
2003: 28).
In the developmental states that have democratized, such as Japan,
Korea, and Taiwan, civil society plays a more active role (Mouer and
Sugimoto, 2003; Kim, 2003; Hsiao, 2003). Although the density of
trade unions in Japan and Korea has declined, they have autonomy
and have been able to exercise some influence in the political process.
Citizen pressure, however, can both help and hinder reform. The
re-election of Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi in September 2005 on
a single issue – carrying out reform of the huge postal savings bank – is a
case in point. Citizen pressure, especially the pressure of public sector
unions or businesses with clientelistic ties to bureaucracies being
considered for restructuring can also delay reform. Exactly how civil
society plays into the reform equation depends on the political context.
With economic development, civil society in the socialist states has
become more pluralistic. The role that their more autonomous civil
societies will play in public sector reform remains to be seen.
The extent to which civil liberties such as freedom of speech and
freedom of association exist in a country are also indications of the
strength of civil society. According to an index of press freedom com-
piled by Reporters Without Borders, Japan and South Korea have the
freest presses (ranked 43rd and 48th respectively), followed by Taiwan,
ranked 60th (Reporters without Borders, 2004). The two socialist states
and Singapore are clustered near the opposite end of the index
(Singapore at 147, Vietnam at 161 and China at 162, out of 167 states
ranked). I sum up my brief discussion of the strength of civil society in
the six Asian states in Table 5.3.
Table 5.3: Moon and Ingraham’s PNT and public sector reform In selected
Asian countries in the 1990s
Country Politicians Bureaucracy Strength of Reform Result

Civil Society
China Lead Follow Weak (a) High growth

(b) Highly corrupt
(c) Significantly
smaller public
sector
Vietnam Lead Follow Weak (a) Moderate growth
(b) Highly corrupt
(c) Significantly
smaller public
sector
Korea Lead Follow/ Moderate (a) Moderate growth
resist (b) Relatively low
corruption
(c) Modest
downsizing
Japan Follow Lead Relatively (a) Low growth
strong (b) Relatively low
corruption
(c) Modest
downsizing
Taiwan Lead Follow Moderate (a) Moderate growth
(b) Relatively low
corruption
(c) Modest
downsizing
Singapore Lead Follow Weak (a) Moderate growth
(b) Very low
corruption
(c) Symbolic
downsizing
Sources: Based on Moon and Ingraham (1998).
Our brief examination of public sector reform in the six Confucian

states indicates that reform achievements have been the greatest mea-
sured in terms of growth, achieving clean government and a signific-
antly smaller public sector in those states with relatively weak civil
societies. As I have shown, leaders of the socialist states of China and
Vietnam destroyed civil society in their quest for social transformation.

The leaders of Singapore also exercised a heavy hand on civil society,
controlling and repressing organizations that might challenge the
state. These results seem to indicate that civil society does not play the
enabling role suggested by Moon and Ingraham. Rather, in Asian states
with stronger civil societies interests organize to frustrate the reforms.
Our discussion also indicates the importance of selecting appropriate
measures for evaluating the results of reform. None of the Asian states
considered here did well on all of the measures.
Notes
* The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Hong Kong Research
Grants Council, which provided funding for this research.
1 Bribery of public officials is highly correlated with economic development,
which may indicate that poorer countries such as China and Vietnam can
expect to ‘grow out’ of corruption. Other forms of corruption, however, that
link politicians to business interests are probably not captured by these
indices. These forms of corruption have characterized politics in Japan and
Korea (Beeson, 2003; Painter, 2003) and could develop in the socialist states
as they become richer. These problems raise questions about how best to
measure the outputs of administrative reform.
2 Unlike Russia and the Central European states, neither China nor Vietnam
adopted large-scale ‘big-bang’-type privatization. While there have been pri-
vatizations of locally owned state-owned enterprises, official policy has been
to preserve large strategically important SOEs in both countries. In China, by
2003, there were about 23,000 state-owned enterprises of which about 2,000
were classified as ‘large’. About 200 of these are owned and managed by the
central government.
3 The establishment of many of these SOEs dates from the Japanese colonial
era in Taiwan.
4 See the summary provided of such studies in UNESCAP, Evaluating the
Impact of Changes in Ownership, available at <http://www.unescap.org/
drpad/publication/dr22_2122/chap4.pdf> (accessed 28 September 2005).
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6
Africa: Rehabilitating Civil Service
Institutions – Main Issues and
Implementation Progress
Ladipo Adamolekun
Background: From relatively healthy to weak civil service

institutions
The civil service institutions (CSIs) inherited by the new African states
that emerged in the 1950s and the 1960s had three advantages that
enabled many of them to perform satisfactorily during the immediate
post-independence years. First, the CSIs operated in a context in which
the goals of governments were clearly articulated: win independence
and seek to improve the quality of life of the mass of the population
through the provision of infrastructure and services such as roads,
energy, water, education and health. Second, the political leaders who
progressively took over executive powers from the departing colonial
rulers from the early 1950s through to the early 1960s were nationalists
who were committed to wining independence, and, in most cases,
were conscious of the need for strong and well-equipped CSIs that
would serve as instruments for ensuring the continuity of the state,
maintaining law and order, and assuring better living standards for the
people.
The third advantage was the inheritance (from the departing colo-
nial governments) of career civil service systems led by small numbers
of well trained, experienced and committed senior civil servants that
provided quality leadership for the institutions in most of these new
states in the different sub-regions of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).1 These
higher civil servants were as committed to the principles of the inher-
ited civil service institutions (notably, merit-based recruitment and
promotion, political neutrality and security of tenure) as they were to
the goals of government articulated by the new political leaders. In
some cases, the two groups of leaders forged strong partnerships to
82
Africa: Rehabilitating Civil Service Institutions 83
nurture a competent administration in the service of the state

(Adamolekun, 2005: 25–7). The initial tasks of localizing staff (replac-
ing expatriates with nationals) through merit-based recruitment
and staff development and training were launched and implemented
fairly satisfactorily. At different times in the 1960s, some CSIs in SSA
(e.g., those in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda) were favourably
compared with the best in different parts of the world (Olowu, 2001).
However, these advantages barely survived the first decade of inde-
pendence in most countries. The clarity of the goal of independence
and the shared commitment of political leaders, civil servants and the
general population to that goal was not transferred to the other goal of
assuring better living standards for the people. No sooner was inde-
pendence won than political leaders began to articulate different
‘paths’ to development: ‘socialist’, ‘capitalist’, ‘non-capitalist’, and
‘mixed-economy’. Furthermore, military officers who had seized power
in some countries before the end of the first post-independence decade
failed, like the civilian political executives, to articulate a clear path
to development. Both civilian and military political leaders rapidly
established self-perpetuation in office into their primary objectives
(Adamolekun, 1988). The CSIs were caught in this muddle. The prin-
ciples of merit-based recruitment and promotion, political neutrality
and security of tenure were abandoned and replaced by either the doc-
trine of party supremacy in one-party states that required civil servants
to be party militants (e.g., Guinea and Tanzania) or by varying degrees
of patronage in many countries, regardless of whether the political
leaders were civilians or soldiers (e.g., Benin, Nigeria, Kenya, Togo and
Uganda).2 The inherited career CSIs were set on the road to decay. In
the countries under military rule (e.g., Benin and Nigeria), the CSIs
became political arenas where competition over the allocation of
resources were carried out in the absence of the traditional political
institutions such as political parties and legislative bodies that the
military had proscribed. Two notable exceptions were Botswana and
Mauritius, which maintained career civil service systems together
with the principles of merit-based recruitment and promotion, political
neutrality, and security of tenure.
It should also be mentioned that the commodity-based economies of
the SSA countries generally prospered in the 1950s and the 1960s,
thereby providing the resources with which the nationalist leaders
were able to pursue the goal of improving the quality of life of citizens.
Some of these resources were also used to nurture the CSIs. Thus,
quality political leaderships ran governments jointly with quality
leaderships of the CSI at a time of relatively well-performing eco-

nomies. The decline in the quality of the political and administrative
leadership groups coincided with a decline in the economies of most
SSA countries, beginning in the early 1970s and reaching crisis pro-
portions in the 1980s. By the second half of the 1980s, the political
and administrative institutions in many SSA countries were in a sham-
bles. This combination of a declining economy and collapsing political
and administrative institutions in the late 1980s and the consequences
for deepening poverty in the region was commonly referred to in the
literature on African studies from then on through the next decade or
so as a ‘crisis of governance’ (World Bank, 1989). Some observers
would argue that the crisis of governance has persisted to the present,
notably in countries referred to as ‘failed’ or ‘failing’ states.
By the time the twin waves of democratization and economic liberal-
ization were sweeping across all continents from 1989 through the early
1990s, most countries in SSA were characterized by weak political and
administrative institutions as well as by declining economies. Responding
to democratization and economic liberalization on the one hand, and the
institutional weaknesses cum economic decline on the other, the rehabil-
itation of CSIs was considered a priority in most of the SSA countries. We
now turn to the key civil service reform (CSR) efforts in the 1990s.
Main issues addressed in civil service reform programmes
When many SSA countries embarked on CSR in the early 1990s, the
programmes were, without exception, only part of a broader public
sector reform effort. Essentially, each country concerned was seeking
to respond to the challenges posed by democratization and economic
liberalization. Predictably, the degree of commitment to reform varied
significantly from one country to another. Indeed, in some of the
countries, debates on aspects of public sector reform have continued to
the present (late 2005). In addition to CSR, public sector reforms focus
on the redefinition of the role of the state; the reform of public sector
management institutions such as teachers service and police (in coun-
tries where they are organized and managed separately from the CSIs),
state-owned enterprises (SOEs), subnational and local governments,
and the reform of both the judiciary and the legislature.
In examining four main issues addressed in CSR programmes – tackling
the problems of civil service staff; strengthening budget and financial
management; improving performance, with emphasis on service delivery;
and enhancing accountability, transparency and ethical behaviour –
references will be made to some of the other public sector reform

efforts, as appropriate.
Redefinition of the role of the state and implications for the

civil service
The economic liberalization embraced by most SSA countries in the early
1990s resulted in the adoption of a market economy and the abandon-
ment of the idea of the state as the ‘engine of growth’ that had been
translated into the different ‘paths’ to development already mentioned.
This called for a new balance in the respective roles of the state and
market in running national economies. Under the new state-market
balance, the state was to play a reduced role. Some countries committed
to a paradigm shift from a state-led growth to a private sector-led growth
(at least, at the level of rhetoric). The state was to provide an enabling
environment for private sector economic activities by implementing
market-friendly policies and providing most of the physical and social
infrastructure as well as the necessary regulatory framework.
The World Bank’s World Development Report 1997 examined the experi-
ences recorded in the preceding five to six years in developing and transi-
tion countries across continents. Two of its main recommendations are
directly related to our concern here: first, it identified five fundamental
tasks of the state ‘without which sustainable, shared, poverty-reducing,
development is impossible’3 and second, it recommended the strengthen-
ing of the capability of public institutions, including CSIs that are at the
heart of governmental administration in modern states. In its elaboration
on the five fundamental tasks of the state (to which the author has added
a sixth), the World Bank stressed the need to match state functions to
capabilities. A state unable to perform fundamental tasks satisfactorily has
no business taking on other tasks. The direct consequence of this re-
definition of state functions for CSIs is a greater clarity in their functions
and in the competences needed for satisfactory performance. Thus, in
many CSR programmes, it is explicitly stated that CSIs would be leaner
and stronger. Their functions would be significantly reduced, compared to
what they were in the preceding era of state domination of the economy
and they would need to be stronger through acquisition of new compe-
tences (e.g., in the areas of regulatory administration and contracting).
Reducing the role of the state convinced many SSA countries
to adopt the new public management (NPM). The key features of
NPM include the separation of policy and implementation through
a principal–agent relationship between ministers (principals) and
bureaucrats (agents). Their interaction is regulated by contracts. Other
features are the application of contestability, competition and contracting

arrangements to the activities of government, resulting in many of them
being hived off, corporatized, or privatized. There was also emphasis on
achieving improved public sector management performance through
managerial autonomy (‘letting managers manage’) and accountability
and the introduction of a strong budget and financial management
system and better policy and programme management to ensure ‘value
for money’ and quality public service delivery. Some of these NPM-style
measures have featured in the state reform programmes in SSA countries.
Tackling civil service staff problems

One of the key civil service staff problems that came to the fore in
many CSR programmes was the bloated size that had resulted from
the era of state-led development. By the late 1980s, the overstaffing
in many CSIs meant that the wage bill in the countries concerned
absorbed a significant proportion of government revenues – between
40 and 60 percent in some countries. This wage bill problem was
largely ignored even when economic decline meant reduction in gov-
ernment revenue: the mentality of the state as the employer of last
resort persisted. Furthermore, economic decline meant that states were
unable to afford the cost of paying decent salaries and wages to civil
servants. It is important to stress that significant variations in the
manner in which ‘civil servants’ are defined in different SSA countries
complicated the determination of both the size and wage bill of CSIs
across countries. Table 6.1 lays out the different categories of staff in
public sector institutions: they are called public servants in the broad-
est sense. Table 6.2 provides examples of variations on the use of the
terms ‘civil servant’ and ‘public servant’ in four Anglophone countries.
In the Francophone countries, the terms civil servant and public
servant are used as synonyms (see Bekke et al., 1996: 1–9).
Flowing from the above, a second problem that CSR programmes
sought to address was pay reform. Tackling staff reduction, wage
bill control, and pay reform in countries with poor performing economies
was a tough challenge that most could not handle on their own. The
donors that came to their rescue, especially the international financial
institutions (IFIs),4 were convinced that the problems would be better
solved within the context of structural adjustment programmes that
advocated shrinking the state and sharp cuts in public expenditures.
Three other civil service staff problems carried over from pre-1990
developments assumed greater salience in the new political context –
merit-based versus patronage recruitment and promotion, politically
Table 6.1: Civil service and other public sector institutions
1 2 3 4 5
Civil service State-owned X Judicial Legislative

A Enterprises State, regional service service
Ministries, (or public or provincial
Departments enterprises/ civil service
and Agencies corporations) ——————
——————— Y
B Local
Revenue service; government
Teachers service; service
Health service;
Police service;
Prison service;
Customs service;
Immigration
service
Table 6.2: Examples of variations in the scope of civil (public) service in SSA
Countries Scope of Public/Civil Service Definite Exclusions
Botswana 1A+B + 3 + 5 4
Kenya 1A + 1B (excluding revenue 4+5
administration) + 3
Namibia 1A+B (excluding police and prisons) 4
+3+5
Nigeria 1A + 1B (excluding police) 3+4+5
Notes:
1. Each of the four countries has a Public Service Commission (Civil Service Commission
in the case of Nigeria), established in each country’s constitution as an independent
body. A Public Service Act defines the powers and functions of each commission whose
operations are governed by regulations and rules that must be consistent with both the
Act and the Constitution.
2. Kenya: Although the police force and the prison service are part of the public service
and under the public service commission, they have regulations and rules that are
separate from those for the other public services.
3. Namibia: The police force and the prison service are constituted into a security service
that is outside the remit of the Public Service Commission.
4. Nigeria: Only the federal civil service is considered here. (State civil services are separate
from local government services.) A Civil Service Act 1988 was abandoned in 1996.
However, there are civil service regulations and rules that must be consistent with the
constitutional provision on the Commission. Nigeria also has a Federal Character
Commission enshrined in the constitution to enforce a vaguely defined
representativeness in both the civil service and other public sector institutions
throughout the federation.
neutral versus partisan civil servants and capacity development

through skills development and upgrading. Significantly, embracing
democratic politics in the early 1990s implied a governmental system
in which the civil service that is at the heart of the conduct of govern-
ment business is capable of serving successive political executives.
There is need for a career civil service whose officials would be
recruited on merit for the most part and whose top echelons would
be politically neutral to enable them work smoothly with successive
political executives. How different countries have tackled these staff
and other CSR problems is examined in section 3.5
Strengthening budget and financial management

The key objectives of measures for strengthening budget and financial
management that are contained in many CSR programmes of SSA coun-
tries are: proper planning and budgeting for public expenditures, effective
and efficient administration of government revenues, proper use of
budget resources, effective control of public expenditure, accounting and
reporting on public finance, and full accountability for all public spend-
ing, including external scrutiny and audit (Kiragu, 1999). A good handle
on the subject that some of the countries have embraced (in most cases,
with support from the IFIs) is the use of a medium term expenditure
framework (MTEF) for ensuring effective linking of policy, planning and
the budget. There is also emphasis on the introduction of computerized
accounting and financial management information systems. Juxtaposed
to these ‘modern’ reform objectives is the more modest reform objective
of getting the ‘basics’ right in countries with weak budgeting and
financial management systems. The key elements in the ‘basics’ are: a
realistic budget that is faithfully implemented, high transparency in
public finance, public funds spent for authorized public purposes,
reported expenditure corresponds to actual expenditure, reliable external
and internal controls, and spending units have reasonable certainty as to
the funds that will be available (Schick, 1998). Getting the sequencing of
reform right at the implementation stage, that is, assuring that the basics
are in place before moving on to the modern reforms would be crucial for
achieving the desired results.
Improving civil service performance, with emphasis on

service delivery
Achieving improved performance feature prominently in the CSR pro-
grammes. Two key dimensions are stressed in most of the reforms:
improved performance at the level of individual civil servants, and
improved performance in respect of service delivery. Regarding the

former, some countries seek to introduce performance management
systems while others seek to overhaul or fine-tune existing systems. In
either case, the objective is to ensure a credible assessment/measure-
ment of the performance of officials and link this, to the extent poss-
ible, to the reward system. Improved individual performance is
expected to impact positively on the activities that they carry out,
ranging from policy advice to actual delivery of some specific services,
including the manner in which they conduct government business
(i.e., fairness, impartiality and honesty). Achieving improved service
delivery is linked to the institutional reorganization associated with the
redefinition of the role of the state: making service delivery orientation
influence the restructuring of governmental administration through
the creation of autonomous (executive) agencies with clearly stated
service delivery contracts, transferring some central government func-
tions to subnational and local governments (through decentralization
and/or devolution), and promoting partnerships between govern-
mental administration and the private and voluntary sectors.
Enhancing accountability, transparency and ethical behaviour

The objective of the reform activities focused on these interrelated
value issues is to ensure effective enforcement of the accountability of
the governors to the governed through making government operations
transparent and open, enlarging the scope for citizen participation,
fighting corruption, and restoring ethical behaviour in the civil service.
At different times in the pre-1990 era some countries had paid atten-
tion, in varying degrees, to aspects of these issues. The Tanzanian gov-
ernment adopted a leadership code of conduct (for both political and
administrative officials) and created an ombudsman in the late 1960s.
In the mid-1970s, Nigeria adopted a code of conduct for public officers
(both political and administrative) and created a Public Complaints
Commission (an ombudsman-like institution). In the 1970s and the
1980s anti-corruption efforts were launched in Ghana, Nigeria and
Sierra Leone. What was different in the CSR programmes launched in
the 1990s is the conscious linkage of these values to the functioning of
democratic polities and market economies. Unlike the largely endo-
genous pre-1990 efforts, the post-1990 efforts were influenced, in
varying degrees, by external actors: the IFIs, bilateral and multilateral
donors, and international NGOs. This development was linked to the
international waves of democratization and economic liberalization of
the early 1990s. However, effective enforcement of accountability and
assuring ethical behaviour would depend more on an enabling domes-

tic environment than on the pressures from external actors (see below).
Reform implementation progress: An assessment
Available evidence in existing studies of the progress recorded in

implementing CSR programmes in SSA countries over the past 15 years
or so suggests that the countries can be divided into four groups: the
advanced reformers, the committed reformers, the hesitant reformers,
and the beginners or non-starters (Adamolekun, 2005) (see Table 6.3).
The redefinition of the role of the state is largely a settled subject
among most of the advanced and committed reformers. This also
means that the functions of the civil service are fairly clearly defined.
However, there are a few of these countries (e.g., Namibia, Ethiopia,
Nigeria and Zambia) where, in late 2005, the policy on privatization
was still a subject of intense debate within both the executive and leg-
islative branches of government as well as in the media. Among the
hesitant reformers, the redefinition of the role of the state is largely at
the level of rhetoric and there is often backsliding in respect of policies
adopted on such issues as privatization and decentralization (e.g.,
Togo).
The decay of CSIs and the problems summarized above were largely
absent in Botswana and Mauritius because they maintained the inher-
ited tradition of merit-based recruitment and promotion and politically
neutral career civil services. The same countries made reasonable
progress in socio-economic development and were, therefore, able to
finance the cost of nurturing their civil service systems through provid-
ing decent pay levels for officials, funding educational institutions at
fairly adequate levels to assure supply of trained indigenous man-
power, and progressively consolidating democratic political culture
(including respect for the rule of law, thereby providing an enabling
governance environment that helped retention of trained national
experts and encouraged both domestic and foreign investment that
contributed to economic growth). In a sense, these developments con-
stitute a kind of virtuous cycle. Namibia and South Africa would qualify
to be included in this group of countries.6 In both Botswana and South
Africa, the nurturing of a career civil service remains a priority of the
governments even when a dose of NPM-style contract appointment
was introduced in the late 1990s for the chief administrative heads of
ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of the central govern-
ment. The governments reacted to a new reality in which the fairly
Table 6.3: Distribution of some SSA countries by performance in civil service

rehabilitation efforts
A. Advanced B. Committed C. Hesitant D. Beginners and

Reformers Reformers Reformers Non-starters
(‘virtuous (‘vicious cycle’)
cycle’)
Botswana Benin Cote d’Ivoire Democratic

Republic of Congo
Mauritius Burkina Faso Gabon Burundi
Namibia Ethiopia Guinea-Conakry Central African
Republic
South Africa Ghana Togo Liberia
Kenya Zimbabwe Sierra Leone
Malawi Somalia
Nigeria Sudan
Rwanda
Senegal
Tanzania
Uganda
Zambia
Public management reform continuum
Virtuous Vicious
cycle cycle
Notes:
1. This categorization is a snapshot that represents overall position of countries during
the entire 15-odd years covered in the review, especially the past half-dozen years.
A categorization of the same countries for 1995 and 1999 will show different
placements for several countries in B and C including Rwanda that would have been in
category D in 1995. And Nigeria would have been in group C in 1999. The placement
of countries in groups A and D would have remained unchanged.
2. Information on the countries provided as examples is based partly on assessments
provided in the monograph cited, and partly on the author’s first-hand observations
during professional visits to all but one of the countries in groups A, B, and C between
1990 and 2005.
decent pay for qualified and experienced senior administrative and

professional staffs in the civil service was lagging behind pay levels for
comparable staffs in the private sector with no prospect of the gap
being closed in the short to the medium term.
Commitment to CSR came later in some of the countries in the
second group (notably, Nigeria and Rwanda) and some of the coun-
tries have been more consistent (e.g., Burkina Faso and Tanzania)
than others (e.g., Kenya and Zambia). The countries embraced the
establishment of democratic institutions and respect for rule of law but

at significantly varying speeds. Because of their commitment to reform,
both bilateral and multilateral donor agencies accepted to provide
assistance. However, this external support came with what amounted
to an imposed sequencing in civil service rehabilitation. With only a
few exceptions, the countries in the group were adversely affected by
the economic decline of the 1970s and the 1980s. Under this circum-
stance, they agreed with external donors to adopt and implement
structural adjustment programmes that required reducing the burden
of civil service wage bill on the budget. This was an explicit condition
for financial support from the IFIs. In practical terms, attention was
focused on civil service staff reduction, freezing of new recruitments,
and removal of ‘ghost workers’. Only modest results were achieved:
some retrenched workers returned through revolving doors, some new
appointments had to be made to some essential services (notably in
the social sector), and in most cases the largest numbers of retrenched
staff were from the lower pay levels, yielding only small savings.
While none of these countries had successfully rehabilitated its CSI
by late 2005, several had implemented selected reforms that have
resulted in varying degrees of improvement in the functioning of the
CSIs. The reform efforts are of two types. First there are some selective
and targeted reform measures such as the enclaving of tax administra-
tion, contracting of appointments of chief executives of MDAs, cre-
ation of executive agencies out of the central government’s MDAs, and
salary enhancement for some groups in the senior civil service. The
second type of reforms seeks to cover the entire civil service and they
are focused on performance and referred to variously as improving per-
formance through citizens’ charters, and civil service improvement
programs.
Enclaving tax administration has meant the transfer of this function
from the civil service to new structures (called Tax Administration or
Revenue Authorities) run at arm’s-length from the service and enjoying
significant autonomy in staff recruitment and compensation. It is
linked to a clearly articulated performance regime. In Kenya, tax
revenues as percentage of GDP has been consistently over 22 percent
since the revenue authority was created, compared to an average of
about 16 percent in the majority of SSA countries. In 2003/04, tax
revenue in the amount of KShs 229 billion (KShs 122 billion in
1995–96) was about 93 percent of total government revenue. Although
some other countries that have adopted the approach have not pro-
duced similar outstanding results (Zambia and Uganda), performance
post-enclaving has been an improvement in every case compared

to the pre-enclaving situation. South Africa, a group A country, has
included an independent revenue authority in its package of civil
service reforms and the results have also been outstanding. For exam-
ple, in 2003–04, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) collected
20 billion rands (about US$3 billion) more than the target agreed with
the country’s Treasury.
Another targeted improvement measure is the adoption, in the late
1990s, of NPM-style contract appointments (with pay levels fairly com-
petitive with those in the private sector) for the chief administrative
heads of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of the central
government. Because of poor performing economies and/or limited
national resources, civil service salary scales, especially at the senior
staff levels, are only a small fraction of the pay levels in the other
sectors and the prospects for significant improvement in the short to
medium term are poor (e.g., Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda).
The creation of executive agencies is also NPM-inspired and involves
the separation of service delivery functions from policy management.
While the policy function remains with central government ministries
and departments, executive agencies have responsibilities for discreet
service delivery or development programs for which they are account-
able for results. The staffs in both groups are regarded as civil servants
but there is more flexibility in the staffing of the executive agencies
than in the ministries. Also, the accountability and performance
regimes differ in some important respects. For example, the flexibility
regarding staffing includes the right to hire and fire. Although Ghana
was the first SSA country to create an executive agency in 1994,
Tanzania has gone furthest with 12 executive agencies by 2001 and
50 more in the pipeline. By 2001, the results were judged to have
impacted positively on service delivery: ‘better roads maintenance,
higher quality airport services, faster business registration and
improved counter services and a more efficient and effective National
Statistics Office.’7
Regarding selective salary enhancement schemes, called selective
accelerated enhancement (SASE) scheme, the idea is that salaries of key
technical and professional staff are to be raised to compete with those
of the private sector. Only Tanzania was implementing SASE by 2003
and it is receiving donor support in financing the significant salary
increases involved (Stevens and Teggermann, 2004). Donor support is
provided over a five-year period during which Tanzania would progres-
sively assume full responsibility for the scheme, pending the time that
a competitive salary regime can be introduced for the entire civil

service. The SASE is only accessible to the ministries with approved per-
formance improvement plans. There are two main reasons for the
inability of group B and C countries to tackle civil service-wide pay
reform. First, in a majority of them (e.g., Benin), the political clout of
labor unions ensures the maintenance of the status quo – that is, inad-
equate pay for all to prevent further reduction in staff strength.
Second, because they are unable to grow their economies at levels com-
parable to those of the countries in group A, they are unable to finance
the cost of implementing decent pay levels across the board.
The idea of a citizens’ charter was launched in 2001 as an African-wide
initiative through the collaboration of the Centre africain de recherches
en administration et developpement (CAFRAD) and the Republic of
Namibia at a Pan-African Conference of the Ministers of Civil Service held
in Windhoek, Namibia.8 While Namibia has created an Efficiency and
Charter Unit (ECU) in the Office of the Prime Minister, dedicated to pro-
moting the introduction and implementation of charters by MDAs, less
than one-third of the MDAs had launched their charters by mid-2003,
and it was then too early to assess their impact. No other African country
appears to have taken the idea seriously, though South Africa’s Batho Pele,
a People First initiative (introduced in 1997) is in the tradition of citizens’
charters and is reported to have positive impact on service delivery
(Cameron, 2004). In the early 1990s, Ghana launched a Civil Service
Performance Improvement Program that was assessed in 2003 to have
been largely unsuccessful in improving service delivery (Mutahaba and
Kiragu, 2002).
Countries in group C have introduced some of the reform initiatives
reviewed in respect of countries in group B but none of them has
recorded any comparable success. Each of the beginners or non-starters
that constitute group D (at the opposite end of group A countries)
appears to have been caught up in a vicious cycle of unending conflicts
(civil strife or civil wars), poor economies, and failed or failing states,
with decaying civil services. It is noteworthy that Sierra Leone that
‘progressed’ from non-starter status to a beginner a few years ago has
identified the enclaving of revenue administration (through the estab-
lishment of a national revenue authority) as an ‘entry point’ to public
management reform.
Implementation progress in respect of strengthening budget and
financial management reflect differences among the four groups of
countries, similar to those already highlighted above. Of 19 SSA coun-
tries that have adopted the MTEF process during the last decade, only
about five have successfully integrated it with their budget processes

(Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda – all in groups
A and B). Many of the other countries are only piloting an MTEF. In
reality, this means that the process is unlikely to have a beneficial
effect on the budget process. In the countries with functioning MTEF
processes, a key feature is the involvement of key stakeholders in the
budget process in its preparation. The stakeholders include cabinet
members, parliamentarians and civil society. South Africa, Tanzania,
and Uganda are arguably the leaders. The obvious lesson from existing
experiences is a reconfirmation of the counsel that getting the basics of
budget right should precede the introduction of an MTEF that should
be government-wide when the relevant prior conditions are met. MTEF
piloting that started in Malawi in 1994 is yet to be integrated with the
budget process.
However, the link of access to substantial aid and debt relief to
improvement in budget and financial management has made some SSA
countries (mostly in groups B and C) pay more attention to imple-
menting reform measures in the area. Specifically, under the Highly
Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, standardized public
financial management indicators have been developed to measure how
candidate countries perform against established benchmarks. By 2004,
seven countries had shown improvement in their implementation
record (notably, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Senegal, and Tanzania).
Almost at the same time as MTEF was being introduced, many coun-
tries, in partnership with some donors (with the World Bank as lead
agency) began to implement two initiatives aimed at improving two
critical aspects of public financial management: one is focused on pro-
curement reform and the other is focused on financial accountability.
The diagnostic tool used for the former is called a country procurement
assessment report (CPAR) while the diagnostic tool used for the latter is
called a country financial accountability assessment (CFAA). One of the
main points raised in CFAAs is the widespread inadequacy of qualified
accounting staff. This is the major explanatory factor for the small
number of accounting staff in public services (those that are available
prefer the ‘greener pastures’ of the private sector), resulting in delayed
audits. This means that technical auditing is usually delayed in such
countries and there are no prospects of moving towards value for
money auditing. However, there are a few exceptions (for example,
Botswana, Kenya, and South Africa). Botswana has moved further to
introduce and implement accrual accounting – a practice that is at the
cutting edge of accounting practice.
Regarding CPARs, the important point to emphasize is the fact that

over 60 percent of the average SSA country’s public spending (at both
the national and sub-national levels) involves procurement. Again, the
CPARs are usually of high technical quality, covering all the issues of
transparency, competition and regular public reporting. Implementa-
tion in most countries leaves much to be desired. In countries we
defined as ‘hesitant reformers’, it is a case of long delays or total inac-
tion until donors decide to undertake another round of CPARs, accord-
ing to so-called timetables agreed with the governments. Even in the
countries described as ‘committed reformers’, implementation of pro-
curement reforms is largely reluctant. The poor implementation of pro-
curement reforms in so many countries is almost certainly linked
to the problem of corruption that the countries are not yet ready to
seriously combat.
Enhancing accountability, transparency and ethical behaviour

SSA countries across the four groups have adopted anti-corruption
bodies and variations on the Ombudsman (‘citizen’s defender’) as the
institutional instruments for enhancing accountability, transparency
and ethical behaviour. Most CSR programmes provide for the establish-
ment of anti-corruption bodies that enjoy varying degrees of auton-
omy (e.g., Benin, Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia,
Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia).
There is broad agreement in the assessments of performance of anti-
corruption bodies in SSA to focus on three factors of good or poor
performance: the degree of autonomy of these bodies, the human,
financial and material resources made available to them, and the ability
of the bodies to forge strategic alliances with groups in the public, private
and voluntary sectors with a view to enhancing their effectiveness.
About 25 SSA countries currently have ombudsman-like institutions
that focus on citizens’ complaints about acts of omission and commis-
sion by public officials for which the ombudsman is to obtain remedies
at no cost to the citizen. As in other countries with ombudsman insti-
tutions (about 120), its flexibility has allowed SSA countries to establish
them either as creatures of the executive (e.g., Nigeria) or the legisla-
ture (e.g., Namibia). Since the majority of complaints are against the
errors of omission and commission by public institutions including
CSIs, it follows that the level of effectiveness of ombudsmen in obtain-
ing redress for citizens would vary: high in countries with strong
CSIs (group A countries) and low in countries with weak CSIs (groups
D and C).
Concluding observations on future directions
At the level of practice, two points deserve attention. The first relates to
the scope and pace of CSR implementation in the different countries
and the second is an exploration of how actions at the regional and
sub-regional levels could help to broaden, deepen, and sustain CSR in
individual countries. Regarding a possible research agenda four priority
topics need to be addressed: two concern the respective impacts of
culture and governance on management in general, including CSIs,
and the other two are CSI-specific foci on the institutions’ role in
poverty reduction (with particular reference to the Millennium Develop-
ment Goals) and their relationship with the external development
environment. One topic of future concern that relates to both practice
and research is the need for attention to capacity development for
leadership (both political and administrative).
• The overview of implementation progress in SSA countries provided

in this chapter shows clearly that countries progress at different
paces due partly to the degree of country commitment and partly to
the level of each country’s institutional, educational and economic
development.
• There is evidence that actions at two sub-regional levels are helping
member countries improve some aspects of their public administra-
tion systems faster than they would have done if there had been no
guidance and support from the regional institutions. The two exam-
ples are the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in
the areas of financial accountability and anti-corruption and the
West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) in the areas
of public financial management and civil service wage bill manage-
ment. Other sub-regional organizations in Eastern, Central and
Western Africa could move in similar directions.
• Regarding the research on public services, they can be conducted by
the management development and training institutes or appropriate
research or faculties/departments of universities. In every case, there
would be need for provision of resources on a continuing basis.
As illustrations, public service research efforts focused on the achieve-
ment of the MDGs should include incentives for effective service deliv-
ery and the impact of HIV/Aids on human resource development.
• Capacity development for both political and administrative leaders
of the machinery of government should combine attention to
managerial training with a leadership development programme,
covering such topics as change management, results orientation,

people management, building coalitions, and communication.
Notes
1 In this chapter, Sub-Saharan Africa and Africa are used as synonyms. North
Africa is regarded as part of the Middle East, as is the practice in some inter-
national organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank.
2 Of course, commitment to the merit principle does not mean total lack of
attention to representativeness. Typically, there is attention to representa-
tion in both old and new states, based on class (Britain), geographical area
(France), racial or ethnic groups in heterogeneous societies such as Ethiopia,
Nigeria, and South Africa in SSA.
3 The five tasks are: ‘establishing a foundation of law [a law-based state]; main-
taining a nondistortionary policy environment, including macroeconomic
stability; investing in basic social services and infrastructure; protecting the
vulnerable; protecting the environment’. I would add assuring the security of
persons and property as a sixth fundamental task of the state.
4 That is, the African Development Bank, the World Bank, and the Inter-
national Monetary Fund (IMF)
5 It is important to mention that many SSA countries embarked on CSR pro-
grammes of varying scope during the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s but
none of them was linked to state reform in the sense that it is used here.
Perhaps the two most broad-gauged CSR efforts were those undertaken in
the early 1970s in Kenya and Nigeria.
6 Up to 1990, Namibia and South Africa were one country under the infamous
apartheid system. Because of its racial exclusion policy, the similarities in
institutional capacity, socio-economic development between it and Botswana
and Mauritius cannot be described as virtuous. However, post independence
Namibia and post-apartheid South Africa qualify to be in the same category
as Botswana and Mauritius.
7 Tanzania Government’s Public Service Reform Annual Report, 2000/2001.
Improvements recorded in subsequent years are contained in annual ‘State
of the Public Service Report’ that are available on a government website: see
*blhttp://estabs.go.tz*bg
8 A model ‘Charter for the Public Service in Africa’ was adopted and individual
countries were expected to adapt it for use. The charter has four basic prin-
ciples: (i) principle of equality of treatment; (ii) principle of neutrality;
(iii) principle of legality; and (iv) principle of continuity [in the provision of
public service].
References
Adamolekun, L., ‘Political Leadership in Sub-Saharan Africa: From Giants to
Dwarfs’, International Political Science Review, 9(2) (1988), 95–106.
Adamolekun, L., Re-Orienting Public Management in Africa: Selected Issues and

Some Country Experiences, Economic Research Working Paper Series, No. 81
(Tunis: African Development Bank, 2005).
Bekke, H., J. Perry and T. Toonher (eds), Civil Service Systems in Comparative
Perspective (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1996).
Cameron, R., ‘Affirmative Action in South African Public Service’, Processed (i.e.
an informal research report, World Bank), (2004).
Kiragu, K., Public Financial Management. In L. Adamolekun (ed.), Public
Administration in Africa: Main Issues and Selected Country Studies (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1999), Ch. 5.
Mutahaba, G. and K. Kiragu, ‘Lessons of International and African Perspectives
on Public Service Reform: Examples from Five African Countries’, Africa
Development, 27(3–4) (2002), 48–75.
Olowu, B., ‘Pride and Performance in African Public Services: Analysis of
Institutional Breakdown and Rebuilding Efforts in Nigeria and Uganda’,
International Review of Administrative Sciences, 67(1) (2001), 117–34.
Schick, A., ‘Why Most Developing Countries Should Not Try New Zealand’s
Reforms’, The World Bank Research Observer, 13(1) (1998), 123–31.
Stevens, M. and S. Teggemann, Comparative Experiences with Public Service
Reform in Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia. In B. Levy and S. Kpundeh (eds),
Building State Capacity in Africa (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2004),
pp. 43–86.
World Bank, World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Part II
Civil Service Systems and
Multi-level Governance
7
National Civil Service Systems and
the Implications of Multi-level
Governance: Weberianism
Revisited?
Caspar F. van den Berg and Theo A.J. Toonen
Introduction
Previous publications in this project demonstrated that state-level

administrative systems were affected by intergovernmental interaction.
It is important to stress that the notion of intergovernmentalism
involves both the exchange between various national states and the
exchange between territorial levels within the state. The increased
importance of these two types of intergovernmental exchange raises
two important questions. The first is whether the available tools for
comparative analysis of civil service systems are still adequate. The
second is whether the national state is still the most appropriate
level of analysis for understanding the nature and dynamics of
contemporary governance.
In addition, the nature of ‘the’ civil service varies substantially from
country to country, from policy sector to policy sector and from one
level to another. Each country, sector, or unit may have distinctive
institutional features and traditions determining the impact of external
developments. Hence, change in civil service systems may be brought
about by the expansion of multi-level governance, and by these fea-
tures and traditions that filter change and thus shape the diverse out-
comes of current developments in each context. Cross-national
diversity in institutional structures and procedures is persistent. There
are no clear signs of convergence in governance processes in various
countries (Page and Wright, 1999; Toonen, 2001). Nonetheless, espe-
cially the member states of the European Union (EU) have adjusted
their decision-making procedures in order to make them more com-
patible with those of the EU. Europeanization of civil service systems is
not synonymous to unification or standardization (Page and Wouters,
103
1995; Wessels et al., 2003) and so an adequate tool for comparative

understanding is all the more pressing. Despite our sensitivity to varia-
tion across national states, policy sectors and units, we concentrate on
identifying the influence of internationalization and multi-level gover-
nance upon the nature of civil service systems. While the EU serves as
an illustration of our argument, the analysis is relevant to other parts
of the world as well.
The paradox that forms the starting point of our exercise consists of
(a) the observation that in literature on administrative systems, the
expanding practice of multi-level governance and network style deci-
sion-making seems to signify an erosion of ideal-typical bureaucratic
features (Kanter, 1989; Handler, 1996; Osborne and Gaebler, 1992;
Lane, 2000), while (b) there is a trend, at least in continental Europe
and North America, towards the re-appreciation of Weber’s ideas (Du
Gay, 2000; Peters and Pierre, 2004; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004; Meier
and Hill, 2005; Olsen, 2005; Terry, 2005). This paradox leads us to our
central question: How can the re-acknowledgement of Weber’s ideas be
reconciled with an empirical reality of inter- and cross-nationalized
multi-level and network governance, in a way that opens possibilities
for comparative analytical research of civil service systems in the 21st
century? Before we discuss the change processes, we need to address
the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Weber’s ideal types and
the concept of ‘bureaucracy’.
One form of misinterpretation stems from the assumption that the
bureaucratic organization of government is purposely rooted in a
national context. This idea is possibly inspired by the more or less
simultaneous rise of public bureaucracies in the Weberian sense and
the nation-state in Western Europe. However, the synchrony of the
two processes does not mean that ideal typical ‘bureaucracy’ thrives
exclusively or even preferably in the context of the national state.
This wrongly assumed connection might lead to the suggestion that
challenges to the national state as the pivotal unit in governance,
are linked to challenges to bureaucracy as the nation-state’s match-
ing administrative organization. Related to this, another form of
misinterpretation stems from the use of the concept of bureaucracy
as an indivisible notion. In fact, in order to use bureaucracy as
a tool for administrative analysis its needs to be analysed at three
levels.
We first briefly sketch our conceptual approach of the multi-level
governance metaphor and the Weberian conceptualization of bureau-
cracy. In the next section, we identify and discuss five dimensions of
Weberianism Revisited? 105
internationalization and multi-level governance that are expected to

have an impact on the nature and functioning of national civil service
systems. In the next section we discuss how these developments affect
the Weberian model of bureaucracy. In our conclusion we pull the
various changes together and evaluate the possibilities for future com-
parative research.
Multi-level governance and bureaucracy: A multi-tiered

approach
Multi-level governance as a metaphor for present-day political and

administrative steering rests on three pillars (at least in the EU). The
first is that there is no single centre of authority, but that authority is
exerted at different territorial levels, that are connected with each
other. The second pillar is the involvement of non-state actors in deci-
sion making, implementation, and enforcement processes. The third
pillar is the notion that relations between actors and institutions are
not only constitutionally fixed and hierarchical, but that a large part of
governance takes place through informal, flexible and even horizontal
interaction (Marks et al., 1996; Scharpf, 2002). While as an analytical
metaphor it was first coined in the 1990s, the governance of Western
Europe has always been of a more or less multi-level nature. Examples
of layered government can be found even in the oldest systems of gov-
ernment, and corporations and other extra-governmentals have been
involved in the dealings of administrations at least since the 17th
century (consider the church and guilds as mediators and regulators of
social life) (Toonen and Van der Meer, 2006). Indeed, the practice of
multi-level governance long predated the emergence of the analytical
metaphor (Benz, 2003; Mayntz, 2004).
Having placed the novelty of multi-level governance somewhat in
perspective, this metaphor is useful since it makes us perceptive of the
increasing degree to which various tiers of government (local, regional,
national, European) and various types of actors and institutions (state,
business, organized interest, media) have come to share responsibilities
and depend on each other. The multi-level governance approach makes
us aware of the complementary presence of non-hierarchical and non-
legal provisions and of the room for informal exchange and negotiated
policy outcomes between and among the various tiers of government
(Peters and Pierre, 2004)
The question now is in what sense the increasing multi-level nature
of governance influences national civil service systems. Since the 1920s,
the Weber’s writings on bureaucratization have been the pre-eminent

tool for the analysis of bureaucracy. He analysed the rationalization of
social life and the concurrent type of legal-rational rule. Within a
system of legal-rational rule public and private activities are best
organized and executed through bureaucratic organizations. Within
these organizations tasks and responsibilities are coordinated by
means of hierarchically ordered offices. These offices are filled by
bureau-cratic officials. By making this distinction between three
levels (system level: legal-rational rule, meso-level: bureaucratic
organ-ization, and individual level: the office holder) we have
a lever with which to identify and interpret the potential changes
related to increasing multi-level governance for civil service
systems.
Expanding multi-level governance: Constituent trends
Internationalization and Europeanizaation of public

administration
For present purposes, we define internationalization in public adminis-
tration as the process in which global, international and transnational
activity and interaction between actors and institutions becomes
more frequent, more intensive and expands to more policy areas
(see Caiden, 2006). This activity and interaction may take place
within the framework of international regimes and organizations
(e.g. the EU, the UN or the IMF), but also in less organized or structural
ways (e.g., through lobbying, and informal interaction).
European integration may be seen both as a specific manifestation
of internationalization on a regional scale and as a catalyst of
increased supranational activity and interaction. The impact of
European integration is known as Europeanization. Although at
first this term was used to describe various phenomena, the most
widely adopted meaning is that of the ‘adaptation of national and
sub-national systems of governance to a European political centre
and European-wide norms’ (Olsen, 2002). This conception ‘focuses
on change in core domestic institutions of governance and politics,
understood as a consequence of the development of European-
level institutions, identities and policies’ (Olsen, 2002). Indicative
for the increased activity of civil servants beyond the nation-state
is, for instance, the steady growth of the Permanent Representa-
tions of a group of EU member states over recent decades (see
Table 7.1).
Table 7.1 Number of policy officials employed by the Permanent

Representations at the European Union of four EU member states
120
100
80 The Netherlands
60 United Kingdom
France
40
Germany
20
0
1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004
Sources: De Zwaan (1993, pp. 417–19); see <http://www.eu-nederland.be/,

http://www.ukrep.be/, http://www.rpfrance-ue.org/ rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=3,
http://www.eu-vertretung.de/de/>.
Several implications of the internationalization and Europeanization

for national civil service systems have to be noted here. First, the activ-
ity of state-level civil servants as players in a wide variety of inter-
governmental and supranational arenas is increasing in terms of
numbers, intensity, and policy areas. The international activity of an
increasing number of civil servants raises the question whether their
actions can still be steered and checked by their political superiors as
effectively as in a system of exclusively nationally operating civil
servants. The larger spatial distance to their mandating political leaders
and the complexity of decision making in international organizations
is expected to increase their discretionary freedom. Thus, international-
ization may threaten effective democratic accountability for bureau-
cratic action.
Increasing numbers of internationally active civil servants also chal-
lenges coordination among national bureaucracies. System-wide co-
ordination is especially important in international arenas, since the
turbulence of multilateral negotiations can easily require adjustments
in bargaining strategies. Without a coherent and consistent political
agenda from national institutions, the risk of conflicting agenda’s,
both across governmental organizations and across policy sectors
becomes pressing. Since multi-level governance means a larger number
of actors (besides national state actors) and a greater importance of dif-

ferent centres of authority (besides the central state), established struc-
tures and processes at the national level may have to be revised or
transferred, either to semi- or non-state bodies, or to supra- or sub-
national tiers (Kohler-Koch and Eising, 1999: 13).
Several studies suggest that in the decision-making process of the EU,
middle-ranking national officials seem to play a more important role
that top level civil servants. Thus, European integration may shift
primary bureaucratic influence on policy making from the top levels of
civil service systems to middle-ranking civil servants. Also, internation-
alization is expected to have implications for career opportunities.
Promotion, secondment, and outplacement to national representations
or to international organizations may add an extra dynamic to estab-
lished bureaucratic career structures.
European integration entails that much legislation with which national
civil servants deal originates directly or indirectly in European-level insti-
tutions. As a result, civil servants who seek access to legislative circles,
need to extend their focus to the European level. At the supranational
level, they meet with potential competition from bureaucrats from the
26 other member states, which creates a dynamic of information
exchange, winning support and forging coalitions. Since these activi-
ties are political rather than bureaucratic activities, it can be argued
that Europeanization makes bureaucratic action more political in
nature. In some cases, this politicization of civil servants’ activities may
be at the authority of political superiors, but it is conceivable that the
openings for increased political activity by civil servants enlarges their
independence. This raises the question again of political control over
bureaucrats in internationalized context. EU-level legislation also
means that civil servants are involved in interpreting, transposing and
implementing directives for and into the national context. Especially
when policy issues are politically contentious, civil servants may be
successful in influencing the final outcome.
Finally, European integration influences the modus operandi of
national bureaucracies given the inducement of EU policies to adopt
network-style governance. National and subnational governments
benefit more from EU-funded programmes if they adopt the open way
of policy making that includes all actors the European Commission
sees as relevant (Kohler-Koch and Eising, 1999). In this sense, European-
ization promotes greater negotiability of policies at the national level.
But, at the same time, it appears that policy negotiability at the national
level is decreasing. Rules, regulations, and lines of command and
control have in many countries been sharpened over the last decade,
to the detriment of organized interests who seek to intervene after
EU directives have been transposed and integrated into national
legislation.
Agencyfication
Agencyfication is the process in which national governments increasingly
delegate mainly implementation and regulatory activities to national-
level agencies that are either completely privatized, or operate at arm’s-
length from the ministerial department and enjoy relative autonomy, at
least with respect to managerial affairs, but under the direct political
responsibility of a minister. Since the early 1980s most western states
pursued some sort of agencyfication strategy, often as a part new public
management (NPM) inspired reforms (van Thiel, 2005). It should not be
overlooked, though, that patterns of semi- and para-governmental gover-
nance of executive tasks existed for a long time in continental European
systems (Dijkstra and Van der Meer, 1997).
Besides purely domestic motives agencyfication is also regarded as an
indication of internationalization. First, the inter- and transnational
nature of governance is a potential driving force behind agencification
(Christensen and Lægreid, 2005: 19). In a complex system of multi-
level governance, national executives need to be vigorous and efficient
in pursuing their goals, both in a strategic sense and in terms of tack-
ling substantial policy problems. Offloading some of their implementa-
tion and regulatory tasks (especially those that would otherwise bear
considerable political sensitivity) to agencies may be instrumental to
enhancing performance on their primary goals (Toonen, 2001).
Second, internationalization encouraged new forms of regulation
and the creation of ‘independent’ inspectorates (Hood et al., 2004;
Christensen and Lægreid, 2005). Where until the late 1970s regulation
and inspection used to be carried out by integrated sections within the
central bureaucracy, in an internationalized governance system a
stronger focus is put on re-institutionalizing the separation of powers,
that is, the formation of regulatory agencies and inspectorates outside
the central departmental structure. In the end, the more important the
role of supra- and transnational organizations in monitoring the
behaviour of the national state, the higher the need for a national
regulation system that is high in credibility, legitimacy and therefore
independent and relatively autonomous from the central executive.
Thus, internationalization contributes to the fragmentation of bureau-
cratic structures.
Whether the power of the administrative top of agencies is sig-

nificantly greater than the power of top bureaucrats in core ministries
is a question that cannot be answered in general terms. On the one
hand, top officials in agencies enjoy more managerial autonomy and,
given the difficulty of clearly separating managerial decisions and
policy decisions, the overall political control over top official in agen-
cies is generally not as strict as in ministerial departments. On the
other hand, political leaders may see agencyfication also as an instru-
ment to enhance their grip on the civil service, for two reasons. By
fragmenting large ministerial departments, they hope to regain some
of the control over individual units under their responsibility. Also,
the creation of agencies mostly coincides with the introduction of
clearly formulated performance contracts that increase the degree of
ministerial control over the top of the agencies (Pollitt and Bouckaert,
2004: 144–6).
Mediatization of governance
Mediatization of governance concerns the trend toward a more impor-
tant and more autonomous role of the mass media in scrutinizing and
steering governance. In almost all of the Western states, governments
have embraced or have been forced to embrace the idea of greater
transparency to acquire greater democratic legitimacy for their policies,
implying more communication with the public and less secrecy sur-
rounding policy practices. This increased transparency of governance is
further reinforced by the development and application of new media
(e-mail, e-government), strengthening direct interaction between citi-
zens and bureaucratic officials. Citizens have more and faster access to
information and services through the internet. Also, the increased
speed and range of information diffusion has enabled the press to take
a more active and autonomous role in scrutinizing political decisions
and decision-making. Citizens and other societal actors can inform
themselves quicker and better about government issues, strategies,
successes and failures (Toonen, 2001).
Moreover, many Western countries witness the increasing practice of
top civil servants to contact the press and to speak out on policy issues,
for which – according to the doctrine of ministerial responsibility –
ministers are answerable to parliament. The doctrine of ministerial
responsibility can only be maintained if bureaucrats are loyal and
refrain from seeking publicity or venting their own opinions in the
media. While interactive governance and increased transparency are
perceived as positive from a legitimacy and accountability perspective,
they have come at a price in terms of capabilities of political control

over bureaucrats.
Parallel to this, ‘structural incidentalism’ (Kuypers, 2001), that is, polit-
ical action characterized by short-term responses to perceived acute prob-
lems) rather by long-term strategies, is observable in a many systems.
Often, these acute problems are signaled in the media and they encour-
age politicians to take an immediate position. Politicians seldom resist the
temptation of blaming their civil servants for negligence, wrong action,
or incorrect information. Structural incidentalism may pose problems for
the functioning of bureaucratic organizations that are typically character-
ized by permanence of office and long-term horizons.
Both politicians and civil servants feel the need to ‘score’ on issues
that receive substantial public attention to retain legitimacy. For politi-
cians, this is normal practice given their dependency on electoral
support. For bureaucratic actors and institutions, however, such atti-
tudes can be seen as a fundamental breach with the ideals of caution,
non-discrimination and long-term planning.
Political leaders have responded to the more autonomous role of the
media and the higher demands for public communication by increas-
ingly using press officers and public relations officers, usually recruited
from outside the career civil service (Steen et al., 2005). Where interac-
tive modes of governance are complementing the more traditional
command system, political communication that is clear, repetitive and
positive becomes an increasingly important concern for political
leaders. In order to ensure effective and successful communication,
they have to rely to a high degree on their strategic spin doctors, often
to the detriment of the influence of the career civil service. At the same
time, though, the increased autonomous role of the media in reporting
and investigating government action also enhanced their ability to
influence ministerial and parliamentary agendas (Walgrave et al.,
2006).
Judicialization of governance
In most western countries, the popularity of NPM led to one or more
waves of regulatory reforms. Also, international organizations such as
the European Union (emphasizing competition and the development
of a free internal market), the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD), World Trade Organization (WTO) and the
World Bank (encouraging new reform ideas across the globe) have
stimulated the development of tighter evidence-based legal controlling
mechanisms in countries that used to employ more consensus-based
regulatory processes (Christensen and Lægreid, 2005; see also Majone,

1999; and Laffan, 2001).
Simultaneously, academics have observed the advance of network-style
decision-making that is in fact characterized by less regulation and more
voluntary cooperation (Marks et al., 1996; Kohler-Koch and Eising, 1999).
Nonetheless, they too sense that wherever informality seems to be
winning ground, formal-legal restrictions to guarantee political and
financial control usually follow at short distance. Network-style decision-
making may uncover gaps in existing accountability relations and the
division of competencies, invoking either tighter legal demarcations or
the intervention of the judiciary (Peters and Pierre, 2004).
So, governance processes are seen to be subject to judicialization by the
ideologically inspired and internationally encouraged application of legal
norms and working methods, and by seemingly inevitable legal measure-
ments taken by politicians to compensate for more informal exchange. In
addition to this, the importance of the judiciary in evaluating political
and administrative behaviour is another indication of the judicialization
of governance (see Christensen and Wise, this volume). Next to the judi-
cial questions as a result of sometimes unclear constitutional relations of
accountability and competencies, the heightened complexity of policy
problems has made it increasingly difficult for the initiators of legislation
(parliament and the executive) to satisfactorily design laws that address
all aspects of a policy problem. Where legislation is not fully adequate to
resolve a policy problem or societal conflict, an appeal is made to the
judiciary. Moreover, social individualization and the empowerment of
citizens vis-à-vis the state have lowered thresholds for litigation, including
cases in which individuals address the courts for perceived unlawful
actions by administrative bodies.
A final indicator of judicialization, and this holds for EU member states
in particular, is the increasingly proactive and powerful position of the
European Court of Justice (ECJ). Due to the primacy of European law over
national law, member states cannot interpret their way out of compliance
with European Community law. Since the 1970s, the ECJ has made more
and more decisions with a noteworthy political and material impact, con-
straining national government and administrative bodies in unantici-
pated ways and in unforeseen policy areas (Alter, 1996).
Implications for the Weberian framework?
Civil service systems have been confronted with changing circum-

stances and many of these have been absorbed or adjusted to by civil
service systems. But does that imply that the Weberian conception of
bureaucracy is now less useful than in the past for the comparative
analysis of national civil service systems?
Following Page (1992), and taking the potential for bureaucratic
dominance as a central notion in Weber’s writings, we focus on the
countering forces of a number of institutions – parliaments, interest
groups, political leadership, personal staff, and the judiciary. We turn
to each of these pillars and institutions and assess their relevance or
obsolescence for present-day analysis.
The principle of hierarchy in organizing and coordinating the
administrative apparatus has by no means become obsolete. However,
in some parts of the civil service hierarchy is now complemented as an
coordination principle by contractual market principles and networks
(i.e., voluntary cooperation based on mutual dependence rather than
hierarchy). These mechanisms are primarily visible in those parts of
the bureaucracy that were established or reformed within an NPM
context (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004: 82). In this sense, a differentia-
tion is conceivable in terms of the importance of hierarchy between
the core departmental organizations and the decentralized units.
Similarly, when looking at the much-debated erosion of professional
career patterns, a mixed picture emerges. On the one hand, in several
systems the debate about the ‘normalization’ of the legal position of
the civil servant with the position of employees in the private sector is
reopened. This indicates that the distinctness of ‘serving the state’
is in decline. Also, for a considerable share of the managerial offices
(especially those in decentralized organs) in practically all Western
states, contracts become less permanent, more flexible, and in some
cases connected with specific performance targets. On the other hand,
internationalization has opened an extra dimension to the career
system, perpetuating and perhaps reinforcing the existing principles
of career constitution (see on new career opportunities: Caiden, 2006:
537–41).
Moreover, when trying to assess the degree to which the Weberian
principle of candidates being ‘selected on the basis of technical
qualifications and being appointed’, reality shows variations. It appears
that in the more peripheral parts of the system, technical qualifications
are highly valued. Most of the decentralized tasks and processes were
intentionally depoliticized when placed at arm’s length. Since these
bodies deal with technical rather than political issues, it is to expected
that they rely more heavily on technically qualified staff than the core
ministries.
These core ministries (especially at the higher levels) are more and
more exclusively in charge of strategic decision-making. This requires a
more strategically minded and politically responsive staff for these
offices promotion is less likely to be based on seniority, but rather on
achievement or political or personal loyalty to the incumbent minister
or government. At the top, the number of strategic advisers, separate
from the career civil service, has been growing.
On this variable, the core bureaucracy seems less bureaucratic in a
Weberian sense than the peripheral bodies. This raises the question
whether internationalization and multi-level governance, where polit-
icization leads to core bureaucracy and the depoliticization and profes-
sionalization into more peripheral units. This development may point
at a broader trend. In the classical conception, the division between
‘politics and technical work’ used to coincide (at least theoretically)
with the division between politicians and bureaucrats. It is now worth
trying to empirically establish if this dividing line coincides more
with the separation between the core ministerial departments and
the decentralized administrative bodies.
Another element of the bureaucratic ideal type is that the ‘office is
treated as the sole, or at least primary, occupation’. The changes dis-
cussed here involve a greater usage of external strategic consultants
who work on short term or part-time contracts, which lowers the score
on this variable, at least for the central departments. Whether this
holds to the same extent for staff in organizations outside the core
bureaucracy remains an open question.
Weber emphasizes official secrecy as one of the tenets of bureaucratic
power (1947). On the basis of the changes described above, it can be
expected that secrecy is decreasing as a source of bureaucratic power.
Two reasons for this are increased transparency of governance and the
increasingly critical and autonomous role of the press. In addition, we
witness the greater external profile of a number of top bureaucrats
(Steen et al., 2005), which might enhance the power of these civil ser-
vants and thus compensate for the loss of power caused by the erosion
of official secrecy.
A number of (comparative) studies point at the decreased ability
of national parliaments in scrutinizing the executive, including the
bureaucratic apparatus (Wessels and Rometsch, 1996; Börzel and
Sprungk, 2007). This is partly explained by the expanded role of
European institutions in initiating legislation and policies, although
there is considerable cross-national variation. In Denmark and the
United Kingdom parliaments play a relatively important role in the
endorsement of European policies whereas in The Netherlands and

various other countries, many EU-level policy issues are hardly polit-
icized, implying less prominence for parliaments in mandating nego-
tiators and in integrating EU directives into national legislation. We
expect that, ceteris paribus, the more an issue is politicized, the more
parliamentary debate takes place, and the more explicit the political
mandate of internationally active bureaucrats will be, resulting in more
negotiation power of national bureaucrats at the EU level. The con-
verse mechanism is also expected to hold: low politicization leads to
weaker political direction for bureaucrats, and less negotiation power
of internationally active bureaucrats.
The capabilities of interest groups in constraining the bureaucracy
have been in motion during the past decades. Generally, organized
interests enjoy a stronger position in networks of interactive govern-
ment than in a more strictly vertically oriented command and control
system. Shaping long-term partnerships, agreement on problem defini-
tion and wider support for policies are among the reasons ministers
and civil servants are interested in the inclusion of these actors. It
should be noted here that the EU structures and its procedures for allo-
cating funds encouraged further institutionalization of interest group
representatives into policy-making.
Moreover, the scope of an increasing number of interest groups has
grown European or even global. Since the main policy framework for a
large and ever-growing number of policy issues is shaped in and
around the institutions of the European Union, interest organizations
(such as associations of producers, professionals, workers and con-
sumers) more and more merge with their counterparts in other member
states, in order to obtain a more powerful position within the EU deci-
sion-making process. This means that the bargaining position of an
individual member state against pan-European interest organizations
becomes weaker, and that national governments will have to find
other ways to retain their influence in the European arena, such as sec-
onding national experts to the European Commission (Trondal, van
den Berg and Suvarierol, 2007).
At the same time, stronger rule-bound and regulatory control in the
implementation phase of policies seems to diminish the influence of
interest groups in the later stages of the policy cycle, at least in tradi-
tionally neo-corporatist countries such as the Netherlands. Interest rep-
resentatives have more to gain by focusing on the European level
where framework legislation and directives are formulated rather than
by concentrating on transposition and implementation processes.
There, exerting influence is limited by the necessity to comply with EU

directives and by the monitoring of regulators and inspectorates. An
interesting proposition therefore is that the centre of gravity of orga-
nized interest activity has shifted from the policy interpretation and
implementation stages at the national and subnational level to the
agenda-setting and decision-making stages at the EU level.
Europeanization leads to an increased inter- and transnational activ-
ity both by ministers and by civil servants. The number of bureaucrats
and the intensity of their participation will in part depend on the
interest a minister takes in EU-level developments and on the domestic
political salience of an issue. Also, ministers will be more active in con-
trolling their supranationally active bureaucrats as the issue concerned
is more domestically politicized. At any rate, the increased activity of
civil servants in supranational arenas calls for reinforced political
control over those bureaucrats.
Although Europeanization and mediatization potentially erode polit-
ical command, the picture is not entirely bleak from the perspective of
ministerial control. Ministers have an arsenal of specific countering
measures at their disposal some of which may be more successful in
one institutional context or issue area and others in other contexts
or areas. However, whether these attempts were successful and suf-
ficient in closing gaps in ministerial command remains an open
question.
Two implications of internationalization and multi-level governance
promote the reliance of ministers on personal advisers. First, multi-
level governance requires more and better political communication
than in a nation-state centred system primarily characterized by hierar-
chical command and control. Second, internationalization requires
national executives to be more vigorous and more efficient in pursuing
their goals. The advisers may come in different shapes and forms –
ministerial cabinets, political assistants, political civil servants, spin
doctors and/or press officers – but should always be loyal, politically
mindful and strategically competent (Steen et al., 2005). In many cases
these advisors are far removed from ideal-typical bureaucrats, as
described by Weber. Thus, personal advisers operate at the nexus
between politicians and career civil servants. Their responsibilities
usually include serving as liaisons between political party, the minister,
and the parliamentarians, as a public relations officer and/or spin
doctor. They raise positive media attention and recast negative media
attention to the benefit of their political superior. The expectation is
thus that the enlarged significance of these advisers enhances their
potential role in constraining the power of conventional civil servants.

In the end, who wins and who loses depends on the wishes of the
minister, the personal traits and activities of the adviser, and the
watchfulness of the civil service.
As a system of governance internationalizes, it becomes more
difficult for national parliaments and executives to draft exhaustive
legislation, given the preferred usage of framework rules and directives
in a system of multi-level governance. Framework laws from the upper
levels are transposed into legislation and policies fitting with national,
regional or local circumstances. As a system of law becomes more
open, more gaps in legislation will occur and more disputes about
interpretation of framework legislation may arise among interested
parties. As a result, and reinforced by the increased complexity of
policy issues, the courts have taken on a more intensive role in terms
of regulation and the interpretation of legislation. In this manner
internationalization inherently fosters the role of judicial institutions
and methods in the political and administrative realm.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we explored the analytical possibilities of reconciling

the movement toward less hierarchy, more networks, more multi-level
governance and allegedly less bureaucracy, and the increasing call of
academics and citizens for the revitalization of the idea of a public
service with a distinctive status, clear lines of accountability, hierarchy,
expertise and neutrality.
These two ideas can be reconciled if we use the Weberian analytical
model in a way that leaves the fundamental principles intact but that
takes on the widened scope of multi-level governance. The Weberian
framework for comparative analysis of contemporary civil service
systems remains appropriate. After all, the variables and mechanisms
Weber identified still apply and real-life conditions can still adequately
be analysed on the basis of their resemblance (or non-resemblance) to
the pure ideal type. Also, when we use Weber’s reference points in
assessing current situations, a considerably differentiated picture
emerges. Apart from differentiation between national systems and
policy sectors, variation is likely between the bureaucracy in the core
ministries and bureaucracy in the decentralized bodies, and between
individual bureaucrats (e.g., those who are internationally active or those
with a high external profile) and the whole bureaucratic apparatus.
Interestingly, although variation is expected, it is not expected that
this variation will follow some uniform pattern: on some parameters a

specific part of the bureaucracy may become more bureaucratic in the
Weberian sense, and on other parameters not at all. While some of
these propositions can already be observed, other trends can only be
hypothesized for lack of in-depth empirical investigation. The intensity
and practical consequences of the trends described in this chapter still
needs much investigation.
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8
Historical Legacies and Dynamics
of Institutional Change in Civil
Service Systems
Philippe Bezes and Martin Lodge
Introduction
We are said to live in an age of reform. The past three decades have wit-
nessed the privatization of state-owned enterprises (Feigenbaum et al.,
1999), the retrenchment of the welfare state (Pierson, 1994), change in the
wider political economy (Hall and Soskice, 2001) as well the reorganiza-
tion of the ‘administrative state’ itself. Although emerging in largely sepa-
rate literatures, these studies have produced rather similar findings and
conceptual perspectives. One similarity is that far from diagnosing univer-
sal paradigm changes and ‘convergence’, scholars have explained that
reforms across states and time have varied. Another similarity has been the
widespread use of broadly historical institutional perspectives to account
for the observed variations. A particularly popular concept has been ‘path
dependency’ to highlight how the force of past commitments – in the
form of high fixed costs and increasing returns – not only directs common
external demands for change into particular national and sectoral reform
trajectories, but also exposes states to a specific set of ‘vulnerabilities’
rather than others (see Scharpf and Schmidt, 2000).
The field of comparative public administration has been receptive to
these institutionalist literatures – however, the analysis of reform in
civil service systems could be advanced further by adopting concepts
that have emerged in recent historical institutionalist writings. In par-
ticular, the literatures on welfare state retrenchment and ‘varieties of
capitalism’ have advanced the study of institutional transformations
processes, especially through an increased focus on ‘mechanisms of
reproduction and logics of change’ (Thelen, 2003: 221; Streeck and
Thelen, 2005) and trajectories (Pierson, 2000; 2004) that have offered
new avenues for in-depth historical analysis.
121
In this chapter, we consider these ‘mechanisms’ and ‘logics’ to

explore the question of how civil service systems evolve. We do so in
three steps. First, we point to five key components of civil service
systems that have structured ‘legacies’ of civil service systems and
shaped reforms. Second, we consider how these five institutional
arrangements – on their own and in their complimentarity – have
established different motives and opportunities for reform during ‘crit-
ical junctures’, that is, those times when civil service systems have
been exposed, such as in the 1980s and the 1990s, to strong external
shocks and challenges. Third, we move from a perspective that regards
civil service systems as potentially exposed to exogenous sources of
change but reacting differently due to institutional specificities to a
discussion of endogenous sources of change.
Institutional components, civil service systems and change
The study of civil service systems has been characterized by the search
for typologies that account for differences across states (cf. Esping-
Andersen, 1990, on different ‘welfare families’). Such attempts at
tracing varieties across civil service systems have included studies
of constitutional position, of political–administrative relationships
(Aberbach, Putnam and Rockman, 1981; Peters, 1987), of central–local
government relationships (Page, 1991), of interaction with public
opinion (Rainey, 1996), representativeness (Van der Meer and Roborgh,
1996) or internal labour markets (Wise, 1996). Page has compared civil
service systems across a variety of dimensions (Page, 1992; 1995; also
Heady, 1996; Heywood and Wright, 1997; Peters, 2001).
A related set of writings has sought to establish causal relations
between constituencies and reforms trajectories by claiming to bring
‘institutions’ back into the study of public administration. Christensen
and Lægreid (2002) have emphasized sociological neo-institutionalism
by acknowledging the influence of March and Olsen’s (1989) work,
especially the notion of the ‘logic of appropriateness’. Not dissimilar to
the work by Rockman and Weaver (1993) as well as other attempts at
distinguishing ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ states, Knill (1999) pointed to the
impact of political–administrative structures in explaining variations in
‘administrative reform capacity’. Hood (2001; 2002) examined possible
linkages between the historical forms of ‘public service bargain’ and
national features of public sector reforms. Finally, Pollitt and Bouckaert
(2000) also offered insightful analysis of national reform trajectories
among different types of politico–administrative regimes.
‘Historical Legacies’ and Institutional Change 123
The emphasis in this chapter is on how trajectories of reform of civil

service systems are individually and collectively influenced by five key
components: legal entrenchment, pervasiveness, political–administrative
nexus, career, and rewards. We are not the first to look at these, and we
do not claim that they are mutually exclusive or fully exhaustive.
However, we suggest that focusing on the effects of and interaction
between these components does not represent another attempt to
discuss ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ states, but seeks to come to a more differ-
entiated argument. Instead of comparing ‘leaders’ and ‘laggards’ in
administrative reform races, institutional analysis should explore the
conditions under which some rather than other options are being
taken. Change is said to be ‘path dependent’: shaped by the robustness
of institutional arrangements, the force of past commitments to par-
ticular constituencies through specific institutional devices, and the
existence of constituencies that are likely to veto any proposal that is
going to threaten their autonomy and survival (see Pierson, 1994).
Collective and individual actors are ‘embedded’ in the legacies of civil
service systems: their resources and attitudes towards change are pat-
terned within these structuring institutional arrangements and these
cannot be reversed without high costs. What emerges from the consid-
eration of these five components are civil service ‘reform maps’ – they
establish particular motives, opportunities and constraints that affect
civil service system reforms.
The first component is the degree of legal entrenchment: how are civil
service systems circumscribed by standard operating procedures and
rules. Weber regarded the process of establishing a specific legal order
as a key factor facilitating political centralisation and the emergence of
rational-legal bureaucracy (Page, 1992: 19–24) and it is this that allows
Pollitt and Bouckaert to distinguish between Rechtsstaat and ‘public
interest’ type bureaucracies. According to them the structuring of a
professional civil service was supported during the 18th and 19th cen-
turies by the development of a large and separate body of adminis-
trative law, consisting of a coherent legal doctrine that covered
bureaucratic activities. Thus, France (and Prussia, and subsequently
Germany) established an extensive and powerful system of law sup-
ported by university-trained lawyers. As a result, the French system was
characterized by complex legal entrenchment, ranging from a strong
legal body of provisions ruling bureaucratic life as well as a statute that
organizes the professional life of all civil servants (statut general des
fonctionnaires). Developments in England, in contrast, were charac-
terized by a fragmented, less differentiated and decentralized adminis-
trative law (see Cassese, 2000: 66–70). The existence of a ‘rigid [legal]
backbone’ (Knill, 1999: 115) suggests that any ‘new’ types of ideas – such
as those supposedly managerial ideas associated with the ‘new public
management’ movement’ – will be filtered in the light of legal coherence
and standard operating procedures, both cognitively as well as struc-
turally through the existence of judicial institutions that further raise
potential ‘reversal’ costs that are involved in any proposal for change.
The second component that shapes the way civil service systems evolve
is its degree of pervasiveness. As already noted, pervasiveness points to the
range of competences that come under the central government’s direct
leverage and the type of networks of organizations and agents through
which government exercises its power (see Page, 1995: 259–61). It is
linked to the spatial distribution, ‘division of labour’ and hierarchical
relationships of public agents across levels of government. Different
countries have relied on different types of organizational structure to
‘deliver’ public services, ranging from central government, state field ser-
vices to autonomous agencies. As a consequence, actors have been histor-
ically distributed across various levels and with different functions and
responsibilities. Sweden, for instance, has historically been characterized
by a substantial number of implementing autonomous agencies, whereas
France has traditionally been characterized by an integrated central
administration with a large hierarchical network of state field units in
local authorities – under the double supervision of the ministries and the
prefects, the territorial representatives of the state.
In other words, this aspect of pervasiveness refers to the degree of
administrative centralization. A high degree of administrative central-
ization is characterized by an integrated system between central
administration and the territorial field units, while a decentralized
system would be characterized by a weak network of field units and a
loose hierarchy from central government to territorial administrative
offices. Two distinct forms of personnel management with different
degrees of autonomy, of number of actors and of resource distribution
emerge from these differences in pervasiveness. In the contemporary
age of ‘managerial reform’ decentralization and ‘autonomization’ of
agencies appear to be more feasible in systems that already have exist-
ing compatible organizational structures (such as Sweden) or where
the state fields units are weak (allowing for an ‘easy’ introduction of
such organizational templates) rather than in cases characterized by
integration and strong local state field units such as in France.
The third component, the political–administrative nexus, points to the
relationship between politicians and bureaucrats ‘at the top’. One key
aspect of this component relates to sources of loyalty and obligation – for

example, whether bureaucrats owe their position directly to their political
master or to some other source. Examples of the former include those
‘direct loyalist’ systems such as the United States with their ‘in and out’
pattern or the emerging pattern in the central European countries (see
Meyer-Sahling, 2004). In contrast, in Japan or Trinidad and Tobago
no civil servant faces the sack after a change in government. In mixed
cases political civil servants can be fired at any time without reason
(in exchange for a comfortable pension, as in, e.g., Germany) or are
appointed by discretion of the political executive to ministerial cabinets
(e.g., France). Managerialist ideas are said to find more resonance in
‘instrumental’ bureaucracies where public servants’s loyalty is directed
towards their political master instead of something more abstract, such as
a constitution.
The fourth component, career, reflects on key choices regarding the
professionalization of offices (to use the terminology employed
by Silberman (1993: 10–15), in terms of social status, training and career.
In other words, this component refers to the openness of the public
service ‘labour market’, the timing of the establishment of supposedly
merit-based appointment procedures through examination and dis-
tinctions between job-based and career-based appointments. The pat-
tern that emerges from such choices again greatly influences the way
in which civil service systems are open to reform ideas. For example,
in France, the monopoly of the Ecole nationale d’administration (ENA),
has a major impact on the way in which reformist ideas can be dif-
fused. Training programmes are kept under strict control of ENA and
are subject to, at most, incremental revisions.
Career issues also involve actors (ministerial departments, agencies,
trade unions) who negotiate career prospects for the civil service at large.
Another crucial element is the ‘administration’ of careers, in particular
whether civil service matters are centrally organized within one ministry
or ‘decentralized’ across ministries; similarly whether there is a split
between a ‘senior’ civil service level, such as the relatively recent creations
of the Senior Executive Service in the United States (in 1978) and the
Senior Civil Service in the United Kingdom (in 1996), or not, as in, for
example, Germany.
Closely linked to the career aspect, is our fifth component, reward.
One of the key characteristics of a Weberian bureaucracy is the exis-
tence of a salaried position and an adequate pension. Many civil
service systems have generally established such a system in the
20th century. This includes clear hierarchical patterns in which civil
service careers are planned, with material rewards relating to rank and
age (in the bureaucracy). Despite an overall similarity, variety still
exists and may even have increased in the past two decades. For
instance, consider the introduction of relative pay levels for Singapore
civil servants who receive amounts their colleagues elsewhere can only
dream of. At the same time, though, Singaporean bureaucratic salaries
were below those received by their private sector colleagues. In addition,
civil service systems vary according to the ‘unmentionable’ material
rewards that they provide bureaucrats (cars, discretionary payments,
medical care and housing, or ‘allowances’ derived from public procure-
ment). Finally, civil service systems also show differences regarding the
provision of immaterial rewards, with the Japanese and English
systems maintaining an ‘honours and medals’ system, while post-1945
Germany had no such tradition for its civilian bureaucrats (and, since
the 1970s, also not for its armed forces). Linking career and reward
are issues relating to career advancement. For example, reward relates
to the level within the bureaucracy any public servant can expect
to rise and the extent to which this rise on the bureaucratic ladder
is conditioned by competition from within and outside the bureau-
cracy.
The ‘managerial age’ of the late 20th century is said to have challenged
many of the traditional reward patterns. These include some countries
attempts at introducing ‘performance pay’, challenges to established
pension ‘rights’, and the opening up of the labour market to ‘outsiders’.
Thus, what was in the past regarded as the main attraction of a civil
service career (tenure and secure reward) has dwindled. At the same time,
this reduction in security has not fully been complemented with an
increase in the ‘risk surcharge’. Top UK bureaucrats, though, managed to
receive substantial pay increases over the past decade, and this caused
salaries to pass those of most top politicians, including the prime minis-
ter. Such a pattern has, however, not been witnessed in, for example, the
United States or Germany.
Critical junctures, opportunity and motive in contemporary

civil service system reforms
As observed in many studies, institutional change often involves a

dynamic of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ where long periods of institu-
tional stability are interrupted by moments of major reforms sequences.
These intense reforming periods have been described by some neo-
institutionalists as moments of ‘critical junctures’ (Collier and Collier,
1991) where choices for designing institutions are made at one moment
through new political coalitions with strong policy feedback: the
choices of new patterns ‘place institutional arrangements on paths or
trajectories, which are then difficult to alter’ (Pierson, 2004: 135).
These trajectories are characterized by sequences of choices that to
some extent predetermine the set of alternatives available at a future
point in time. These alternatives are partly the result of the restrictions
of options that arise from any particular choice as well as the con-
sequence of side effects of initial choices. An excellent illustration
of how choice shapes the sequence of possible later reforms has
been provided by Tulia Falleti’s (2005) study of decentraliza-
tion policies in Latin America in which she illustrates how certain
choices at particular junctures placed states on particular reform
trajectories.
It is not difficult to find the importance of ‘critical junctures’ and
‘sequencing’ in the study of civil service systems too. An historical
investigation relying on this kind of argument is Silberman’s account
of differences in key administrative choices in 19th-century France,
Japan, the UK and the United States (1993). He explains how civil
service systems developed and rationalized differently in the face
of the same kind of problems because they encountered different types
of leadership succession crisis. A contemporary use of ‘critical junc-
tures’ approach can be fruitfully advanced to analyse how and why
many civil service systems in the 1980s were exposed to strong exter-
nal and internal challenges and associated with extensive reforms.
Factors that have been put forward to explain the interest in civil
service reform across countries have been the emergence of parties in
government willing to challenge existing institutional arrangements
(New Zealand, the UK, Australia), to address particular party-political
concerns (France, Spain) or to sustain certain welfare state outputs
(Sweden). At the same time, fiscal pressure, the rise of ‘anti-tax elec-
toral coalitions’, the rise of different campaigning strategies that paid
little attention to civil servants’ advisory role and placed its faith in
spin doctors, and more party-’loyal’ advisers also provided for ‘polit-
icization’. Finally, the supposed rise of a ‘new paradigm’ (the ‘new
public management’) has also been suggested as a factor driving polit-
icians towards civil service reform (Hood, 1995). In many ways, the
aggregation of these factors allows us to identify the 1980s as a ‘critical
juncture’ in that social processes and standard operating procedures
across civil service systems were questioned. In this period, high
conditions of ‘stress’ and heightened attention towards civil service
systems means that an issue is no longer processed in the domain-

specific context but in the wider political system.
Indeed, civil service systems have responded in a variety of ways to
these exogenous challenges (i.e., external to the civil service system)
and they have responded in distinctly institutional ways. Some coun-
tries (New Zealand, the UK) witnessed extensive civil service reforms in
terms of organization, status, and reward while other systems (Germany,
France) witnessed change in the wider political–administrative system
(e.g., through decentralization) while witnessing arguably less reform
activity of their civil service systems. A third group of countries
(Scandinavian countries) have developed along both dimensions.
The interaction and interdependence between the five components
can explain these differences in the nature and scope of changes in
civil service systems by emphasizing various motives, opportunities
and constraints. While different states may be faced with similar prob-
lems (or motives), for example, budgetary constraints, the oppor-
tunities for exercising ‘cut backs’ in the civil service may be limited. For
example, the German federal government had little motive to ‘cut
back’ bureaucracy (especially prior to unification in 1989), because
financial problems were largely felt at the local and Land levels (that
also included the largest number of public servants). It was therefore to
be expected that most ‘NPM’-style reforms were witnessed at these
levels of government rather than at the federal level. Similarly, systems
characterized by a strong linkage between politicians and civil servants,
such as the ‘hybrid bargain’ that is said to exist in France (through,
e.g., appointment to ministerial cabinets or political nominations),
provide little opportunity for ‘reform-willing’ politicians in the area of
the top civil service (Bezes and Le Lidec, 2007).
Apart from differently ‘institutionnally filtered’ pressures, a focus on
opportunities for civil service reform points also to the extent to which
the various components are ‘mutable’ (Clemens and Cook, 1999). In
other words, some may be less ‘robust’ than others because they are
weakly entrenched or less tied to solid support coalitions, while others
are locked-in because they are strongly defended by actors who have
developed investments, interests, relationships or privileges in a partic-
ular arrangement (Gourevitch, 2000: 144–5, quoted in Pierson, 2004).
Political systems such as the US that are characterized by two principals
rather than one have witnessed no major ‘NPM’ reform, despite much
talk under Al Gore and his National Performance Review, given the
institutional jealousies of Congress and the President over the bureau-
cratic agent. And indeed, certain arrangements maintain a degree of
‘stickiness’ that bar certain types of reform. In contrast, Westminster

systems such as New Zealand faced limited formal resistance when
changing from tenure requirements for senior bureaucrats to contract-
based departmental ‘chief executives’ (Boston et al., 1991). Equally, in
Britain, the introduction of executive agencies was facilitated not only
by strong political will (and opportunities) but also by top civil ser-
vants and widespread institutional fragmentation within the British
core executive (Hogwood, 1993). In some ways, the observed changes
in Anglo-Saxon civil service systems could be seen as ‘path-dependent’
in that they extended and reformulated the traditional ‘professional
orientation’ that ‘takes advantages of the existing high social and eco-
nomic incentives for individuals to take on professional training and
roles’ (Silberman, 1993: 13).
By contrast, the French institutional configuration offered less oppor-
tunities to reform the civil service in the 1980s because its existing
rules were supported by strong coalitions (trade unions, left-wing
parties including the French Communist Party, public sector elec-
torate) as well as the efficiency of the ‘hybrid bargain’ between top
bureaucrats and politicians. In the French context, therefore, changes
in political governance have mostly relied on the strengthening of
local authorities through various waves of political decentralization
(1982–83, 2003–04), while partisan and functional politicisation of top
bureaucrats have steadily increased through existing arrangements and
without reform (Rouban, 2004). The recent introduction of NPM
recipes in the early 2000s in order to transform personnel management
emerged from inside the French civil service and not so much from
political desire (Bezes and Le Lidec, 2006).
‘Opportunities’ for reform do not merely arise from ‘leverage’ and
lack of ‘robustness’, but also from institutional ‘fit’. As is well known,
institutions have the tendency to incorporate reform themes into their
logic of appropriateness rather than being transformed by these new
ideas. It is therefore not surprising that despite the universal spread of
the ‘competency’ language for the assessment of civil servant’s api-
tudes (in terms of ‘excelling behaviours’) in the higher civil service
throughout the 1990s, the national ‘competency’ policies were dis-
tinctively self-referential, in the sense of reflecting distinctly national
characteristics (Lodge and Hood, 2003; Hood and Lodge, 2004; 2005).
In the German case, a number of debates regarding the competency
and skills of civil servants have been held since the early 1970s, but
were repeatedly frustrated. In the 1970s, competency was discussed
while heated debates were conducted about whether the German civil
service was sufficiently competent to deal with the complexities of the

modern Welfare State. This debate died in the mid-1970s. The com-
petency debate returned in the 1980s, but was interrupted by the
demands of unification. When the Red–Green coalition returned to
competency in its ‘activitating state’ reform programme, it again got
‘flooded away’ (the rising tides of the river Elbe in 2002 led to realloca-
tion of central resources away from administrative reform and to crisis
management). The German story, however, is also one of departmental
frameworks (given their constitutional autonomy) as well as the con-
tinued importance given to subject expertise as key feature of com-
petency – rather than social aspects (such as behaviour) that had been
long-standing features of German assessment procedures. In the British
case, the language of competency in terms of ‘excelling behaviours’
emerged in the 1990s (later than Germany or the United States) and at
the time of the establishment of the Senior Civil Service (SCS). The SCS
was in itself a compromise between some politicians who sought to
establish a New Zealand-type contract system and others who wanted
to preserve the traditional ‘serial loyalist’ system. The SCS was to estab-
lish (preserve) a ‘go anywhere’ elite. As a result, competency was defined
in ways that resembled those of a typical ‘go-anywhere’ Whitehall
bureaucrat rather than in terms of a German ‘subject expertise’-emphasis
or a managerial understanding of competence in the sense of minimal
standards that had been applied by the top public servants to the rest
of the public sector throughout the 1980s.
Similarly, the distinctly ‘decentralized’ tone of NPM-inspired reforms
in Scandinavia has been linked to the pre-existing emphasis on dele-
gated authority (Christensen and Lægreid, 2001). As analysed by Pierre
(2004), the Social Democrat reform programme was mostly concerned
with ensuring loyalty and compliance through the large body of agen-
cies. Changes were therefore tied to the inherited structures that also
allowed, since the 1990s, a politicization of agency appointments. The
same type of argument about ‘bounded forms of change’ has been
made in the case of Italy (Capano, 2003: 792).
In sum, even by merely taking a typical detective account of ‘motive’
and ‘opportunity’, a more differentiated account emerges: change in
civil service systems cannot be regarded as some form of ad hoc tabula
rasa approach that regards all countries to be starting an administrative
reform ‘race’ from the same starting point with the same institutional
structures at the same time. Civil service systems, given their historical
origins and their interdependence within the five components, but
also with wider aspects of the political system, experience various
‘critical junctures’. Institutional configurations shape the way in which

pressures for reform emerge, are perceived and dealt with. Even in
periods of severe ‘stress’, they shape the discretionary space of ‘reform-
interested’ politicians and top bureaucrats.
Endogenous and gradual sources of change in civil

service systems
Apart from greater sensitivity to the way in which these critical junc-
tures shape later choice sets, the recent institutionalist literature has
also paid attention to the inherent contestation of any institutional
arrangement and to those mechanisms that allow for major change
over time through incremental adjustment (Streeck and Thelen, 2005).
Actors seek to challenge existing institutional arrangements as well as
bring different interpretations regarding the ‘rules of the game’ into
their interactions. Such contestation arguably leads to some instability
and ‘hunting around’ (see Lodge and Wegrich, 2005). Viewing institu-
tions as endogeneously contested structures that also display
significant ‘staying power’ provides for several further insights into the
analysis of civil service system reform trajectories. This approach is
all the more necessary in public administration as studies have over-
oscillated between analysing radical transformations in some countries
and inertia in others. Without claiming to provide an exhaustive list of
arguments, four key themes exemplify gradual transformative change
and reflect the tension between contestation and stability within
institutional arrangements.
One way in which civil service systems have witnessed change is
through ‘displacement effects’ (Streeck and Thelen, 2005: 19–22), that
is, the growing importance of institutional arrangements that were
created at different points in time, were previously latent or of minor
significance and will become dominant. Gregory and Christensen
(2004), for example, suggest how in the Danish case the development
of fixed-term contracts and performance review for top civil servants in
1987 was based on older forms of fixed term appointments that had
been created in 1971. And what started as a device for specialized jobs
has grown in significance over time, leading to the adoption of per-
formance contracts for all agency directors. In France, the use of an
aggregate wage bill ceiling framework to estimate the global costs of
personnel expenditure in the civil service provided bureaucrats within
ministerial Budget Directorates with considerable discretion to decrease
the sum that could be negotiated with the social partners in public
service bargainings in the 1980s. This tool was initially used as a ‘low-
profile’ instrument but turned into a major managerialist device in the
early 2000s as part of wider administrative reform initiatives (Bezes,
2007). Indeed, a new Act on Budget Legislation, adopted on 1 August
2001, redesigned the overall budget architecture by organizing credit
items into broad programmes, devolved the resource allocation deci-
sions to public managers and gave them consolidated appropriation
items including a global wage bill ceiling and a jobs ceiling. This
allowed these officials to decide on the mix of resource inputs to
obtain policy goals with the exception of topping-up personnel appro-
priations from other items.
The second notion is ‘layering’. Orren and Skowronek (1994; 2004)
have provided the leading analysis of the development of the US
administrative state using such a layering ‘lens’. Layering denotes the
way in which additions are placed onto existing institutional arrange-
ments: ‘new coalitions may design novel institutional arrangements,
but lack support, or perhaps the inclination, to replace pre-existing
institutions established to pursue other ends’ (Schickler, 1999; quoted
in Thelen, 2003: 226). Such developments are said to lead to ‘differen-
tial growth’ (Streeck and Thelen, 2005: 23), leading to the incorpora-
tion of a new set of arrangements into established standard operating
procedures. Arguably, the initial bifurcation of the Whitehall pay
bargain given the performance-related and time-limited contracts for
‘Next Steps’ agency chief executives created the space for introducing a
greater ‘risk reward’ into the contracts of ‘normal’ Whitehall civil ser-
vants at a latest stage. Capano (2003) has also suggested that the man-
agerialist tools that were incorporated into the Italian civil service in
the 1990s did not replace the historical ‘paradigm’ of the Italian civil
service, but was superimposed and incorporated into them. In other
words, layering is likely to have a number of effects, not all of them
intended. Of course, there may be no effect whatsoever: reform initia-
tives are regularly announced with great fanfare, but then disappear
without much trace. In many ways, the organization of the UK central
government with its Cabinet Office responsible for overall civil service
policy allowed for this kind of pattern (in that individual career pro-
spects advanced through the production of policy initiatives, but not
their implementation). Instead of tombstone patterns, layering can
also have ‘irritant’ effects on existing arrangements that have (often
unintended) transformative effects. For example, the greater prom-
inence of ‘outsiders’ in the British core executive (in the form of spin
doctors, special advisers and civil service outsiders recruited into the
service) since 1997 has triggered the coutervailing development of

greater codification and boundary controls between civil service and
party political work for ‘normal’ civil servants.
The third mechanism of endogeneous changes, ‘institutional conver-
sion’, is defined as the redirection of existing institutions to new goals,
functions or purposes (Thelen, 2003: 228–30). Many traditional inspec-
tions or control bodies in UK have now endorsed performance mea-
surement and audit as their dominant activity (Hood et al., 1999). For
example, the UK National Audit Office is often regarded as having
undergone such kind of change away from ‘toothless beancounter’ to
major ‘value for money’ watchdog of central government activities.
Finally, ‘drift’ (Hacker, 2005; Streeck and Thelen, 2005: 24–6) charac-
terizes a pattern of change where institutions are subject to erosion or
atrophy through slow, invisible and ‘natural’ changes. A good illustra-
tion of this type of endogenous change is the contemporary demo-
graphic profile of the civil service. Such change is provoked by
changing gender profiles or the susbtantial challenges arising from
age profiles across European national administrative system that
suggest that large parts of the bureaucracies are due to retire until
2015, leading to substantial replacement and institutional memory
preservation problems.
Conclusion
This chapter has advanced to two key arguments. First, national civil
service systems are not simple constructs that are likely to respond in
similar ways to exogenous pressures. Instead, what emerges is a pattern
of different motives, opportunities and constraints for civil service
system reform due to specific institutional configurations. In many
ways, even ‘critical junctures’ are shaped by the past. This does not
mean that all civil service systems should be regarded as sui generis, but
at the same time, there should be greater awareness that states are not
engaged in administrative reform races that commence from similar
starting positions (see also Hood and Lodge, 2005).
The second argument is that taking as a starting point the five com-
ponents at the heart of civil service systems should allow for consider-
able scope for extensive comparative research. At the same time, using
the conceptual tools developed in institutional analysis should also
allow for a more theoretically informed analysis of both change and
stasis. In the discussion regarding five components that provide for a
civil service system, we have pointed to the importance of looking not
only at the various components on their own as ‘opportunity struc-

tures’, but also across all five components. Civil service systems there-
fore emerge as differentiated patterns that have their own particular
vulnerabilities and reform opportunities. As suggested above, much
can be learnt from paying increasing attention to the endogenous
sources for change. These may emerge through intentional action
(such as displacement effects), or over time as a result of various short-
term decisions (layering and sequencing).
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9
Public Service Systems at
Subnational and Local Levels
of Government:
a British–German–French
Comparison
Sabine Kuhlmann and Jörg Bogumil
Introduction
The subnational and local levels of government have hitherto been

largely understudied in comparative civil service research. Against this
background, this chapter focuses on two central questions. First, we
analyse whether and how the local public service can be distinguished
from the central state/federal level of government and to what extent a
‘local public service system’1 can be identified with specific structures and
development patterns. Second, we question to what extent and due to
what factors country-specific patterns and structures of local public employ-
ment, inherited from the past, have been subjected to major changes and
ruptures diluting historically ingrained differences or whether those
national peculiarities of local public services have been retained. In order
to answer these two compound questions, we primarily draw on ‘qualita-
tive’ approaches and restrict ourselves to three ‘cases’: Germany, France
and Great Britain. These countries will be scrutinized and compared with
regard to the predominant features and developmental patterns of public
employment and human resource management at the local level of gov-
ernment. The case selection is justified here by the fact that these three
countries represent important models of European administrative culture
and crucial variations of decentralized institution-building and public
employment in Western Europe, the analysis of which is essential to
comparative public administration in general.
Local government systems
The nature of local public service systems is not only linked with the
nature of public employment and civil service systems but also with
137
specific features of local government systems. Local personnel struc-

tures and public servants’ qualifications largely depend on the local
governments’ functional responsibilities. Furthermore, state–local inter-
action and the position of state authorities in relation to local authori-
ties strongly account for local governments’ weight within total public
employment. Territorial boundaries of the local system determine to a
large extent local functional ‘viability’ and thereby likewise local public
service structures and functioning. Therefore, we first provide a brief
overview of the three local government systems before examining and
comparing their specific local personnel structures.
Within the German federal and highly decentralized political
system, the municipalities (Gemeinden), the county-free cities (kreisfreie
Städte), and the counties (Kreise) enjoy a constitutional guarantee as
institutions of local self-administration (Article 28, para. 2 Basic
Constitutional Law). They are basically responsible for all local public
tasks (‘all purpose institutions’: Allzuständigkeit), which mirrors a histor-
ical path dependency dating back to the 19th century, when the com-
munes came up as functionally strong, multi-purpose organizations.
Until today, a peculiar feature of the German model can be perceived
in the fact that both state tasks and local self-administration functions
are institutionally integrated at the local level (Wollmann, 1999),
whereas only very few (single purpose) state agencies are operating at
local level. This strong model of local government was strengthened
in the course of the 1970s when, as a result of the territorial reforms,
large units of local authorities emerged, despite the fact that significant
territorial differences between the Bundesländer still remained.2
The French constitutional and administrative system was up to the
early 1980s characterized by a very weak local self-government and a
dominant executive-centralist administration of the state, with the
prefect as the central figure. State administration within the ‘indivisible
republic’ followed a strictly hierarchical structure ranging from the
ministries in Paris and the prefects – appointed by central government
– as the chiefs of the départements’ administration down to the munici-
palities. In addition to its own tasks the state administration fulfilled
the départements’ and the prevailing number of the municipalities’ self-
administration tasks. The new constitutional situation of the year 1982
marked an all but revolutionary rupture with the Jacobin tradition
(Mabileau, 1996: 33), which is reflected in the fact that the prefect lost
his strategic key position in the local system and his executive function
in the département was transferred to the general council (conseil
général). Furthermore the self-administration tasks of the départements,
Public Service Systems 139
but also of the municipalities were significantly expanded. Especially in

the field of social welfare important parts of the prefect’s personnel
were transferred to the départements’ administration. Numerous new
local administrative professions came up in former state policies and
consequently the bandwidth and professional composition of the local
workforce changed significantly (Bodiguel, 2004: 157).
Great Britain is – like France – historically a unitary state, which at the
same time was – contrary to France, but similar to Germany – distinctly
decentralized for the reason of its politically and functionally strong local
self-government that traces back to the 19th century. The British model
of local government is based on two conflicting institutional principles.
First, according to the principle of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’, every
political and constitutional question can be ruled by a parliamentary law
for which a simple parliamentary majority is sufficient. Consequently the
municipalities only have those competencies that they are explicitly
assigned by parliament whereas all other tasks are ultra vires (Wollmann,
1999: 188). Second, within the tradition of ‘dual polity’, according to
which local and central government functions are distinctly separated,
the municipalities are in fact endowed with extensive room for manoeu-
vre. While central government deals with legislation and ‘high politics’,
local authorities are responsible for all local tasks and act as ‘multi-func-
tion’/’all-purpose’ organizations. Due to the fact that Parliament pre-
vented the creation of central government branches at meso and local
levels (Sharpe, 1993), British local governments were in charge of the
whole range of local social services, a large part of the education system
and numerous other local tasks for a long time.
Peculiarities of local government employment
Different indicators can be applied to the question of the extent to

which the local public service constitutes a separate system of public
employment with specific characteristics, structures and profiles.
We focus on three aspects. First, the personnel ‘weight’ of local gov-
ernment within the political and administrative system. This helps
measure the significance of the local level within the entire system of
public employment. Second, the legal embodiment of the local public
service in the three countries will be compared to show whether or not
it has a separate legal or institutional status apart from state/central
government. Third, the structural peculiarities of the local public
service in contrast to the upper levels of government will be analysed
and compared confining ourselves here to the status profiles.
Table 9.1: Local government systems (traditional profiles3)
Germany France United Kingdom
Territorial Structure
12,682 municipalities 26 regions 39 Counties

117 ‘County-free’ cities 100 départements 283 Two-tier districts
323 Counties 37,000 municipalities 82 Unitary districts
32 Boroughs (GLA)
– Differences between – Myriad of tiny communes – Large administrative

the Länder (2,000 inh. on average) units (counties:
– North-Rhine- – 90% of all communes 730,000 inh.,
Westphalia: have less than districts: 125,000 inh.
396 municipalities 2,000 inhabitants on average)
with 48,000 inh. – Territorial fragmentation – ‘Viable’ (partly over-
– Bavaria: sized) structures
2,056 municipalities
with 6,100 inh.
Functional Responsibilities/Administrative Structures
– Communes as – Communes with – Local authorities as

‘multi-function’/ marginal functions ‘multi-function’/
’all-purpose’ – Predominance of the ’all-purpose’
institutions state (also in local institutions (tradition
– Integration of state self-administration tasks) of ‘dual polity’)
and local self- – Many ‘deconcentrated’ – Few single purpose
administrative tasks (single purpose) state state agencies at the
– Few single purpose authorities at the local local level
state agencies level (95% of the state – Comprehensive
personnel) mandate in delivering
social services
(‘municipal empires’)
Type of Local government*
North Middle Franco Group Anglo Group

European Group
Source: * According to Hesse and Sharpe (1991).
Personnel weight
In all three countries the local level has a sizeable workforce which
reflects the important role of local government within the national
public sector. With a share of one-third (Germany, France) respectively
and more than half (Great Britain) of total public employment, the
local public service consistently plays a decisive role within the
national public service system. There are significant differences
between the countries, though. These primarily arise from historical-
institutional imprints and path dependencies. Up to now, the muni-
cipalities in the UK have had a high personnel size and a high density
of local employment. This mirrors the unequalled local strength within
the ‘dual polity’ model. In France, the Napoleonic centralism and the
Jacobin tradition are still influential, visible in the smaller size of local
compared to central public employment. Per 1,000 French citizens,
there still are almost twice as many state servants (41) than local
employees (23). The state continues to have by far the largest share
of public employment (more than 50 percent). Comparing these two
countries we can assume that Great Britain – despite the Thatcheristic
‘war against local government’ (see below) – is still endowed with a
stronger local workforce than – meanwhile – decentralized France. In
Germany, too, the distribution of local employment across the three
levels of government (Federation, Länder, Communes) has remained
comparatively stable. The municipalities still represent one third of the
total public employment (after the Länder with about 50 percent). In
this respect they are still a substantial cornerstone of the civil service
which confirms the historic tradition of a strong local self-administra-
tion. With its dual function of implementing state policies transferred
by Federal and Länder legislation on the one hand and fulfilling own
local self-administration tasks on the other hand, it forms the back-
bone of German public administration on the whole.
Furthermore, the significance of the local public service can be mea-
sured by its share of general employment. In countries with a lean
public sector (for instance, Germany) local governments, relative to
total employment, have a less important role as employers than in
countries with an extended public sector (such as France). In Germany,
local public employment weighted by total employment has the least
important position in comparison to the other countries, which can be
referred to the lean German public sector in general. This contrasts to
Britain, where local public employment, with 10 percent of general
employment, is at the top position, followed by France with 6 percent.
These figures reflect the evolution of the public sector as a whole.
In Germany, the share of public employment as a percentage of
general employment has decreased to 14 percent, whereby the German
civil service is meanwhile one of the leanest among the OECD
members (Derlien, 2002: 232). The French civil service, by contrast,
Table 9.2: Local public employment, general public employment and general
employment in country-comparative perspective, 2000/01
Country Local Public Local Public Local Public Public

Employment Employment Employment Employment
(1,000) (% of general (% of general (% general
public employment) employment)
employment)
Germany * 1,470 31,9 3,7 13,6

France** 1,404 29,6 5,7 19,4
UK*** 2,690 52,8 9,3 17,6
Note: * Figures for 2001 only full-time employees of the local authorities, Intermunicipal
Associations and the Indirect Public Service (‘mittelbarer Öffentlicher Dienst’) are not
included. Source: Kuhlmann and Röber (2006). ** Figures for 2001 included: Regions,
Départements, Communes, intermunicipal cooperation bodies (EPCI), établissements
publics locales. Source: Ministère de l’Intérieur, DGCL (2003). *** Figures for 2000;
included: counties, districts, boroughs. Source: Bach and Winchester (2003), 294.
continues to grow, irrespective of neo-liberal rhetoric (rise of the quota

from 17.8 in 1980 to 19.4 in 2001). Great Britain can be ranked as
falling between these two extremes. However, taking into con-
sideration that the quota amounted to roughly 28 percent at the begin-
ning of the Thatcher era (1981), it clearly exceeds the German trend to
decrease public sector employment.
Legal distinction
In legal and institutional terms, the degree of distinction between the
local public service on the one hand and the central state civil service
on the other hand, as a second indicator for measuring local public
service ‘autonomy’ in comparative perspective, varies significantly
between the three countries. Within the French model, the local level
has been quite visibly acknowledged as a distinct sector of public
employment. In the course of decentralization reforms, a specific ter-
ritorial civil service (FPT) was created by law of 26 January 1984 – dis-
tinct from the state civil service (FPE) – which was granted its own
‘statute’ and specific local provisions (of course ruled by national legis-
lation). Within the German federal and Länder legislation, there are
only very few prescriptions which exclusively refer to local personnel.
Thus in legal terms, the distinction between the state (Federal/Länder)
and the local level of public employment is not clear. Local servants
are basically subjected to the same nation-wide uniform prescriptions
(civil service law, Bundesangestelltentarif (BAT)/Tarifvertrag Öffentlicher
Dienst (TVöD) as the state personnel. In Great Britain, the distinction

between local government workforce and central government civil ser-
vants is even more clear-cut than in France. This again traces back to
the tradition of ‘dual polity’, according to which local employees are
explicitly not regarded as being ‘civil servants’. Furthermore, collective
bargaining is organized by way of a specific bargaining unit for local
governments: the National Joint Council for Local Government Ser-
vices, which is detached from the central government bargainings.
This clear-cut distinction between the local and central government
levels of public employment has even been reinforced by the new
option for local governments to negotiate their own local agreements
in order to replace the national agreements.
‘Status structures’
Third, we draw upon the actual profiles and structures of the local
public service (compared with the other levels of public employment)
and focus here on ‘status groups’. In continental European countries,
the local level has turned out to be a forerunner in challenging and
questioning traditional ‘status models’ in public employment practice.
The national legislator, by contrast, continues to stick to the tra-
ditional statutes for civil servants. In Germany, the traditional duality
of the status groups (civil servants – Beamte/employees – Angestellte) has
barely disappeared, especially in East Germany, where the local civil
servants’ quota is distinctively lower (2 percent). In fact, an almost
single-status system in the municipalities has meanwhile evolved with
East Germany at the very top. Civil servants (Beamte), who are still pre-
dominant at the Federal and the Länder levels, are increasingly dis-
appearing (12 percent of the personnel). Thus the (British) model of
collective bargaining is coming to the fore and this stands in marked
contrast to the federal and Länder civil services with their Beamten
quota of about 60 percent each. The British system is not familiar with
status differences in the German and French sense, taking into account
that the traditional distinction between ‘manuals’ and ‘non-manuals’
as ‘status groups’ does not imply strict legal differences. Nonetheless,
British local authorities have likewise been forerunners in blurring and
abolishing traditional employment (or ‘status’) structures. The ‘single
status agreement’ passed in 1997 by the NJC for Local Government
Services brought to an end the common differentiation of manuals and
non-manuals – at least in formal terms. The local government services
were in first place to embark on a ‘single status model’ in Britain. The
same basically applies to French local government, which was path
breaking in the development of a ‘two-status system’ evolving in

France. It is mainly the communes that employ significant parts of con-
tractuels (34 percent of the local staff) because local employers increas-
ingly prefer flexible (partly subsidized – emplois aidés) employment
contracts. Consequently, the traditional employment via statut is being
pushed back, particularly and mainly by local employment practice,
whereas national legislation is lagging behind. In all three countries,
conspicuous peculiarities can be observed with regard to local status
profiles and developments that support the theory of local public
service constituting a specific subsystem of public employment. Local
governments have been the front runners in challenging and reform-
ing traditional status profiles, while national legislators as well as state
civil services showed resistance.
Local public service development: between inertia and

rupture
Patterns of continuity
Very distinct structures and profiles of local public employment
evolved in the three countries under scrutiny here. They have largely
been shaped by different ‘starting conditions’ and longstanding his-
torical traditions. These illustrate the formative influence of past insti-
tutional choices and historically ingrained structures that at least in
the basic structures determine the local landscape even in recent times.
The duality between the continental European (Hegelianic respectively
Rousseauistic) state tradition, on the one hand, and the (utilitarian-
liberal) public interest tradition on the other hand, proves to be a par-
ticularly influential inheritance in the three countries. These traditions
are reflected to this day in the different legal arrangements of employ-
ment contracts in local public service. Within the British public inter-
est-tradition, which perceives the state and local public service as a
part of society, the regulative competence of public employment is
assigned to the bargaining units (except teachers) and is part of normal
industrial relations. In France and Germany, public employment is, by
contrast, to a large extent regulated by national legislation (Dienstrecht/
statut). The prevailing legal and institutional distinction between
private and public employment is conceptually derived from their rule
of law principle and the Rechtsstaats tradition of continental Europe.
Though the traditional status models in the local practice have became
increasingly blurred, significant differences between the countries
remain. The French municipalities are still dominated by the tradition
of the strong statut, the British local governments by the model of free
collective bargaining and the German communes by the duality of
status groups. German local governments have, however, adopted
a ‘single-status system’ by largely renouncing the Beamten status,
whereas in France the trend from the ‘single-status system’ to a new
‘two-status structure’ is moving in the opposite direction.
The distribution of the local workforce by sectors of activity, too,
reflects continuity over time, which again is moulded by historical
imprints. While in Great Britain the outstanding significance of the
education sector (50 percent of the personnel) with the teachers as its
backbone, is striking (Schröter and Röber, 2000), in France the prevail-
ingly ‘technical’ function (planning, public utilities, construction,
infrastructure) of local government is still characteristic (about 50 per-
cent as well). In Germany, the profile of the local workforce is deter-
mined by the communes’ mandate in local social policies. This main
focus of employment has been broadly stable since the 1960s.
Patterns of change
In the past decade, a series of cutbacks and changes have occurred that
heralded sustained modification of the significance of local public per-
sonnel. They are primarily evidence of the functional shift between
local governments and state on the one hand and public and private
sector on the other hand. In the wake of the ‘neo-liberal revolution’ in
Great Britain the density of local government employment decreased
from 53 employees per 1,000 inhabitants in 1991 to 46 today, a reduc-
tion of 10 percent in total and the traditionally strong local govern-
ment system in the UK was awkwardly weakened. Local authorities lost
Table 9.3: Development of local public employment in country-comparative

perspective
Country Local Public Local Public Local Public Employment

Employees Employees Change
per 1,000 inh. per 1,000 inh. 1990/91–2000/01 in %
1990/91 2000/01
1000 %
Germany 25,2 17,8 –526 –26,4

France 20,2 23,3 +238 +20,4
UK 52,5 45,8 –277 –9,3
Source: notes: see Table 9.2.

their financial autonomy completely and were forced to contract-out

numerous local services to private providers (e.g., refuse disposal,
school restaurants, street cleaning and maintenance). Although
‘Compulsory competitive tendering (CCT)’ has been abolished by New
Labour and replaced with the ‘Best Value System’ (see below), the pres-
sure towards outsourcing still persists (Reimer, 1999: 157; Bender and
Elliot, 1999: 295). One impact of the competitive tendering has been
the reduction of about 300,000 employees since the beginning of the
1990s, which is about 10 percent of the entire local workforce. The
municipalities felt compelled to reduce staff when they were outbid by
private suppliers and the respective staff members were made redun-
dant. Furthermore even the staffs in the successful in-house teams were
reduced in order to keep competitiveness with private firms in terms of
labour costs (Bender and Elliott, 1999: 296). Furthermore numerous
‘time-honoured’ local tasks have been transferred to single-purpose
state agencies and quangos operating at the local level (see Skelcher,
2000).
Although marketization and contracting-out only played a minor
role, German local governments witnessed even more dramatic cut-
backs of their workforce. By contrast, these were primarily due to the
national budgetary crisis, to necessary adjustments of overstaffed
East German authorities as well as to the more recent privatization
activities prompted by EU market liberalization (especially in the public
utility sector; cf. Wollmann, 2002). Thus, local public employment in
Germany has shrunk within only one decade by more than one fourth,
in East Germany even by more than 50 percent. As a result, Germany
has today less local public employees per 1,000 inhabitants than
France, where local public service is a clearly expanding employment
sector – not at least with regard to the recently started ‘second wave’ of
decentralization (so-called Acte II de la décentralisation).
These shifts reveal that the convergent neo-liberal trend did not lead
to the same cuts in all European local public service systems, but has
caused visible differences. While the German local public service has
decreased in size and the traditionally strong German model of local
self-administration appears to be questioned, the former Jacobin
state of France has created strong local administrative bodies in the
meantime, at least where personnel weight is concerned. In Great
Britain, the neo-liberal and increasingly centralistic reform initiatives
of the government, have an impact on a shrinking local employment
sector threatening the traditionally strong British local government
model.
Regarding the internal structures of local public service systems and

methods of human resource management there have occurred likewise
some remarkable changes. In all three countries, the new public man-
agement (NPM)-inspired approach of performance-oriented public
sector modernization has produced significant impacts on the local
public service, yet in different ways. In Germany, the NPM-guided
‘New Steering Model’ (Neues Steuerungsmodell – NSM; see Bogumil and
Kuhlmann, 2004; Kuhlmann, 2004) which spread over the local land-
scape in the 1990s was directed at modernizing the traditional
methods of human resource management (HRM) considered inflexible,
bureaucratic and completely lacking performance incentives. New
instruments and procedures were required that would ensure a flexible
employment practice and adequately support and challenge the local
employees’ capabilities. According to the findings of a recently finished
research project on NSM evaluation in German local authorities (see
Bogumil and Kuhlmann, 2006)4 innovative elements of a human
resource management have indeed increasingly been tested at the local
level. Sixty-two percent of the mayors stated that appraisal interviews
have been implemented, 56 percent report on elements of teamwork,
47 percent of confidential reports and 35 percent of new methods of
selection.
The debate on performance-related HRM also gained ground in
France. The system of increments according to the seniority principle
(ancienneté) and the lump sum granting of extra pay (local allowance,
family allowance and so on) without any relation to individual perfor-
mance are in the spotlight of criticism claiming that the egalitarian
salary and pay system (gestion égalitaire) that evolved over decades must
be complemented by performance-related elements. Meritocratic
appraisal procedures (Bodiguel, 2004: 164) are required that would
allow public sector managers to distinguish between good and bad per-
formance. Basically, a three-stage payments system is arrogated with a
uniform basic pay (traitement de base) for all employees belonging to
the same salary group. Second, a supplement in relation to the specific
function or position would be granted (complément lié à l’emplois
occupé), and, third, performance-related extra pay (complément indemni-
taire de rendement/prime de service). In order to determine the perfor-
mance-related pay, appraisal interviews between the employee and
his superior were suggested. Yet, it must be recalled, French civil
service law stipulated appraisal interviews (entretien d’évaluation)
20 years ago, although the debate on performance-related pay gained
momentum later (cf. Lemmet and Creignou, 2002: 73). A compulsory
‘evaluation/grading’ (notification) of public servants’ professional

skills (valeur professionelle) by their superiors – ranging from grade 1
to grade 20 – had already been fixed in the mid-1980s. Local em-
ployers can thus refer to these already existing instruments of per-
sonnel review when dealing with new performance-related evaluation
measures.
Comparing the three countries, there can, however, be little doubt
that in the UK performance management plays the most important
role in reforming local public service. This does not only apply to the
widespread (and often criticized) debate on performance-related pay,
but in particular to the (even more criticized) approaches of measuring
and controlling local government performance on the basis of mainly
centrally defined performance indicators that are checked by central
government auditors and inspectors. Within the ‘Best Value’ regime
established in 2000, a close network of inspectorates and auditing was
developed (central Audit Commission, inspectorates and authorized
private auditors) to administer this central government instructed
performance management system (Wollmann, 2004). The assessment
is based on a 5-point scale: while the ‘good’ performers are rewarded
benefits (e.g., release of legal restrictions, additional resources and
so on), in the ‘badly’ performing local authorities elected members
of the council can in the worst cases be replaced by central gov-
ernment appointed officials. For local servants, the consequences
of Best Value are above all a growing workload and are increasing
‘transaction costs’. Undoubtedly, performance measurement requires
additional resources of time and workforce for reporting and
evaluation activities, for preparing the inspections, dealing with
inspectors and responding to their reports. As a consequence,
day-to-day workloads have expanded and it has been estimated,
that
‘the direct cost of inspection in local government is £600 million

per annum. This estimate takes no account of the time taken by
officers and councillors, who have to prepare the inspections, deal
with inspectors and respond to their reports. External inspection
including external assessment plays an ever-increasing role in the
work of the (local) authorities, occupying the time and attention of
both councillors and officers … It is widely felt that the inspection
process adds to the burden on (local) authorities. Inspection of
reviews has been a costly process in its direct costs and in time taken
from other tasks. Inspection can be de-motivating for staff, influencing
attitudes to best value’ (Stewart, 2003: 133; 209; cf. also Hood
et al., 1999: 101).
Conclusion
Our findings give support to the assumption that local public service con-
stitutes a relatively distinct system of public employment. It does not
only carry a substantial weight of the public workforce but is, above all,
an important pillar and backbone of the entire politico– administrative
system at national and supra-national levels. A capable and viable as well
as politically accountable local self-government appears to be a decisive
precondition for the functioning of the entire democratic order. Against
this background, current reform initiatives in the OECD world have been
directed towards transferring responsibilities, resources and powers from
upper to lower tiers of government, thereby further strengthening the
local level. These reform strategies are necessary and appear to be promis-
ing, taking moreover into account that in many countries local govern-
ments are also the forerunners of public sector modernization. This may,
on the one hand, be due to the more urgent (also financial) problems and
pressures at reform. On the other hand, it seems also to be related to the
attributes and dedications of the local personnel acting in a more flexible
way with reform instruments and behaving in a more pragmatic and
output-oriented manner than is the case at other political and adminis-
trative levels. This behaviour, again, results from the immediate proxim-
ity to the local arena, to local problems and to the citizens. The success
and failure of public sector reforms thus largely depends on the degree to
which local government is involved and may expect to benefit or not
from these reform measures. Against this background, the above-men-
tioned cutbacks that local public services in Germany and Great Britain
suffered in the course of NPM reform, EU liberalization and national bud-
getary crises, appear to be precarious setbacks. They conspicuously con-
tradict the ongoing trend of devolution and decentralization in Europe
(cf. Stoker, 1991: 7; Vetter and Kersting, 2003: 16), which was described
here for France. From a more ‘normative’ point of view, we would thus
finally plead for a design and direction of public sector reform appropri-
ate to further and reinforce local government’s pivotal position within
the politico–administrative system. From the more ‘scientific’ perspective,
we suggest that future administrative research should take up the chal-
lenge to put a greater analytical emphasis on subnational and local levels
of public service systems and thus fill this ‘missing link’ in comparative
public administration.
Notes
1 We use the term ‘public service system’ instead of ‘civil service system’ in
order to distinguish it from the concept of ‘civil service’, which primarily
refers to central government personnel (see Bekke et al., 1996: 1).
2 Accordingly, the German model resembles partially the British territorial
system (northern parts of Germany) and partially the French model (south-
ern and eastern Länder).
3 We leave aside here the ‘political profile’ of local governments because it is
not in the immediate focus of this chapter.
4 The project was supported by the Hans-Böckler-Foundation (2004–06). In
spring 2005, a survey in altogether 1565 municipalities has been conducted,
including all mayors and heads of county administration (Landräte) as well
as all staff council’s chairmen. The survey is representative for all German
municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants.
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10
Middle Level Bureaucrats:
Policy, Discretion and Control1
Edward C. Page
Introduction
Top level bureaucrats have been the standard fare of studies of bureau-
cracy. Max Weber’s (1988) treatment of the subject, a sheet-anchor for
the study of bureaucracy ever since, has been widely interpreted as a
reflection on the role of very senior administrative levels and, in partic-
ular, their policy-making roles (see also Armstrong, 1973; Suleiman,
1975; 1978; and Aberbach, Putnam and Rockman, 1981). While the
lowest levels of bureaucracy have received some attention (Mechanic,
1962), the only serious appearance in the academic literature on
administration is as implementers, and most famously as ‘street level
bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980; see also Pahl (1977) for a discussion of
‘urban managers’). The middle levels of the bureaucracy have largely
tended to be ignored.2
Why should this matter? One answer that there are a lot of middle
level bureaucrats in national government organizations and we have
little understanding of what they do. For example, most treatments of
the ‘top’ of the German bureaucracy cover around 1,500 people, while
there are 18,000 federal officials in the much broader classification of
‘senior’ (höherer Dienst), 41,000 in the ‘upper’ (gehobener Dienst). In
Britain, the top three ranks make up around 700 people, while the
‘Senior Civil Service’ comprises 4,000 and the grades immediately
below (grades 6 and 7), 22,000. Certainly many people in these grades
may be unimportant if we wish to understand policy (the central
reason for political science’s interest in bureaucracy) but this is an
assumption, not a fact.
A theoretical answer to the question is that one of the central charac-
teristics of bureaucracy is that it is a social system as well as a social
152
Middle Level Bureaucrats 153
group. Weber (1988: 836) does not emphasize the power of top
officials, but of the social system of bureaucracy: it is the advance of
officialdom rather than just top officials that makes him ask whether
democracy is any longer possible in modern society. For Tocqueville
([1836] 1994) the key kind of despotism ‘democratic nations have to
fear’ is certainly an ‘administrative despotism’, but it is not wielded by
a small leadership caste, but by ‘schoolteachers’. An understanding of
bureaucracy as a social system requires an understanding not just of its
top leadership, but of the norms that pervade its operation: a view rec-
ognized by Merton (1940) and Gouldner (1954) but recognized rather
rarely in political science (for exceptions, see Heclo and Wildavsky,
1974; Mayntz and Scharpf, 1975).
Given that so little is known about life in ministries and central or
federal agencies outside of the interactions at the top, there is no great
wealth of comparative data and information on which to base a com-
parative examination of the role of middle level officials. The central
purpose of this chapter is to outline the roles that middle ranking
officials play in the development of policy and to highlight the fea-
tures of bureaucratic systems that might cause variation in the role of
middle ranking officials. This chapter relies heavily on the experience
of one national bureaucracy – that of the United Kingdom (or more
accurately the non-devolved civil service based in Whitehall) – but
seeks to generalize beyond the individual case with the use of some
material gathered for a comparative study still in its very early stages.
The roles of middle level officials
The indeterminacy of decision-making

It is trite but true that with policies, the devil is in the detail. Many
policies involve the elaboration of detail to such a degree that it is
difficult to call them ‘policies’ without it. Take the example of the
introduction of civil sequestration of drug dealers’ assets in the United
Kingdom (see Page, 2003). The principle behind legislation introduced
in 2002 can be easily stated – that you can seize assets derived from
criminal activity without necessarily having to secure a criminal con-
viction beforehand – and has been applied in many other countries the
general policy label of ‘civil sequestration’ (see PIU, 2000; for a discus-
sion of policy labels see Mossberger, 2000). Yet questions about who
does the seizing (a new, dedicated agency or existing authorities), what
is liable to seizure (whether pensions, matrimonial homes, inherited
wealth are to be included), how seizable assets are detected (the size of
the staff devoted to the activity) and the circumstances under which
seizures are made (only for large amounts or whether it is a form of
punishment to be visited on small-time crooks), are questions of detail
that shape the whole policy. The answers given to them are likely to
make the difference between a symbolic or even dead-letter policy and
the development of a significant new tool in the armoury to combat
crime.
In the development of the legal, fiscal and administrative framework
for a programme, there are likely to be many issues for which it is very
hard to identify a key decision which shapes its subsequent develop-
ment. A large number of policies cannot be deemed to be formed
before they have developed details.3 Those who develop details, and
lower level policy officials have responsibility for developing detail, are
thus likely to have significant roles in shaping policies unless their
roles in this respect are so tightly constrained by their political and
administrative superiors.
The vagueness of policy instructions

Do those who develop detail have much leeway in how they develop
it? It is common to argue that politicians issue instructions that
bureaucrats, whether senior or lower down, have to carry out. If politi-
cians specify in detail what bureaucrats do, as some principal-agent
approaches suggest (see Huber and Shipan, 2002), lower levels of the
bureaucracy would have clerking roles in working out the detail. Yet
politicians do not invariably or even frequently issue direct instruc-
tions that indicate precisely what their officials should do. For
example, in our UK study of middle level bureaucrats (Page and
Jenkins, 2005) we found that ministers indicated they would like a
reform of the whole system of distributing billions of pounds to local
government without initially specifying how they wanted it changed
beyond saying they wanted a ‘fairer’ and ‘less complicated’ system.
This lack of precision was very common where new laws were being
drafted or new policies were being outlined. Indeed it was unusual to
find policies where the minister was specific on what she or he wanted.
While principal-agent theory has a strong focus on the nature of
delegation as a result of the policy-making process, it has less to say
about the case of delegating to subordinates as an integral part of
the policy making process (Horn, 1995). If ‘principals’ keep a tight
rein on the work of their subordinates, then the delegation does not
offer much scope for subordinates having a significant effect on
policies.
The supervision of subordinates

It is often assumed that national bureaucracies are hierarchical organi-
zations in the sense that accountability flows through hierarchical
chains of command: a set of subordinates receives instructions from
their superiors, to whom they are responsible, their superiors, in turn
are subordinates of officials even higher up, and so on to the top,
where the top political executive (whether a minister or a political
appointee) has, in principle, the same hierarchical relationship with
her/his top permanent officials. There are three reasons why super-
vision might be expected rarely to work in this way.
First, by sheer weight of numbers and the time available to supervise,
a senior civil servant cannot expect to supervise those below her/him
as s/he goes about developing detail. A head of a directorate would be
extremely hard pressed closely to supervise the work of over 40 people
dealing with potentially different aspects of her/his directorate.
Second, the nature of policy work tends to flatten hierarchies. Working
at a very fast pace – those involved in developing policy typically have
to produce the details of how policies will work at short notice – means
that politicians and officials are both given incentives to avoid cumber-
some formalities and circumvent hierarchical barriers in order to
develop policies on time. Damaska (1986), in his analysis of ‘ideals’ of
officialdom, suggests that the nature of policy making – the application
of undifferentiated community standards to develop policy responses –
is more likely to reflect a ‘coordinate’ ideal of officialdom with fewer
distinctions between ranks and grades than a ‘hierarchical’ ideal. Third,
the idea that hierarchy is exercised through formal supervision is to
misunderstand the nature of hierarchy itself. While strict supervision
may be a characteristic of some organizations, it is likely, from all that
we know, to be rare. As Kaufman’s (1960) study showed, forest rangers
obeyed superiors not because the mechanisms to ‘detect and discour-
age deviation’ were particularly strong, but because of both a ‘will and
… capacity to conform’ (Kaufman, 1960: 161). The values of their supe-
riors were internalized by rangers, indeed rangers were selected and
trained to internalize these values, and thus were likely to conform.
Conformity with hierarchy is as much a matter of values and culture as
of the use of a fomal capacity to command and control.
Policy as its own cause

The impetus to develop a policy can come from the operation of,
or matters arising from, another policy. This observation is made by
Wildavsky (1979) in his article discussing how policies have knock-on
effects on other policies – for example, devolution to the UK regions

has impacted on charging for public services in London (Page, 2001) –
and thus policy can be ‘its own cause’. Hogwood and Peters (1983)
argue that as policy activity has grown and few areas of life remain
unregulated, the ‘policy space’ has become so crowded that policy
changes are likely to have an impact on existing policies. Moreover,
policies are decreasingly likely to be ‘new’ and more likely to become
refinements or modifications of existing policy: policy ‘succession’ is
more likely than policy innovation.
The importance of existing policy as a direct or indirect cause of
policy change is likely to place those with some experience of running
existing policies at least occasionally in a pivotal position in making
policy. For example, in the case of sequestration of drug money in the
United Kingdom, the group of middle level officials running existing
money laundering policies were responsible for a report, originally
written for parliamentarians, which attracted the attention of the
members of the executive, was taken up by the Labour Party in its 2001
election manifesto, and given to the same group of middle level
officials to develop as legislation following the Labour election victory.
Where the practice of existing policy forms a significant basis for policy
change, those involved in delivering existing policy can be important
in shaping that change.
The policy roles of middle level officials
Given that policy can significantly involve the elaboration of detail

and that supervision is unlikely to be direct, middle ranking officials
who deal in policy are likely to have important roles in the develop-
ment of policy. The precise roles that they play will depend upon how
bureaucratic life and government more generally is organized in any
country or sector within it. The fusion of the legislative with the execu-
tive branch gives the executive in the UK, and administrators in partic-
ular, a set of roles in the legislative process closer to helping determine
the shape of the legislation, while the separation in the United States
gives them advocacy roles (see Kaufman, 1981; Holtzman, 1970).
In our study of middle ranking officials in the United Kingdom (Page
and Jenkins, 2005), we identified three broad types of policy work that
middle ranking officials tended to do. ‘Project work’ consisted of devel-
oping a specific project – for example a blueprint (‘White Paper’) for
reform, a set of organizational reforms or a piece of legislation. Thus,
for any major Act of Parliament, there is a team of officials, the de facto
leader of which is usually not a senior civil servant, although a senior

civil servant (usually on the lowest rung of the senior civil service) may
have formal responsibility for the team (Page, 2003). ‘Maintenance
work’ is important in policy terms as it refers to general supervisory
responsibilities for policies – it includes dealing with operational
aspects of ongoing policies and recommending adjustments or taking
decisions connected with them, or developing publicity strategies to
encourage greater takeup of the policy. ‘Service work’ includes acting as
an adviser to a minister (such as the official who recommends to the
minister whether a criminal represents a sufficient danger to remain in
a high security prison), or as the secretary to a minister (the ‘private
office’ of UK ministers is a key intermediary between a minister and
the remainder of his officials) or as part of a secretariat to an advisory
body.
Each of these types of policy work can bring officials at relatively
junior grades and early stages in their careers into policy making. This
is most obvious in the case of project work. It was striking, for
example, that none of the officials actually working out the policy
which would then be passed on to solicitors and then Parliamentary
Counsel (trained lawyers who actually draft legislation in the UK) in a
major piece of legislation was out of their twenties. Maintenance work
also involves influencing policy: as with the official responsible for
supervising the arrangements for disabled benefit claimants who iden-
tified problems with the system and propose remedies, or the Ministry
of Defence official who described his work monitoring a particular set
of NATO issues:
A large part of the work is briefing. Occasionally we take it on

ourselves to write a paper. I have just done a paper suggesting ways
forward for integrating new members in the Alliance. 80 percent of
the time these things don’t come to anything. Occasionally you do
a paper that gets shown around to other allies, and it could get
backing and put into NATO and can be policy.
Even service work can bring relatively junior officials significant policy
making responsibility: for example, the mostly middle ranking officials
in the private office of a minister, rather than the permanent secretary
or other top brass, provide the main line of communication between
leading politicians and the officials working for them, and officials
servicing committees or other bodies are frequently relied on to iden-
tify emerging issues and suggest remedies (as with the Home Office
official advising a narcotic drugs panel who read all the rave and
dance magazines to find out about the contemporary drugs scene and
recommend action be taken on new drugs).
Cross-national comparison and middle level bureaucrats
National patterns and variation
How do middle level officials acually shape policy? It would be com-

forting, from a democratic theory perspective, to assume that influence
of middle level bureaucrats is predominantly in fields of less important
decisions surrounding policy development. To answer the question in
this way poses immense difficulties in determining what is an ‘impor-
tant’ decision, and raises the thorny issue of whether myriad less
important decisions taken with little involvement of senior officials
and politicians can be summed to form a cumulated tally of high levels
of influence. Yet even disregarding these problems, the evidence from
the United Kingdom is not that encouraging for the idea that the
‘big’ issues are handled by politicians and senior bureaucrats: two
of the four pieces of primary legislation investigated in detail (Page,
2003) can be said to have originated in the deliberations of lower
level bureaucrats, and in all four bureaucrats were involved in develop-
ing key contours of the legislation with little interference from on
high.
Other prime candidates for what makes middle level bureaucrats
more likely to influence policy include the ‘technicality’ of the issue
(a technical policy involves detail and generalist senior administrators
and politicians are less likely to become involved); how interested a
politician might be in an issue, the personality of the politician or
senior official (some are more ‘hands on’ than others), and some orga-
nizations may be more likely to ‘empower’ lower grade officials. Such
variables may prove to be important, though we simply do not know
enough to be sure how important they are. What, however, was
remarkable from the three studies looking at middle ranking officials in
the United Kingdom (Page, 2001; 2003; Page and Jenkins, 2005) is the
similarities in patterns of middle level involvement in policy making
found among different individuals across government organizations as
well as the wide range of policies to which these similarities applied.
Such similarities reflect two possibilities: first, that the UK pattern
displays universal characteristics of the work of middle ranking officials
involved in developing policy anywhere, irrespective of country,
policy, sector or issue. Second, the UK pattern reflects one of possibly

several patterns, or even a pattern unique to the UK, and other coun-
tries would have their own distinctive patterns: that is to say there is a
distinctive UK pattern that might characterize much of the work of
middle ranking officials there but which is distinctive from patterns
prevailing in other countries. Thus one answer to the question of the
role of middle ranking officials is that there are distinctive national
patterns of how middle ranking officials are involved in the policy
process. And there are several reasons to think the distinctive UK
pattern would not be found in other jurisdictions. By outlining the
reasons we may point to some of the likely patterns of variation cross
nationally in the role of middle level officials.
The pattern of specialisation

One of the remarkable features of the UK civil service, and in particular
of the characteristics of the middle ranking bureaucrats working on
policy, is their lack of specialization, as conventionally measured by
the fit between training and subsequent career. Only a handful of over
100 officials interviewed in Page and Jenkins (2005) were educated in a
field that had some, albeit indistinct, bearing on their current jobs.
They tended to stay in the same job for under three years and when
moved to another job it was unlikely to have any relationship with
previous jobs. By most conventional understandings of the term, such
officials are not ‘experts’ in the United Kingdom.
The significance of this in theoretical terms is strong. The conflict
between hierarchy and expertise is one of the most fundamental ten-
sions within bureaucracy. The central premise of Weberian theory is
that bureaucracy’s strength in the political system is based on its
knowledge: bureaucracy is Herrschaft kraft Wissen (Weber, 1988: 129)
and the bureaucrat is the technical expert, while the politician is by
nature a dilettante. This point is echoed, albeit in different ways by,
among others, Alvin Gouldner (1954) and Aberbach, Putnam and
Rockman (1981) and ‘principal-agent’ models of bureaucracy. Such
theories tend to emphasize the asymmetry between the expertise of
officials and politicians at the top of the administrative hierarchy. Yet
in many countries senior bureaucrats, and this is a feature noted in
public and private organizations, are ‘generalists’. Few officials make it
to the top because they are specialists in a certain body of knowledge
as opposed to experts in the process by which policies are put together.
Thus it is more likely that the central tension between political leader-
ship and administrative expertise will be found at a much lower level
in the bureaucratic hierarchy than generally assumed: at the level of

relationships between middle level bureaucrats and their superiors.
In the United Kingdom, the low levels of technical specialization
may prevent significant conflicts between experts and hierarchical or
political superiors as policy officials have to develop, sometimes from
scratch, some sort of familiarity with the issue they are dealing with
(e.g., as happened when an official with a humanities education had to
read law texts over the weekend to familiarize herself with land law as
she was appointed to a team revising land law). In other countries this
is less likely to happen. Our knowledge of ‘specialization’ is rather
patchy, but there are clearly countries in which technical knowledge is
fostered among officials. In Hood et al.’s (2002: 5) comparison between
the UK Department of Trade and Industry and the German Economics
Ministry, the Sachkompetenz or ‘subject expertise’ of the officials was
what informed observers (primarily from interests affected by their
decisions) admired in the German officials, for the British officials it
was the ‘analytic ability’, and three times as many German officials
dealing with telecoms and competition policy were likely to have tech-
nical knowledge of the history of the policy issue they were dealing
with than their UK counterparts (Hood et al., 2002: 19, through the
same imbalance was not found in energy policy). Swedish ministerial
officials outside the very top levels who are involved in developing
policy tend to develop their careers as handläggare or ‘desk officers’ over
years in the same job.
The patterns of institutional control

The basic institutional control over middle rank civil servants in the
UK is the norm of getting the minister to sign off on any significant
decision. This aspect of what is in Britain termed ‘ministerial respons-
ibility’ is a basic feature of any hierarchical organization (that a senior
be responsible for any major decision). However, there are different
ways in which this ‘signing off’ translates into policy influence.
In Britain the approach to delegation in policy development is
strongly ‘hands off’. The need to sign off brings no frequent direct
contact between politicians and civil servants. There are infrequent
contacts that take the form of seeking what all involved term ‘a steer’.
This means an indication of the way that the minister would like his or
her servants to develop policy. It is conventional to offer choices of
ways to develop a policy, even if such choices have to be contrived – as
when a minister’s views can be easily guessed or when there are for one
reason or another no realistic attractive alternatives to what officials
are proposing. A ‘steer’ is an instruction that leaves the option of chal-

lenge or revision at a later stage because it lacks the clarity or finality of
a decision or a command. It is also an instruction that is usually
requested by the subordinate, often when work has progressed to a stage
where the authority of a minister is sought to confirm that this work is
‘along the right lines’ and has not been in vain (i.e., the minister is
likely to approve the final version) or when there are genuine choices
to be made that can affect the shape of the policy. It is a form of invited
authority.
One might expect special advisers (‘spads’ in UK terminology) to
constitute a more direct institutional control over the policy develop-
ment work of middle ranking officials. While advisers tend to have a
more prominent role in some ministries, such as the UK Treasury, than
the rest, overall the impact of spads was very limited: in a few cases
they intervened in policy development by coming up with ideas which
then had to be worked on by officials, occasionally (but rarely) they
could be used as a form of access to politicians (e.g., getting the agree-
ment another minister when your own minister is away somewhere),
but in our study we came across no examples of advisers supervising
policy development of making frequent interventions in development
(see Page and Jenkins, 2005).
This contrasts strongly with the experience of Sweden, where the
political supervision of policy development is secured by two main
devices: special advisers and the state secretary. First, while the special
advisers to ministers also serve the policy advisory role to ministers
that they fill in the UK and appeared less likely to intervene in the
daily routine of policy development in the bureaucracy than the state
secretaries, they nevertheless intervened by participating in routine
meetings about shaping secondary legislation. This tendency is high-
lighted by the practice of specialist advisers for parties other than that to
which the minister belongs being present in the ministry. Thus the
‘advisers wing’ within a ministerial office building in Stockholm
housing a Social Democratic minister will also have offices for Green
and Left Party advisers, as these parties suppovled the Social Democrats
in government in 2006 – continuing a practice found under coalition
governments (Pierre, 1995: 143) and underlining that the job of
adviser is not limited to whispering in the ear of a minister but taking
an active interest in the daily work of the ministry.
The staatsekreterare (state secretaries), are political appointees given
responsibility for day-to-day running of the ministry (Pierre and Ehn,
1999). They take a highly active interest in the development of policy:
a feature of their work enhanced by the relatively small size of Swedish

ministries, with much of the technical and more routine administra-
tive work in most cases being the function of constitutionally separate
agencies. The role of the state secretaries is also strengthened by the
associative norms of Swedish civil servants. Not only do most parts of
ministerial office buildings have spaces where colleagues take coffee
together and discuss their work, it is common for state secretaries to
visit all parts of the ministry and make direct contact with those devel-
oping policy. One Swedish official’s description of the role of the state
secretary in developing her piece of legislation (shared by other respon-
dents in other ministries) sets out a direct relationship involving
frequent contact between relatively junior officials and the ministry’s
political leadership quite different from the relationship between civil
servant and minister, and especially between civil servant and perma-
nent secretary, in the UK: ‘we have weekly meetings with the State
Secretary, but you can also get in touch on the telephone if you need
to. You don’t have weekly meetings with the advisers, but you can
phone them and talk to them about issues’.
Constant contact with people exercising as appointees second-hand
political authority offers a different pattern to the UK pattern of
invited authority with far less direct political supervision. At present
we can only speculate how, for example, the French cabinet model
offers politico–administrative elites to shape the how those outside
very top, say below the level of sous directeurs go about their work or
whether top level politische Beamte offer the same kind of routine polit-
ical involvement in the work of middle ranking officials found in
Sweden (Mayntz and Scharpf, 1975).
Patterns of normative compliance

Given that institutional forms of supervision of the development of
policy in Britain are rather weak – limited to formal assent and the offer,
when requested, of a ‘steer’ – we might expect some additional mecha-
nism by which some degree of compliance with politicians’ aspirations
and wishes are secured, otherwise policy development by middle level
officials would come to resemble a process of trial and error as they put
up series of plausible proposals that ministers for one reason or another
dislike – assuming politicians did not accept everything that bureaucrats
put to them.
The simple fact is that patterns of normative control can be as
powerful as any institutional control, as Kaufman (1960) suggests in
his discussion of the ‘capacity to conform’ among forest rangers
mentioned above. Civil servants in the United Kingdom face a series of

pressures that incline them to make strong efforts to try and under-
stand what a minister might want – including what his or her aspira-
tions are, what is acceptable within the party, parliament and cabinet and
what personal predispositions he or she may have. Thus a British civil
servant charged with coming up with new legislation on adoption of
children (see Page, 2003) looks at where the initiative comes from (in this
case it reflected a long-standing interest of the prime minister rather than
the minister of health who was in charge of the department preparing the
legislation), anything that the prime minister’s advisers had said on
the subject, what the leading groups that politicians listened to said
about the subject, what politicians themselves had said and such like.
Civil servants in the United Kingdom spend much time looking for cues
about what their minister might want and approve. In many cases this
involves estimating in advance what a politician will think about an issue
before the politician has given it much thought.
Patterns of normative compliance are less well understood in a com-
parative context than the other two dimensions set out as having an
impact on the role of middle level officials on policy making. They
relate to features of bureaucracy often classed as ‘cultural’ patterns
(cf. Crozier, 1964; Hofstede, 1984) and tend to be eschewed by compar-
ative administration scholars as they tend to be dismissed as armchair
‘generalization’ (Kjellberg, 1984). However, the contrast between
patterns governing how authority is exercised in Sweden and Britain
suggests that there are powerful differences in the norms surrounding
the exercise of political authority within bureaucratic systems that
become especially apparent when the role of middle ranking officials is
examined. Both in Sweden and the United Kingdom, the notion that
civil servants are subordinate is similar: indeed the idea that (with
some exceptions for quasi-judicial and regulatory bodies) bureaucrats,
and especially bureaucrats who happen to be involved in policy-
making, are ultimately subordinate to politicians is possibly a universal
in democratic political systems.
In the Swedish case studies connected with my comparative study of
secondary legislation, the pattern of normative compliance was quite
different. In part this could be related to the traditional agency struc-
ture of Swedish administration in which ministries are supposed to be
the ‘policy making’ units, while day-to-day executive functions remain
the province of agencies. The main difference is that Swedish officials
are more likely to comply with more direct instructions issued rather
than anticipate the likely reaction of the politicians. As one official
argued, ‘The politicians have lots of people working for them. They are
working away all the time at political initiatives and they came to us and
asked what we thought of it. They are the real motor in the whole
process. They have some knowledge in the area – most of them as much
as we have’. The real expertise in the Swedish system is more likely to be
found in the administrative agencies, even after one acknowledges the
greater career specialization among Swedish officials than British. The
agency officials, at least those involved in two of the six regulations in my
comparative study, saw themselves as mere providers of information
regulations. As the agency official responsible for one sensitive regulation
put it ‘I was not part of the Working Group [looking at the regulation] so
I was not party to the discussions about the different types of interests
and conflicts over the choice of the model – that is something for the
[name withheld] department to sort out’. In a third case the agency acted
as a lobby – persuading the ministry that a revised regulation was needed
and suggesting what might be in it – but its administrative and technical
experience did not bring it a direct policy role.
Here we have two different normative patterns of compliance – the
UK model is based on anticipating reactions of politicians, the Swedish
is based on allowing elected politicians and those who carry their
authority more directly to shape policy. Is this a distinction without a
difference? It is certainly not in terms of the discretion available to civil
servants in the process. Civil servants in UK ministries typically face
and take a wider range of choices about how policy initiatives are
developed than their Swedish counterparts. It should be emphasized
that UK civil servants do not perceive themselves to be ‘policy makers’
in the sense that they can develop policy in any way they like – indeed
they generally regard their choices as highly limited by what they
know the minister will want or like. Nevertheless, the pattern of
normative compliance in the UK appears more likely to involve mid-
dle ranking civil servants in questions of policy design and political
calculations than the pattern in Sweden.
Given the norm of compliance with democratically expressed wishes
is a fundamental feature of bureaucracies, one would not expect, in
other democratic countries, to find a basic norm of ‘non-compliance’ –
the generally empirically unfounded assumptions of ‘shirking’ in prin-
cipal-agent theories of bureaucracy notwithstanding. Whether there
are two models (an indirect ‘anticipated reactions’ model as in the UK
and a direct ‘expressed preferences’ model of compliance as in Sweden)
is hard to say at present. The United States might in principle be
expected to offer two sources of authority that need to be balanced,
though Holtzman’s admittedly now dated study (1970: 104) underlines

the ‘primacy of the [cabinet] secretary’ even in the everyday life of
those departmental officials in legislative liaison who have the most
contact with Congress. It is quite possible that middle ranking officials
orient their behaviour not to politicians (whether directly or indi-
rectly) but to senior officials in systems that function much more
clearly on the basis of the exercise of hierarchical authority. Such
might be expected to be found, if anywhere, in France with its strong
fusion between senior administrative and political roles and with its
system of working that is conventionally regarded as strongly hierar-
chical (see Bezes, 2006).
Conclusions
It does appear likely that patterns of normative authority could be at

least as variable as the forms of institutional control over middle
level officials. While administrative science might justifiably be cau-
tious about explanations for behaviour that rest on ‘culture’, to then
avoid studying the norms according to which authority is exercised
in bureaucratic systems is likely to avoid the most important distin-
guishing characteristics of state bureaucracies. Moreover, it is hard
to make much sense of the features of bureaucracies that are the
common fare of comparative studies – institutional structures,
recruitment, promotion – without understanding such norms. While
one branch of the study of public bureaucracy, that associated with
public choice, is apparently uninhibited in attributing norms and
motivations to bureaucrats without much direct empirical evidence,
attention to how bureaucrats, particularly those lower in the hierar-
chy who in many systems do much detailed policy work, can show a
range of motivations derived from norms that do not necessarily give
priority solely to material considerations such as monetary reward or
an easy life.
The middle level of state bureaucracies, where officials have the time
and responsibility (even if they do not come to it with a high level of
technical expertise) to develop policy details, constitutes one of the key
arenas where we would expect to find played out the central contradic-
tion in modern bureaucratic states as pointed out by Weber (1988) and
elaborated by Gouldner (1954): the conflict between elected politicians
who are supposed to be in control of bureaucracies and those who
have the time and knowledge to handle the detail that goes to make up
a significant part of a ‘policy’. How is this tension, which Weber and
Gouldner describe as a conflict between hierarchy and expertise (see

also Page and Jenkins, 2005), resolved in modern democratic societies?
The ways in which they are resolved in countries about which it is
possible to make a guess tend to involve variations on the theme of the
suppression of expertise. In the UK ‘generalist’ civil servants get few
chances to develop the technical expertise that might be expected to
challenge the supremacy of politicians, in Sweden the more specialized
civil servants defer to the instructions they get, albeit indirectly by
political appointees.
However, to recognize the supremacy of some form of political direc-
tion does not settle the matter. As we can see in the UK and Swedish
contrast, the different ways in which political supremacy are estab-
lished vary and these have significant implications for the involvement
of bureaucrats in policy-making. Moreover, the contrast further shows
the variety of forms in which ‘political’ control is exercised. The
common factor is that ‘political control’ is exercised by those who have
some claim, whether first- or second-hand, to an authority derived
from election. How close any political control exercised second-hand
via an appointed top level official or a political adviser actually is to
the wishes of the elected politician further limits the significance of the
simple recognition that ‘politics is trumps’. This is especially more so
because elected politicians are often unlikely to have defined views on
the key matters of detail handled at this level.
Notes
1 The research contained in this chapter is supported by Economic and Social
Research Council grant RES-000-22-1451 for the project ‘Hierarchy, expertise
and policy bureaucracy: a comparative analysis’.
2 Carpenter’s (2001) historical study of ‘mezzo’ level of bureaucracy not-
withstanding. Carpenter’s understanding of ‘mezzo’ is just below the very
top, but still at very senior levels.
3 Certainly not all policies require detail of this sort. Some policy decisions
are relatively simple such that the decision itself hardly needs any opera-
tional specification before it comes into effect (such as raising the bank rate)
or the decisions may set in train understood or frequently performed rou-
tines that require little elaborate operationalization (such as establishing or
suspending diplomatic relations with a particular country). Moreover, some
policy decisions can be of such far-reaching impact that subsequent deliber-
ation over detail and operational issues pale into significance beside them;
working out precisely how the policy will work resembles crossing the ts
and dotting the is of a principle already established. The granting of inde-
pendent status to the Bank of England in 1997 might be an example of such
a policy.
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11
Reforming Human Resource
Management in Civil Service
Systems: Recruitment, Mobility,
and Representativeness
Per Lægreid and Lois Recascino Wise
Introduction
Towards the end of the 20th century, the notion of the distinctiveness of
public sector as a ‘model employer’ began to fragment. Macro forces and
the dissemination of reform ideas appear to have contributed to a
rethinking of the notion of the uniqueness of the civil service and to the
weakening of conditions of employment for civil servants in many coun-
tries. Nowadays, the notion that the public sector warrants a distinctive
internal labour market system is no longer obvious. Not only have the
domain and responsibilities of civil servants changed, as others in this
volume describe, but also in many countries the status of civil servants
was also dramatically altered. Civil servants have become de-privileged in
terms of their conditions of employment, losing their special conditions
of recruitment and advancement as the public sector turns to business
and industry for inspiration and best practices (OECD, 2005a). The trans-
fer of private sector management techniques into the public sector chal-
lenges the notions of a career service, lifelong employment and general
employment conditions affecting the quality of working life. Decentral-
ization of responsibility for hiring, firing and promotion and drift in pre-
vailing norms about how these processes are determined contribute to
making it increasingly difficult to describe the operating internal labour
market (ILM) system within a given jurisdiction or organization; the
notion of a single or even dual ILM in government has become obsolete.
There is a move from collective barging to site or individual wage bar-
gaining and growing use of contractual and contingent workers in gov-
ernment along with special systems for political appointees. This trend
may create multiple internal labour market systems within the same
agency and increase administrative complexity.
169
At the same time, demands for greater inclusiveness in the com-

position of the public workforce have expanded the meaning of repre-
sentativeness and have had a transformative effect on civil service
systems in many countries (Wise, 2003). Contextual factors are impor-
tant for understanding which diversity element remains dominant in a
particular country or region. Different criteria for representativeness
may compete with each other as well as with other eligibility stan-
dards, such as competence or seniority. Studies demonstrate that the
diversity that matters may pertain to many different factors including
religion, ethnicity, language, social class, gender, region, and education
(Wise, 2003). Demographic patterns common to many industrialized
countries have made age diversity a salient issue in the composition of
the public bureaucracy for the 21st century. Most recently, the use of
citizenship as a criterion for employment in government organizations
is under increasing scrutiny. While citizenship standards are often
relaxed at the local or regional level of government, central govern-
ment has typically been considered the domain of a nation’s citizens.
Broad globalization forces and demographic trends, along with other
local factors, may make governments receptive to the employment of
non-citizens in central government. Under the Free Movement of
Workers Directive, member nations of the European Union are required
to open public sector labour markets to citizens of member states.
Similarly, in other countries, non-citizens have established a significant
toehold in regional and local government. Thus the notion of who has
standing to serve in government organizations is in transition.
Our aim in this chapter is to map out some of the macro reforms that
have impacted human resource management in civil service systems. We
are interested in rational and market-based reforms designed to make
government more efficient and effective as well as normative reforms that
have expanded the construct of representativeness and promoted social
equity, humanization and individualization of employment practices. In
particular, we focus on three key elements of internal labour market
systems giving comparative examples of changes related to recruitment,
promotion, and mobility. Subsequently, we draw implications about the
consequences of these transformations for the public bureaucracy.
Macro reforms impacting internal labour markets in

civil service
The traditional central government based on the Weberian model

has a unitary personnel system with service-wide remuneration and
Reforming HRM in Civil Service Systems 171
conditions. Status is based on the job or position with limited

performance-based variations. The recruitment system, reward structure,
promotion ladders and mobility pattern are strongly regulated, rule
based, and standardized representing a distinct labour market system
(DiPrete, 1989; Wise, 1996; Bekke and Van der Meer, 2000). Systems can
be characterized by the extent to which they are ‘open’ or ‘closed’ in
terms of recruitment and advancement. The underlying assumption is
that public sector employment is different from work in other sectors and
therefore requires a special employment system and structure with
specific rules and regulations for recruitment, promotion and mobility.
Broad global forces have impacted labour market structures in the
public, private, and non profit sectors. Shifts in the employment rela-
tionship to favour management and promote greater flexibility have
been associated with declines in the overall stability of internal labour
market systems reducing the reliability of promotion ladders and
security of employment arrangements while increasing the use of alter-
native work agreements such as temporary, part time and contractual
employment. These changes were evident prior to the 1980s in
business and industry (Osterman, 1982) and the public sector was not
immune to them.
In fact, a bundle of reforms referred to as new public management
(NPM) embraced many of these market-based reforms and pro-
mulgated global changes in public personnel systems from the mid-
1980s to the end of the century. NPM challenged two main doctrines
in traditional public administration (Dunleavy and Hood, 1994). The
first is the doctrine that the managers should be controlled by a
detailed set of rules and procedure to enhance neutrality, impartiality
and political loyalty. In the area of appointments, for example, hiring
regulations assured that managers would have little or no discretion in
selecting candidates to fill a particular job thus avoiding the threat of
favouritism or patronage and assuring fairness and accountability. The
second is the idea that the public sector is very different from the
private sector and requires special arrangements for personnel pro-
cedures and practices. For example, the policy of a career service and
emphasis on seniority, protections against political demands, require-
ments for special training for entrance or advancement in the civil
service and rules for redress and grievance related to hiring and pro-
motion as well as other actions distinguish the public sector from
the private. In contrast, the NPM approach is ‘to let the manager
manage’ by giving them more leeway and discretion and to underline
the similarities between public and private employment rather than
the differences. For example, hiring authority was decentralized to

management in some cases and in others hiring rules were relaxed to
permit greater discretion and responsibility on the part of managers
in terms of selection. This drive to make managers more responsible
for selection and other management duties can be pursued through
mechanisms of performance management, managerial accountability
and individually based rewards and sanctions (OECD, 2003).
Despite the dominance of rational reforms at the end of the 20th
century, normative influences related to social equity, representativeness,
and humanization are reflected in a stream of activities occurring within
the same time period in different civil service systems (Wise, 2002).
Humanization, a distinct normative movement led to a rethinking of the
practices and technical focus of personnel administration by placing
greater emphasis on the unique qualities and contributions of individu-
als. The trend toward greater humanization was in many ways compati-
ble with the idea of applying private sector methods and techniques to
government and a significant driver of reform in civil service systems
(Wise, 2002). The technical focus on personnel administration had had
greater resilience in the public sector than the private for a variety of
reasons and the focus on policing civil service practices remains evident
in many countries, including the United States. Individualization, which
is grounded in the humanistic management movement which began
in the 1940s, emphasizes the fit between the individual and the job,
promotes flexibility by expanding individual responsibility beyond a
predefined set of tasks and empowering individuals to take responsibility
for the work that needs to be done (Wise, 1999). According to an OECD
study (2004a), individualization of human relations arrangements is one
of the main measures for enhancing flexibility of civil service systems.
Individualization can be seen in the selection process, the terms of
appointment, promotions and mobility opportunities, termination of
employment as well as in compensation systems.
Human resource management (HRM) was a key field for the applica-
tion of contemporary public management reforms, as it has been for
other management trends. Assumed effective techniques such as man-
agement by objectives, total quality management, delegation, devolved
management and performance-related pay were transferred into many
government organizations (Boyne, 2002; OECD, 2005a). The idea of a
unified and distinct civil service was challenged by efforts to blur the
borders between public and private employment systems, to normalize
the status of government employees and to lessen the differences
between public sector and private sector employment (Pollitt and
Bouckaert, 2004). The pace and means of these reforms have, however,
differed from country to country. It seems that each country adapts the
instrument available to its own institutional structure and economic
and social constraints.
The general picture is a parallel process of robustness and flexibility.
On the one hand, only few countries have made drastic moves away
from their traditional civil service systems. On the other hand, most of
the countries try to reform and adapt their systems to provide flexibil-
ity. We face parallel processes of NPM-inspired reforms introducing
private sector management tools to increase efficiency and normative
oriented reforms enhancing social equity and equality. Both these
trends are promoting individualization but the change processes are
heavily constrained by traditional civil service systems and historical-
institutional contexts. Even if the different countries move towards
NPM territory, the scope and pace of the reform processes are different
(Christensen and Lægreid, 2001). Some countries are forerunners and
others are laggers. They also start form different starting points repre-
senting different state traditions such as the Anglo-American public
interest tradition, the continental European Rechtsstaat tradition and
the Scandinavian welfare state tradition. Thus the pace and scope of
human resource management reforms are very different from country
to country (Shim, 2001). The most extensive reforms are in New
Zealand but Australia, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Switzerland
have also transformed the nature of public service employment and
people management. On the other end of the spectrum are countries
where HRM reforms have been much more limited, leaving traditional
system of public sector personnel management relatively unchanged,
such as France, Spain, Germany, and Japan (Shim, 2001). There is also
a large intermediate group of countries such as the United States,
Canada, the Netherlands and most of the Nordic countries.
Parallel processes of robustness and flexibility are also obvious when
it comes to four central qualities for traditional public administration:
anonymity, merit, permanence and neutrality (Stark, 2002). These
principles vary with administrative level as well as across countries.
They have, for instance, been stronger in Westminster system than in
the United States. What is clear though is that NPM-inspired HRM
reforms represent challenges to the tenets and principles of Weberian
bureaucracy. The threat to some principles, however, may be greater
than it is to others. Anonymity and permanence are more vulnerable
to these efficiency-based reforms than the concepts of merit and
neutrality.
Decisions nowadays are more often associated with the person who
executes them and managerial accountability is strengthened relative
to political responsibility. Adding to this, bureaucrats must to a greater
extent face the personal consequences of their behaviour in office
through linking individual actions to merit-based adjustments. Short-
term contracts to supplement tenure and promotion are more often
based on some indicator of individual performance. These reforms can
be seen as challenging the permanence principle by connecting out-
comes, including the results of hiring and firing decisions to a given
manager’s rewards and penalties.
In the next part we review specific changes related to recruitment,
status, promotion and mobility. Subsequently, we draw some implica-
tions for policy and practice.
Changes impacting status, recruitment, promotion,

and mobility
Changes in the status of civil servants
An OECD survey (2004b) shows that 13 countries have changed the

status of their civil servants over the past 10 years. In many countries the
traditional tenured public service is replaced with a contractual regime,
but the system of contracts and the application of it differs form country
to country (Lægreid, 2001; Gregory and Christensen, 2004). One trend is
towards contractualization of top civil servants but the scope and content
of contract management varies among countries (Putsey and Hondeghem,
2004). In some countries, the specific rules guaranteeing lifelong employ-
ment have been abolished and civil servants have been put under general
labour laws. In other places, civil servants have been put under short-term
contracts with no guarantee of further employment in the civil service.
Some countries still protect lifelong employment but term contracts for
positions have been introduced to increase an individuals’ responsibility
for performance. Civil servants remain in the public service, but their stay
in a position is not guaranteed. Even if there are more temporary posi-
tions, people may still be hired based on the principle of merit and they
are also under the new regime supposed to be neutral implementers of
political decisions. In this sense, the current reforms represent a recombi-
nation of traditional principles. In some countries, status is also under-
mined by the decreasing total public employment (OECD, 2005b).
Contemporary reforms can be seen as a lesser challenge to the principles
of merit and neutrality.
Variations are found across levels of administration. While the

impact of reforms can be substantial within the public sector in
general, it is often less significant for the senior civil service of central
government, especially in countries where there is a strong public
authority concept of the state (Halligan, 2003). But some reform mea-
sures, such as short-term contracts and performance-related pay are
thought more common among senior managers than among other
public service staff (OECD, 2004b).
Changes in recruitment practices

One trend in the recruitment system is to put more emphasis on
recruiting executives with management and leadership capacities.
Former management experiences tend to become more important as
recruitment criteria. Many OECD countries are moving toward recruit-
ing employees form the market rather than from an internal career
system with external recruiting only at early stages. Both internal and
external recruitment strategies are to an increasing degree based on
open competition and selection based on merit, competence and anti-
cipated performance. We also see a movement toward more temporary
employment and fixed-term contracts often supplemented with detailed
individual performance or appraisal contracts. The recruitment and
mobility of civil servants have changed due to the challenge to a
tenured career. It is becoming more normal that top officials are
appointed on short-time performance-related contracts. But this trend
is stronger in some countries such as New Zealand and the United
Kingdom than in others such as Germany and Scandinavia. Recruit-
ment has changed from closed to more open competition and marked-
based systems in many countries, but generally the number of outside
recruits remains a minority (OECD, 2003). Active efforts to recruit
women and minorities in some countries, however, expand diversity
and representativeness. Norway is an example of a country using
modest gender quotas for positions in public administration.
Different forms of senior executive service (SES) systems are found
in some countries like Canada, New Zealand, United States and the UK
(Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004) and others, such as Belgium, Ireland and
the Netherlands have taken initiatives to limit terms of office for senior
civil servants (Bekke and Van der Meer, 2000). In some cases, such as
Australia, the SES has been rather successful in increasing internal
mobility, external recruitment, use of performance appraisals and iden-
tity building, but in other cases, such as New Zealand, it has been more
of a failure and has been terminated (Halligan, 2003).
International organizations appear to be promoting the notion of a

professional corps of public employees who are not restricted by
national boundaries and move based on their skill set and career goals
between governments. Globalization of public sector employment can
be seen as response to an aging public sector work force as well
as declining salience of public sector employment (OECD, 2002). This
idea is compatible with new public management reforms emphasizing
professional skill sets and rejecting the argument of the uniqueness
of government employment. It may have the potential to erode
national norms and values and perhaps to standardize methods of
service delivery and levels of service quality.
Changes to promotion and mobility systems

The priority of internal labour markets and the norm of promotion
from within have eroded where lateral entry is permitted and encour-
aged. Employees are increasingly moving between sectors of govern-
ment and between government and other sectors. In many countries
formal mobility or exchange systems promote movement across tra-
ditional borders. Developing administrative partnerships is seen as a
key framework for meeting the challenges of managing the European
Public Service (Sutherland, 1993).
Within this context, the importance of seniority as a criterion has
decreased and promotions are now more likely to be linked to perfor-
mance and personal competencies According to one study, most OECD
countries have a performance management or performance appraisal
system in place, with the exceptions of Greece, Iceland, Japan,
Luxemburg and Spain (OECD, 2004b).
The classical distinction between a closed ‘career-based’ civil service
system with centralized recruitment, promotion and training and an
open ‘position-based’ civil service system with a decentralized manage-
ment of appointment, promotion and training is still useful. Countries
such as Belgium, Canada, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland,
New Zealand and the United States have position based civil servant
systems open for lateral entry. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany,
Austria, Korea, Japan, Mexico are examples of a more closed career
based civil service systems. The United Kingdom has moved from a
strongly career-based system to a strongly position-based system over
the past two decades. Sweden moved form a position-based system to a
broad-banded system with no position descriptions.
Both the traditional career-based system and the position-based
system have been subject to reform pressures: the former because it
lacks adaptivity and the latter because it lacks collectivity (OECD,

2005a). Career-based systems are introducing external competition for
open positions, performance management systems and delegating
responsibility for human resource management. Position-based systems
are introducing more competitive processes and transparent pro-
cedures. A third agency or department-based system seems to emerge
with high level of delegation and low level of individualization. This is
a hybrid system which delegates more responsibility to line depart-
ments but where civil servants have tenure and make a career in the
civil service (OECD, 2004b).
There is still a wide diversity among OECD countries in how the
political administrative interface is managed when it come to recruit-
ment and mobility. In some countries, each change of government is
accompanied by appointment of new executive officers and senior
officials. In some countries, party membership for civil servants is well
known and important for the appointment process; others may not
align themselves to political parties. We can see pattern of more use
more personal political staff by ministers and an increasing tendency
to make new senior appointments with an incoming government
(OECD, 2004b).
Increasing use of mobility programmes or secondments

Mobility exchanges or secondments, in principle, appear to be a com-
mon feature of national civil service systems. Mobility partnerships
can be formed with many different kinds of organizations. In addi-
tion to other central government departments, regional and local
governments are eligible partners along with international organ-
izations, public enterprises, and private sector organizations. Some
countries add non-profit and academic institutions, and indigenous
tribes to the list of partners. A broad definition of eligible partners
is more likely to permit ideas to travel across sectoral boundaries
and to create common pools of knowledge among levels of govern-
ment.
The British government, for example, has put several different pro-
grammes in place that promote job mobility or secondment for civil
servants. Under the Fast Stream Development Programme, selected
entrants to the civil service are targeted for earlier exposure to respons-
ibility, promotion, and job mobility (UK Civil Service Fast Stream
Development Programme, 1997). Under the Export Promoter Initiative,
government organizations use mobility assignments as a way of bring-
ing needed business skills into their organizations.
Among member states of the European Union, secondments of

national civil servants to the European Civil Service or other authori-
ties of the EU are common and most countries allow national civil
servants to take temporary assignments in other international organi-
zations. According to a study of 15 countries, many national govern-
ments also have bilateral or regional exchange agreements (Auer,
Demmke and Polet, 1996).
Mobility programmes may be structured to promote diversity and
advance equal employment opportunity but they may also marginalize
special groups of workers such as older or younger workers, persons
with different occupational specialities, status within the hierarchy, or
regional locations. Thus the inclusiveness of the terms of eligibility and
existence of special targeted groups affects representativeness.
An overall perspective
Clearly there is no convergence towards a single model of civil service

systems. Most governments still share the main elements of traditional
system of public administration. However, some strong common
trends towards modernizing public service are emerging across groups
of countries such as changes towards reducing the differences between
public and private sector concerning the status of civil servants, recruit-
ment practices and in promotion and mobility systems. A desire to
increase managerial autonomy and flexibility by deregulating human
resource management, delegating authority and individualizing
accountability and performance is apparent (OECD, 2005a).
The pace and comprehensiveness of these trends varies significantly
from one country to another and reform activity falls across a wide
spectrum. It is far too early to conclude that tenured merit bureaucracy
is unsustainable. Its adaptive capacity is high and we face a dual
process of robustness and flexibility (Christensen, 2003). Traditional
centrally controlled bureaucracy has proven more enduring in coun-
tries where the existence of a strong and all-embracing concept of the
state is an important part of the national culture.
It is, however, necessary to consider changes affecting the top civil
servants. Some of the general trends are in play for executives but
vary in strength and may be associated with counter-trends, such as re-
centralization by defining mandatory government-wide appointment
criteria (OECD, 2004b). Similarly, the senior civil service is exempted
in many countries from the trend of opening government posts to
non-citizens.
What we might see for senior services is two trajectories. One repre-
sented by senior services that have been modernized but within state
traditions and rather closed and robust against external pressure. The
second are more venerable to external pressure, and more open to new
management and personnel concepts (Halligan, 2003). The first family
of countries departs from the Rechtsstaat tradition of continental Europe
and the second from the Anglo-American public interest systems of
United Kingdom and its previous colonies.
Implications
Human resource management (HRM) practices pertaining to recruit-

ment, promotion and mobility are in transition. But there has been no
comprehensive evaluation of recent public sector HRM reforms across
different countries (Shim, 2001) and systematic evidence for some of
the promised benefits of efficiency-based HRM reforms are very patchy.
Certain reform effects are often promised and anticipated but although
their appearance is seldom reliably documented (Christensen, Lægreid
and Wise, 2002) and evidence of success is lacking, the motion behind
the reforms enables them to continue to travel onward. This is evident
for broad public management transformation (Pollitt and Bouckaert,
2004: 140) as it is from more specific human resource management
reforms.
The extent to which the changing status, recruitment, promotion
and mobility of civil servants will induce corrosion in such traditional
values of fairness and impartiality remains to be seen (Hood, 1991).
One proposition is that norms for fairness, equity, predictability and
impartiality, which limit flexibility and discretion in appointments,
will be in tension with demands for greater flexibility and discretion in
hiring and promotion. Where public managers can choose between
appointing career civil servants and hiring contingent or contractual
employees these tensions will be even greater. But it is important not
to forget that the fundamental purpose of the public service is govern-
ment, not management (OECD, 2005a). This means that it is essential
to address values that maintain and strengthen confidence and trust in
public sector organizations, such as social cohesion.
A lesson from reviews of human resource management practices is
that there is no easy solution or one ideal type of public employment
system. There is a difficult trade-off between individualization and
delegation of human resource management to improve the adaptivity
and flexibility of the civil service on the one hand and the sense of
collectivity, shared values and mutual trust relations among civil ser-
vants (OECD, 2005a) on the other hand. How to balance fragmenta-
tion and integration, individualization and common identities and
market pressure and cultural cohesion is a big challenge in human
resource management reforms in the public sector.
Variation on key practices from one country to another is the rule
rather than the exception. Different states face different contexts, risks
and problems and start with different values and norms. The efficiency
driven emphasis is controversial in the field of HRM (Pollitt and
Bouckaert, 2004) and the notion that current performance should be
the dominant criterion for tenure and promotion has not become uni-
versally accepted. Seniority, loyalty and qualifications still play an
important role in many states. The persistence of values related to the
perceived role of government as a model employer and traditional
notions of the uniqueness of the public services may partly account for
the tenacity of these criteria.
The traditional public administration model characterized by its high
value on rule following behaviour and limited freedom and account-
ability for appointments and promotion (and in turn results) is being
challenged by public administrators around the world who seek more
discretion for hiring decisions and promotion, but who are also more
anxious to obtain greater accountability (Christensen and Lægreid,
2002). A system that extends discretion for appointment authority to
managers without strengthening their accountability, however, under-
mines political control. Thus a challenge facing civil service systems in
the 21st century is balancing the demand for flexibility and account-
ability with the need for representativeness and equity in human
resource management.
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and J. Pierre (eds), Handbook of Public Administration (Thousand Oaks: Sage,
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Christensen, T. and P. Lægreid (eds), New Public Management. The Transformation
of Ideas and Practice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001).
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Part III
Civil Servants and Legality,
Efficiency, and Responsiveness
12
Law and Management:
Comparatively Assessing the Reach
of Judicialization
Robert K. Christensen and Charles R. Wise
Introduction
The concept of judicialization circumscribes a multiplicity of meanings.

In this chapter, we focus on one of the ‘newest’ meanings of judicia-
lization, what Tate and Vallinder (1995b: 516) refer to as ‘Judicialization I’:
judges and judicial institutions as policy makers complementing, sub-
stituting, or competing with politically accountable policy actors.
Managers and judges have a complex relationship in the manage-
ment of public affairs in civil service systems. The balance between
managerial and judicial control of policy has ebbed and flowed during
different periods. In recent years, increasing control appears to be
moving to the judicial partners. This chapter assesses the balance in a
comparative perspective, offering a framework to understand the rela-
tive potency of US and European judicial institutions as we progress
into the 21st century.
The context of this inquiry is couched in lively discussions on both
sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, observers (e.g., Horowitz,
1977; Shapiro, 1988; Melnick, 1994; Shapiro, 1995; van Horn, Baumer
and Gormley, 2001; Wise and O’Leary, 2003) have long called atten-
tion to the role of judiciaries in policy making. In Europe, many of the
same arguments enjoy growing attention (e.g., Shapiro and Stone,
1994; Tate and Vallinder, 1995a; Jacob et al., 1996; Henckaerts and Van
der Jeught, 1998; Stone Sweet, 2000; Conant, 2002; Guarnieri,
Pederzoli and Thomas, 2002; Koopmans, 2003) as illustrated by Stone
Sweet’s (2000: 3) observation that European ‘constitutional judges will
increasingly behave as sophisticated legislators’.
Five years after Epstein (1999) rallied APSA’s Law and Courts section
around Gibson, Caldeira and Baird’s (1998: 343) declaration that law
185
and courts constitute ‘the most neglected subfield within comparative

politics’, we have benefited from a surge in comparative judicial schol-
arship (e.g., Epstein, Knight and Shvetsova, 2001; Jackson and Tushnet,
2002; Koopmans, 2003; Shapiro and Stone Sweet, 2002).
We anticipate and hope that this trend will continue. While the field
is still developing, we offer a framework as a point of commonality and
within which future research on comparative judicialization can pro-
ceed. We also propose several middle-range theories to encourage and
guide empirical work in this rising area of scholarship.
We do not suggest that the comparative judicialization research,
newness notwithstanding, offers little overarching conceptual guid-
ance. On the contrary, we attempt to incorporate and synthesize exist-
ing models here. For example, Epstein and her colleagues (see Epstein,
1999; Epstein, Knight and Shvetsova, 2001) offer a useful model of
judicial review that allows comparative work according to court system
characteristics. Similarly, Stone Sweet (2000) and Koopmans (2003) call
our attention to how fundamental questions of separation of powers
serve as a comparative heuristic. By tying together models such as
these with our own insights, we offer an assembly of factors that can
be used to identify features of law and courts in assessing their compar-
ative judicialization potency.
Our framework contemplates:
• legal tradition (e.g., civil law versus common law);

• structural and constitutional judicial features such as appointment
rules, powers of judicial review, and separation of powers;
• mechanisms for resolving intergovernmental relations; and
• relationships with supra-/international judicial bodies.
Such a framework gives a broader, comparative context to assess the

dynamism of EU and US judicialization than has existed previously. As
an illustration of how this framework might be implemented, we also
offer middle-range theories based on the framework to encourage
future empirical research.
Legal tradition
We focus on two traditions of positive law: common and civil law.

Common law describes a tradition where judges dominate the rule
of conflicts, setting the precedent-based law governing future, similar
conflicts. This is a tradition where, as Raadschelders (2003: 126)
Law and Management 187
describes, ‘justice precedes law’, the codified law being a ‘rather late
and occasional interloper’ (Horowitz, 1977: 1). Civil law, on the other
hand, is law preceded by a justice articulated by scholars and legislators
as a guide, and often constraint, for judicial bodies (Murphy, Pritchett
and Epstein, 2002).
A theme of the preceding century’s comparative research has been
that the expansiveness of judicial policy depends on the context’s legal
tradition whether civil or common law. Accordingly, legal tradition is
an important beginning point in our framework. Christie (2000: 224)
offers some insight into legal tradition’s significance: ‘courts operating
in different legal cultures can reach different conclusions on the same
issue, not necessarily because they take a different view of the merits of
the issue involved, but because they have a different view of the judi-
cial function and/or utilize different judicial techniques’.
Murphy, Pritchett and Epstein (2002: 5–6) describe the features of
civil law in relation to judicialization, as a ‘system, closed, self-con-
tained … a neatly ordered body of principles hierarchically arranged.
Any judicial tampering with this system, even a charitable effort to
ease harsh effects of the [Civil] Code’s commands, is bound, over the
long run, to do more harm than good’. Common law, however, relies
upon the creativity of a judiciary, and is, by definition, that ‘part of the
law that is within the province of the courts themselves to establish’
(Eisenberg, 1988: 1).
Although the strong correlation between the common law tradition
and strong judicialization was a general assumption of 20th-century
comparative research, some observers have suggested that civil law
judges have gained increasing policy power (e.g., Murphy, Pritchett
and Epstein, 2002), while common law judges, at least in the United
States, have curbed their policy potency (e.g., Shapiro, 1995).
Accordingly, we offer the following middle-range theory to test this
assumption’s validity in the 21st century:
MRT 1. Judiciaries steeped in a civil law tradition have less impact

upon public policy than their common law counterparts
Provine’s survey of judicialization in France lends support to this

proposition. She observed that in France ‘[civil law] legal tradition …
discourages political discourse based on rights … mak[ing] a sharp
distinction between law and politics and assign[ing] judges no role in
the development of law’ (Provine, 1996: 179–80). The absence of the
equity doctrine and stare decisis, principles very prevalent in common
law countries, explains this distinction. French judges do not, in a case

of first instance, create ways to prevent unjust results (equity); nor do
they cite their and other, prior judicial opinions as guiding, if not
binding, law (stare decisis) (Provine, 1996). This is not to say that
French judiciaries are entirely without power; Rohr (1995) and Stone
(1994) chronicle France’s Constitutional Council’s increasing competi-
tion with majoritarian policy-makers. Counter-trends notwithstanding,
for the present we assess civil law judiciaries to be more constricted in
judicialization than common law judiciaries. In the British common
law case, for example, Sterett (1994) demonstrates that even without a
written constitution upon which they might invalidate majoritarian
action, British judiciaries are powerful policy actors across a host of
substantive policy areas. The United States, perhaps to a greater extent
than any other common law nation, demonstrates vast judicial
influence, with Marbury v. Madison and Brown v. Board of Education as
the classic and contemporary watershed of judicialization.
With respect to impact on policy-making and the administrative
state, scholars have underscored the impact of common law courts.
Speaking to policy-making, Kagan (2001) has argued that policy-
making is increasingly articulated on the adversarial stages of common
law courts, giving the judiciary increasing power in defining policy.
Kagan (1997) is less conclusive about whether ‘adversarial legalism’
affects Europe as much as it has the United States, suggesting that the
United States may even adopt the more efficient, unified approaches of
Europe’s social policies such as social insurance.
Speaking to the structure and operation of the administrative state,
Rosenbloom (1983), Rosenbloom and O’Leary (1997), O’Leary (1993)
and O’Leary and Wise (1991) have long contended that the common
law judiciary has played a major role in retrofitting the civil service
within constitutional schemes. Rosenbloom concludes that the impact
has been profound. Where administrators once enjoyed immunity, the
courts have played a major role in creating an administrative environ-
ment ‘governed by constitutional law’ (Rosenbloom, 2000: 45). Several
examples illustrate this observation. In an area of institutional reform
litigation stemming from the common law case Brown v. Board of
Education (1954), O’Leary and Wise (1991) emphasized that the judi-
ciary is often the most powerful partner in the partnership of man-
agers, judges, and legislators. The theme of a judiciary shaping and
directing civil service is emphasized again by Hamilton (1999) in the
area of civil service patronage. Hamilton calls to the attention of public
administration scholars and practitioners the influence of the relatively
recent evolution of common law in prohibiting consideration of polit-

ical association in the decision to hire, promote, terminate, or grant
contracts.
Hamilton’s study illustrates the broader impact of the judiciary on per-
sonnel relative to civil rights; Hamilton’s own example largely focuses on
civil servants’ First Amendment right of political association. Beyond
freedom of association, courts have been particularly influential in regu-
lating a host of personnel decisions using the broad civil rights provisions
of the Constitution and the civil rights statutes. Today, common law
interpretations of civil service issues are frequently founded on the rights
of free speech; religion; privacy; procedural and substantive due process;
and equal protection (DiNome, Yaklin and Rosenbloom, 1999; Wise et al.,
1999). For example, Wise et al. (1999) illustrate that workplace searches of
public employees will be governed by judicial interpretation of the Fourth
Amendment privacy standards. The standards are far from formulaic, but
are ‘decided on a case-by-case basis’ (1999: 195).
Another aspect of legal tradition, explored in more detail below, is its
effect on judicial structure. For example, legal tradition influences the
nature of jurisdiction, whether unitary or specialized. The common-
law tradition is more indicative of judicial jurisdiction that encom-
passes ‘not only civil and criminal matters but also public law litigation
and usually judicial review of legislation’ (Guarnieri, Pederzoli and
Thomas, 2002: 81), as in the United States.
While the assumption is that common law traditions foster relatively
higher levels of judicialization, our theory deserves further attention
and testing as ‘the distinction between civil and common law
[becomes] less apparent today than during the initial stages of their
development’ (Christensen, 2001/02: 400). Indeed, for some time
scholars (Hurst, 1977) have suggested that the 20th century witnessed
a shift towards civil law, fueled by the increase of the welfare state, and
the dominance of the legislative and executive functions relative to
that increase. At the same time, the emergence of supra-/international
judicial bodies, such as the International Criminal Court, increasingly
blend civil/common law approaches in order to be relevant to multiple
jurisdictions.
These observations suggest a shifting tension between civil and
common law traditions, with increasing movement towards hybridiza-
tion of the two. At this point our best conclusion is reflected in von
Mehren’s words (2000: 16): ‘as the values (of civil and common
law) are incommensurate, no permanent balance is likely to be struck;
accordingly, an element of instability exists on both sides of the
equation that can cause each system to move closer to – or retreat from –
the other system’s position’.
The increasing, if not cyclical, convergence of civil and common law
traditions notwithstanding, our reading of the research is that the
central tendencies of civil law judiciaries tend less towards judicializa-
tion than do common law judiciaries.
Structural rules and powers
In many ways a reflection of a sovereign’s legal tradition,1 we examine

here the implications of judicial structural rules and powers on the
comparative policy impact of US and EU courts.
Judicial appointment
We consider first the aspect of judicial appointment. In the United
States, judicial appointment to the federal bench is primarily the pre-
rogative of the Executive branch, and such appointments are, as a rule,
life tenures. In France, however, guarantees of life tenure are absent
(Provine, 1996: 183). European countries have generally preferred
judicial predictability over independence. Illustratively, Kagan (2001:
111–12) observes that ‘in the Netherlands (and in other hierarchically
organized European legal systems) judges are recruited, socialized, and
supervised in a manner explicitly designed to maximize adjudicative
predictability … to homogenize the judiciary to make its decisions
legally competent, uniform, and predictable’.
Furthermore, the selection of these judges, unlike in many European
countries, is observed (Jackson, 1974; Kagan, 2001: 112; Provine, 1996:
200) to be as much as function of political prowess as a successful legal
career. For example, Kritzer (1996: 175–6) notes that ‘many judges on the
US federal bench have had extensive experience in both legislative and
administrative roles’. We believe that judicial appointments based on
political or administrative experience increases the likelihood of judicial-
ization. A contrasting illustration drawn from Great Britain supports this
proposition. ‘In England, a judge who is a former barrister with no direct
experience in political administration might be very reluctant to make a
decision that result[s] in having to deal with the day-to-day operation of a
prison or a school district or a mental hospital’ (Kritzer, 1996: 176).
We conclude this section with the following middle range theories
MRT2A: Life- tenure judicial appointments encourage independence

and insulation that foster judicialization
MRT2B: Appointment of judges based on political/administrative

experience encourages judicialization
Standing and judicial review

We suggest in this section that judicialization, reflecting constitutional
separation of powers, is a function of the rules of standing and the
structures of judicial review. To organize this section and to encour-
age continuity in the field, we draw upon Epstein, Knight and
Shvetsova’s (2001) articulation of these comparative aspects. Those
authors identified four ‘key characteristics’ of court systems: judicial
standing, type of judicial review, timing of judicial review, and institu-
tional structures of judicial review. We suggest that each of these
aspects has implications for the comparative impact of US and
European courts.
Standing and type of judicial review

Judicial standing concerns the powers/rights of a litigant to bring a suit
before a court. In United States these powers are, in many respects,
more limited than in European countries.
As specified in the US Constitution, disputes can be brought to a
court’s attention only by a party with an individual stake and
‘sufficient interest’ (Canon and Johnson, 1999: 39) in the dispute. The
type of review necessary for standing in this context is known as con-
crete review. In European countries, however, a broader host of actors,
including governmental actors, may bring suit based on concrete
review or abstract review. An observation about Germany illustrates
both the concept and theory behind abstract review. In Germany, the
nation ‘has theorized its form of abstract review at the behest of
officials with automatic standing by casting the Constitutional Court
as part of the state machinery charged with the welfare-producing duty
of providing a constitutional legal order through the vindication of
“objective”, not “subjective” or individual, rights’ (Reitz, 2002: 458).
This means that many European courts can and are encouraged to
entertain claims that may be brought by parties lacking individual
interest in a dispute, as long as those parties are petitioning the defense
of rights recognized by society.
The implications of standing rules on judicialization are drawn out
by Reitz (2002: 453): ‘a system of concrete review undoubtedly restricts
judicial review, as compared with a system combining both abstract
and concrete review-at least the class of parties with standing is
restricted and there are certain issues which are unlikely to be raised in
a system confined to concrete review’. While there is naturally some

debate about the similarity between concrete and abstract review
systems (see Reitz, 2002), we draw our middle-range theory from the
underlying rationale separating these two concepts.
MRT3: Standing rules of concrete review are more likely to circum-

scribe judicialization than systems with hybrid (concrete/abstract
review) standing rules
Timing. Like standing rules, the US courts are also more bound than
European courts on when a dispute can be heard. The powers of US
courts only reach those disputes that have occurred or otherwise have
an element of ripeness. When judicial action cannot provide relief
either because a state act had not yet occurred or because the occur-
rence became moot, US litigants are denied recourse. This requirement
is commonly referred to as ex post/a posteriori relief.
In contrast, the powers of European courts generally reach ex post/a
posteriori and a priori/ex ante, to cover those state acts that have not
fully materialized (Epstein, Knight and Shvetsova, 2001). Because these
courts are able to adjudicate across more temporal stages of a policy
issue, we offer the following middle range theory:
MRT4: Judicialization is more likely when timing rules are not

restricted to acts ex post/a posteriori
Institutional structures of judicial review: jurisdiction

In this section, we address some of the confusion that readers may be
having as to which courts we are analysing. While the US Supreme Court
is most comparable to many European countries’ constitutional courts,
our target of inquiry is broader than the ‘highest’ court in each land. The
breadth of our inquiry hinges upon the concept of judicial review, or the
power of a court to review the constitutionality of a state act. While
Epstein, Knight and Shvetsova (2001: 121) refer to these powers as the
institutional structures of judicial review, or ‘who has power to engage
judicial review’, we refer to these structures as jurisdiction.
While we recognize a range in the European experience, the typical
European country’s judiciary system circumscribes the jurisdiction of
constitutional review to a single constitutional court, often operating
within a non-hierarchical judicial system, where jurisdiction is special-
ized. As an extreme example, the French judicial system is disaggre-
gated, lacking a central administrative component. The Constitutional
Council, the body with the concentrated powers of constitutional

review, is not even technically part of the French judicial arrangement
(Provine, 1996; Rohr, 1995).
However, in the US context, the powers of judicial review are nearly
ubiquitous throughout the lower courts and higher courts, but within
a highly hierarchical dual (state and federal) court system, ultimately
bound by the decisions of the US Supreme Court. Notwithstanding,
van Horn et al. (2001) point out that the hierarchical US system can be
misleading because, in reality, ‘most lower court decisions [state and
federal] are never reviewed by higher courts’. As an illustration of the
power of ‘lower’ courts in the United States, many state courts have
gone beyond federal judicial and legislative mandates to declare
unequal and unconstitutional their state’s education funding schemes
(Kramer, 2002; Wise and Christensen, 2005).
This leads us to a middle-range theory concerning jurisdiction and
court system structure.
MRT5: Non-hierarchical judicial systems, where jurisdiction is spe-

cialized and the power of constitutional review concentrated, gravi-
tate less towards judicialization than do judicial systems where the
power of constitutional review is open to a broad range of jurisdic-
tions within a centralized, if not hierarchical, court system
As Guarnieri et al. (2002: 79) observe, the less specialized the ‘the
scope of judicial decisions is the more politically significant a judge’s
role is likely to be’. Nevertheless, Guarnieri et al. recognize some debate
in the literature relative to this point. Our theory offers a good starting
point in testing this inquiry in the future.
Intergovernmental relations
We explore here the impact of intergovernmental relations on

judicialization. This exposition drives at the very heart of the role of
judiciaries in the policy process. In a comparative analysis of three
countries, Wise and Brown (1999) explore how intergovernmental
disputes are resolved through political and/or judicial means. They
conclude that various countries utilize judicial mechanisms in differ-
ent degrees. Japan, for example, more often uses political avenues
of dispute resolution than judicial. However, the United States
relies heavily upon judicial means to resolve intergovernmental
conflict.
These findings stem, in part, from considerations already raised in

the framework presented in this chapter – legal tradition and reach of
powers of judicial review. Germany, for example, has empowered its
Constitutional Court to ‘determine controversies between organs or
government with respect to their relative rights and powers, such as
the boundaries between Bund and Länder governments’ (Wise and
Brown, 1999: 534). Even ordinary courts in the United States wield this
power.
Japan, however, prefers to ‘dispose of a case on nonconstitutional
grounds, and wherever possible, statutes should be construed so as
to avoid a constitutional issue’ (Wise and Brown, 1999: 538–9). Like
Japan, Provine (1996: 179) notes, courts in France are not on equal
footing with other government institutions; ‘institutional limitations
on judicial policy making have undoubtedly discouraged activists from
enlisting courts in their efforts’. These limitations come in the form of
placing the judiciary subject to the authority of the Minster of Justice,
who is an executive appointee (Provine, 1996: 183).2
Based on these considerations we propose the following middle-
range theory relative to intergovernmental relations:
MRT6: Judiciaries bearing more responsibility to resolve inter-

governmental conflicts and individual and societal problems wield
greater powers of judicialization than do courts situated within
countries where such disputes are primarily channelled through
political (executive or legislative) avenues
Relationship to supranational judiciaries
In this final section, we explore perhaps one of the newest aspects of

judicialization: the implications of supranational judiciaries for sover-
eign, judicial policy potency. While the United States has clearly
resisted such international courts as the International Criminal Court
(ICC), a vast number of countries have not (Christensen, 2001/02). In
Europe, the policy influence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has
been carefully detailed, with Conant (2002: 241) concluding that the
ECJ faces a broad range of responses from Member States including
‘exit, voice, and loyalty, like most institutions in democratic states’.
Historically, France resisted submission to EU courts and did not
refer cases to its jurisdiction until 1969, when ‘a regional appellate
court, explicitly recognized all of the decisions of the European Court
of Justice as binding’ (Provine, 1996: 198). Today, EU courts are seen as
a ‘point of reference in French political debate’ and are studied by

French lawyers and students as ‘guidance in domestic disputes’ (ibid.).
Deference to supra- and international judicial bodies intuitively sug-
gests handing over powers of judicialization to a different body. For
example, the judiciaries within the United States remain comparatively
unbound by international judicial law and, according to common law,
remain primarily loyal to precedents set within their own jurisdictions.
In short, the hierarchy of US courts does not yet feature international
courts the way European systems do.
France provides the contrasting illustration. While French courts do
not enjoy the powers of judicial review, they have ‘reached decisions
that are sensitive to rights by other means, including reference to the
European Commission and Court on Human Rights’ (ibid.: 199). This
French form of ‘quasi-judicial review’ (Cappelletti, Kollmer and Olson,
1989) comes not by rejecting international institutions, but by aligning
with them and recognizing their jurisdiction.
Scholars such as Weiler (1994), have offered a thesis of judicial
empowerment to explain why national courts would defer cases to the
jurisdiction of the ECJ. These scholars suggest that deference to supra-
/international courts is an instrument by which ‘lower member courts
could employ judicial review over other political institutions; a practice
normally reserved for higher appellate courts’ (Ruggiero, 2002: 52, ref-
erencing Weiler (1994)). Affirming this, Alter (1996: 464) suggested
that lower courts had much more to gain by deference to the ECJ than
did higher national courts, which ‘had the most to lose by [allowing
the EJC to exercise] authority over national legal issues’.
These observations lead us to our final middle-range theories:
MRT7A: Higher court deference to supra-/international judicial

bodies leads to decreased powers of judicialization
MRT7B: Lower court deference to supra-/international judicial
bodies leads to increased powers of judicialization
Some scholarship is already available testing these theories, and

suggesting a need to nuance them.
By analysing lower, intermediate, and higher court referrals to the
ECJ, Stone Sweet and Brunell (1998) offer some evidence that the
inquiry needs much more detail. They found that activities of interme-
diate courts (appellate) should be accounted for, as appellate references
to the ECJ have outnumbered lower court references to the ECJ.
Furthermore, Stone Sweet and Brunell suggest that the inquiry needs to
account for substantive area of law. They note that in different areas of
case law the ECJ often encourages the position of a national court in a
particular area of law to gain their support.
By examining the implications of EU banana regulations for
Germany, Ruggiero (2002) suggests an additional dynamic that hear-
kens back to our theories about judicial structure (MRT5). Using a
rational institutionalist framework, Ruggiero (ibid.: 74) suggests that
national high courts (courts of last instance) sometimes ‘disempower’
the ECJ and EU in the minds of lower/intermediate courts; ‘the general
independence of the member state legal order and hierarchical struc-
ture may condition the likelihood of whether lower member court will
follow the precedence of the member court of last instance or of the
ECJ’.
The influence of supra-/international courts relative to national judi-
cialization is still evolving and appears, for now, to depend on particu-
lar circumstances. However, the middle range theories we offer in this
section, in connection with MRT5 (responding to Ruggiero’s observa-
tions) go some distance in clarifying the next steps around which
future research can coalesce.
Conclusion
We do not offer here a grand theory of comparative judicialization.

Rather, to encourage a common and concentrated language in this
area, we offer a newly growing field a framework within which to
conduct comparative analyses of the role of the judiciary in policy and
civil service. The framework we offer accounts for the potential impor-
tance of varying legal traditions; structural and constitutional judicial
features; mechanisms for resolving intergovernmental relations; and
the role of international judicial bodies
We note that the relationship between the judiciary and civil service
system is complex and dynamic. Notwithstanding, evidence suggests
that judicial influence of policy and public service configuration is
increasing. We contend that the ability to comparatively assess this
relationship is key to understanding contemporary civil service
systems.
While we have sought a parsimonious framework that builds upon
past models, we invite discussion of this framework – even thoughtful
additions and subtractions relative to its components. We agree with
Stone (1994: 447) that ‘judicialization is an empirically verifiable phe-
nomenon’, and, we have attempted to illustrate how our model might
be implemented by offering middle-range theories amenable to empir-

ical, comparative work.
Notes
1 For example, ‘how a nation prepares and selects its legal personnel depends
on prevailing principles of jurisprudence. As noted above, France differs
fundamentally from common-law nations … in the position it takes on the
origins of law and the role of judges’ (Provine, 1996).
2 ‘Rather than relying on individuals asserting rights, demanding damages and
otherwise seeking redress, Britain provides a broad net of social programs
to mitigate many of the inevitable misfortunes of modern life … [e.g., by]
by shifting consumer protection into the criminal arena, Britain has lifted
the responsibility for insuring fair dealing from the individual consumer and
placed it in the hands of a government agency’ (Kritzer, 1996).
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13
The Constitutional Responsibility
of the Civil Service*
John A. Rohr
This chapter examines the constitutional foundation of the American

civil service and suggests that the Constitution of the United States
serves as apt instrument for alerting American civil servants to the
important roles they play in the governance of their country. It is a
comparative study only in the sense that I show at the outset just why
the Constitution of the United States is a more likely candidate for this
pedagogical task than the constitutions of Canada, France, and the
United Kingdom
Canada, for example, has a strong constitutional tradition grounded
in a robust adherence to the principle of ‘responsible government’ that
antedates the present Confederation. It was most impressively rein-
forced by Pierre Eliot Trudeau’s ‘repatriation’ of Canada’s constitution
in the Constitutional Act of 1982. And yet this very constitution itself
has become a sign of contradiction because Quebec has never accepted
its legitimacy. The seriousness of the problem was brought home force-
fully in the remarkable 1999 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada
that under certain carefully specified conditions Quebec could legally
secede from the Confederation.1 To ground standards of civil service
action in so frail a constitution is to lean upon a bruised reed.
France is not likely to provide a constitutional foundation for its civil
service because of the sheer number of constitutions it has produced –
from 13 to 17 depending on what one means by a constitution. I recall
watching the evening news one night in 1990 when I was living
in Paris. On the screen, Robert Badinter, the Garde de Sceaux at that
time (something akin to a US Attorney General) was wryly explaining
that the French excelled in writing constitutions because they had so
much practice in doing so. Badinter’s light touch provided welcome
relief from the marked tendency of France’s critics to overstate the
201
seriousness of short-lived constitutions. Yes, France has had many con-

stitutions – too many no doubt – but this has not deterred leading con-
stitutional scholars such as François Luchaire and Gérard Conac from
entitling their magisterial text book quite simply La Constitution de la
République Française, thereby heightening the continuity of the great
principles that undergird the constitutions of France’s five republics.2
A far more serious problem for grounding the French civil service in
the constitution is the deep-seated, long-standing French antipathy
toward oaths in support of republican regimes. For many French polit-
ical scientists, oaths smack of monarchy – or worse – of the Vichy
regime of the Maréchal Pétain. As the late Marie-France Toinet put it,
‘the very thought of such an oath makes Frenchmen shiver’.3 This sen-
timent, of course, puts French political scientists at odds with their
American counterparts who seldom, if ever, find fault with the legally
mandated duty imposed upon all federal civil servants to take a
prospective oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
The United Kingdom is a constitutionally driven country, but certain
aspects of the British Constitution raise problems for our project.
Although we are often told that the British Constitution is unwritten,
this is not entirely true. To be precise, we should say that the
Constitution is written but uncodified.4 This makes it difficult for
foreign visitors and journalists (and perhaps even homegrown
Englishmen as well) to know just who must do what and to whom in
order to have a genuine constitutional issue. Indeed, so loose is the
meaning of constitution, that at times one gets the impression that a
constitutional issue is one that I consider important. American civil
servants are far less likely to have any such problem because they know
that an American constitutional issue must somehow be linked –
however tenuously, and sometimes very tenuously – to a specific article
or section of the Constitution of the United States. At least in prin-
ciple, if not always in fact, an American constitutional issue must
somehow or other fall within the four corners of the constitutional
text.
Before turning to the American civil service, a word about the
meaning of responsibility is in order. I use the word in both its indi-
vidual and collective senses. That is, I am interested in both the
conventional question of how the individual civil servant might
demonstrate responsible behaviour and in the vaguer and less manage-
able sense of how the civil service as an institution might exercise
responsibility. For example, I am interested in how the individual
American civil servant thinks about the oath he or she has taken to
Constitutional Responsibility 203
uphold the constitution and also in how he or she engages his or her
peers in dialogue about the oath they share in common. Further,
I would like to know to what extent the civil servant and his or her
peers encourage their training officers to integrate some constitutional
principles into the training curriculum. Clearly, there is no bright line
dividing individual from institutional questions. Most questions have a
little bit of each.
Underlying my argument is the presumption that civil servants in all
four countries, and probably in many other countries as well, play
enormously significant roles in the governance of their countries.
For purposes of this chapter, my high-toned view of the civil service is
simply a presumption. I have defended the grounds of this presumption
elsewhere.5
American civil servants have contributed significantly to the develop-
ment of constitutional doctrine because of the problematic character of
their legal status. I say problematic because of their dual role as
employees and citizens. Like civil servants everywhere, they experience
the inner tension that comes from this dual role. As employees, they
are the organizational inferiors of their political masters and should
stand ready to do their bidding. As citizens, however, civil servants are
the masters of the elected officials and, like all citizens, have a duty to
see to it that the elected officials serve the public faithfully. To har-
monize these two roles is no easy matter. Consequently, questions of
disciplining civil servants often follow the well-worn path to the court-
house, that traditional repository, as de Tocqueville noted, of most of
the difficulties arising in the American political culture.
The conflict of roles often becomes acute when the employee’s
freedom of speech clashes with management’s insistence on silence.
Let us examine three Supreme Court decisions addressing this peren-
nial issue. I turn to decisions of the Supreme Court not only because
they state the law of the land authoritatively as of a certain time but
also because the justices give reasons for their opinions which are often
subjected to criticism by dissenting justices who disagree with the
outcome of a case. Thus, there is a dialectic element to Supreme Court
opinions that can serve as a model for civil servants who, ideally,
would engage one another in constitutional argument over events
in their agencies. Courts provide certain guidance for constitutional
argument among alert civil service citizens.
Our story of freedom of speech goes back to 1892, when a policeman
in New Bedford, Massachusetts, lost his job for talking about politics
in violation of a civil service reform regulation forbidding such
conversations during working hours. The officer maintained that

the regulation violated the guarantee of freedom of speech in the
Massachusetts Constitution. His argument was rejected by the Supreme
Court of Massachusetts in an opinion by Justice Holmes, who would
later sit on the Supreme Court of the United States. Holmes’ opinion
was remembered for the pithy phrase that ‘The petitioner may have a
constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right
to be a policeman’.6 As Holmes’ reputation as a jurist grew, the clever
maxim grew with him until it came to dominate public personnel
law suits throughout the first half of the 20th century. Eventually, it
became known as the ‘right-privilege dichotomy’, thereby emphasizing
the purely gratuitous nature of public service employment. During the
McCarthy era, the principle was frequently used to fire civil servants on
the flimsiest evidence or no evidence at all. If public employment is a
privilege and not a right, the employing authority had unfettered dis-
cretion to remove whomever it chose to remove. This situation became
intolerable and gradually the courts began to move away from the
right–privilege dichotomy toward standards that would give some pro-
tection to harassed civil servants. This tendency came to full bloom in
the 1968 decision Pickering v. Board of Education.7
Marvin Pickering was a school teacher in Will County, Illinois, who
wrote a letter to a local newspaper criticizing the way the Board of
Education spent taxpayers’ money. The school board fired him for
conduct ‘detrimental to the efficient operation and administration of
the schools of the district’. Pickering sued on the grounds that he was
being punished simply for exercising his constitutionally guaranteed
freedom of speech and the press. Under the privilege doctrine,
Pickering would have been told he had a constitutional right to write
to a newspaper but he had no constitutional right to be a teacher. By
1968, however, the courts had moved far enough away from the pri-
vilege doctrine to decide the case by setting up a ‘balancing test’
between ‘the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting
upon matters of public concern and the interests of the State, as an
employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs
through its employees’, Justice Thurgood Marshall, writing for the
court, found the balance favoured Marvin Pickering. Marshall’s opinion
gave particular attention to Pickering’s status as a teacher. Looking
beyond Pickering’s individual rights under the First Amendment,
Marshall noted that teachers ‘are as a class, the members of the com-
munity most likely to have informed and definite opinions as to how
funds allotted to the operation of the schools should be spent’. Thus,
Pickering prevailed not only because of his individual rights but

also because of a distinctive contribution he could make to the public
interest because of his role as a teacher.
A few years later, the US Supreme Court was called upon once again
to examine the constitutional rights of a civil servant in Connick v.
Myers.8 Sheila Myers was an assistant district attorney in New Orleans
who was transferred involuntarily from one section of the criminal
court to another. She protested the move and maintained it was
intended to punish her for outspoken criticism of her boss, District
Attorney Harry Connick. Myers incurred Connick’s wrath by circu-
lating a questionnaire in the office testing morale among the District
Attorney’s staff. He fired her for insubordination. She challenged this
action by arguing that the real reason for her dismissal was to punish
her for circulating the petition.
Basing her argument squarely on Pickering, Myers prevailed in the
federal district court and in the Court of Appeals. Somewhat sur-
prisingly, however, the US Supreme Court reversed the lower courts
and found for District Attorney Connick. Justice White, writing for a
narrow 5–4 majority, held that Pickering did not apply to this case
because the speech in question, Myers’ questionnaire, had insufficient
public interest to trigger First Amendment protection. White reasoned
that the First Amendment protections civil servants enjoy are not
intended to provide them with a ‘grant of immunity from employee
grievances not afforded by the First Amendment to those who do not
work for the state’. Justice White seemed to be concerned with pro-
viding an even playing field for both private and public employees in
matters that are not of serious public concern. Thus the advantageous
position civil servants enjoyed in Pickering was somewhat scaled back
in Myers by the provision that First Amendment protections apply to
civil servants only when matters of public concern are involved.
Sheila Myers was no whistle-blower, but had she gone public with
her concerns she might well have won sufficient media attention to
make it impossible for Justice White to say there was no public issue
involved. The irony of the Myers decision was that Sheila Myers would
have strengthened her case considerably had she gone public with it
to the newspapers and television shows. Rather than embarrass her
agency with public revelations, she took the more responsible route of
keeping her complaints in-house and this, it turns out, was her fatal
error. The irony is compounded by the unsavoury lesson for manage-
ment in public organizations. The perverse teaching of Myers is that
management would be well advised to fire disgruntled employees at
the very first sign of their unhappiness before they have a chance to
contact the media. This, of course, would violate every canon and stan-
dard of good management, common sense and decency. It under-
scores, however, the depth of the clash of cultures between the realms
of public management and constitutional law. As such this case
puts managers on alert to the fact that good management and good
constitutional law do not always harmonize.9
Further troubling lessons emerge from Rankin v. McPherson, a case
involving Ardith McPherson, a black, 19-year-old probationary em-
ployee in the constable’s office of Harris County, Texas. On 30 March
1981, McPherson heard the shocking news that President Ronald
Reagan had been shot outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC.
She turned to her boyfriend and fellow employee and said, ‘If they go
for him again, I hope they get him’. Unbeknown to McPherson,
another employee was within earshot, heard the unfortunate remark
and reported it to Constable Rankin, who immediately fired McPherson.
Shortly thereafter, McPherson sued for reinstatement in a federal
district court in Texas. She argued that even though she was a prob-
ationary employee, she could not be terminated for exercising her con-
stitutional right to free speech, but that this is precisely what Constable
Rankin had done. The district court rejected her plea but the Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed, thereby prompting Rankin’s
appeal to the Supreme Court where McPherson prevailed. Following
the Myers precedent, Justice Thurgood Marshall found McPherson’s
speech was of public concern and therefore protected by the First
Amendment. The relevance of the First Amendment was not enough
for McPherson to prevail. She needed a favourable outcome from the
Pickering balancing test wherein Justice Marshall weighed McPherson’s
free speech interest against Rankin’s managerial interest in firing her
for her intemperate remarks. He found the balance to be struck in
McPherson’s favour.
In a vigorous dissent, Justice Scalia maintained the court’s majority
misunderstood the true nature of the case before them. For Scalia, the
issue ‘is not, as the Court suggests, whether Rankin’s interest in dis-
charging [McPherson] outweighs her rights under the First Amendment’.
Scalia maintains that the court’s majority errs in confining Rankin’s
interest in this case to discharging McPherson. His correct interest is ‘in
preventing the expression of such statements in his agency’ as those
McPherson had uttered. Scalia concedes that termination may well be
too severe a punishment, but decisions of this nature are to be made by
the Texas Civil Service Commission not by the US Supreme Court. By
placing inordinate emphasis on McPherson’s termination, the majority

had created a situation in which McPherson could be reinstated and
then repeat her ill-advised comment on the first day she is back on the
job. Scalia’s argument brings home the main problem with balancing
tests. Considerable attention must be given to what goes on the scale.
The court should have balanced a broad range of possible adminis-
trative actions for Rankin, not just his interest in firing McPherson.
The examination of these three cases, Pickering, Myers, and McPherson,
gives a hint of what I mean when I write about responsibility grounded
in the Constitution. Having taken an oath to uphold the Constitution,
civil servants would do well to study cases such as the three mentioned
above. Regardless of whether a particular civil servant agrees or dis-
agrees with the outcome of a particular case, he or she will have
learned several principles that might be useful in one’s career. For
example, one learns the danger of relying on clever aphorisms, such as
Justice Holmes’ comment on the policeman having no right to his job.
Pickering teaches the advantages of balancing tests, but Scalia’s dissent
in McPherson points out the limitations of such tests and the impor-
tance of putting the right object on the scale. Myers emphasizes the
link between constitutionally protected speech, and matters of serious
public interest. The opinions of the Supreme Court play an important
pedagogical role in instructing civil servants what their own rights and
those of others mean in practice.
The purpose of the constitutional study I suggest is not to form great
constitutional scholars; that we can leave to the law schools and the
political science departments. My goal is to provide the civil servant
with practical insights into constitutional practice. Such insights can
be gained even when most civil servants would disagree with a particu-
lar opinion. To illustrate my point, I have selected three decisions
I found rather questionable at least as far as my own sense of justice is
concerned. Let me tell the story of each of the cases and then let us
reflect upon them. The three cases address very different issues – child
abuse, Miranda rights, and federal pension benefits – but all three
points in the same direction, namely, that even judicial decisions that
seem unduly harsh or unfair provide useful lessons for civil servants
whose sense of responsibility is grounded in the constitution.
Let us begin with the child abuse decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago
County Department of Social Services.10 This case focused on the tragic
story of Joshua DeShaney, an abused child whose father had beaten
him ‘so severely that he suffered permanent brain damage and was ren-
dered profoundly retarded’. The boy’s mother sued the Department of
Social Services (DSS) of Winnebago County, Wisconsin, claiming that

the department’s failure to take affirmative action on Joshua’s behalf
deprived him of the liberty guaranteed by the due process clause of the
fourteenth amendment.
Joshua arrived in Winnebago County in 1980 as a one-year-old
infant in the care of his father, Randy, who had won custody of the
boy when the parents divorced while residing in Wyoming. Randy
married again and this marriage also ended in divorce. During the
divorce proceedings, Randy’s second wife told the police about her
husband’s abusive treatment of the boy, information that was duly
passed on to the DSS. The agency interviewed Randy who denied the
charges. When Joshua was admitted to a local hospital ‘with multiple
bruises and abrasions’, the DSS was again alerted to the possibility of
abuse. Joshua was placed temporarily in the custody of a hospital and
then under a child protection team that included several employees of
the DSS. Eventually, Joshua was returned to his father and shortly
thereafter signs of abuse were observed when the child was brought to
an emergency room. For the next six months Joshua’s case worker
noticed some hints of further abuse but still no action was taken. After
yet another trip to the emergency room, the case worker was denied
entrance to Randy’s home but nothing was done until the child – now
four years old – arrived again at the hospital after being beaten so
severely that he fell into a life-threatening coma. Finally, Randy was
tried and convicted of child abuse and Joshua was placed in an institu-
tion for the profoundly retarded where ‘he is expected to spend the rest
of his life’.
In view of this sorry record by the DSS, Joshua’s mother sued the DSS
in federal court for having denied her son his constitutionally guaran-
teed liberty under the fourteenth amendment. The Supreme Court of
the United States rejected the mother’s argument on the grounds that
the fourteenth amendment protects only against state action that
deprives a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law
(‘… nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property
without due process of law’). Chief Justice Rehnquist noted that this
decision did not preclude Joshua’s mother from bringing her suit in a
Wisconsin court. As far as the federal courts were concerned, her suit
could not go forward. Despite its shocking failure to act, it was not the
state of Wisconsin that brought about Joshua’s condition. It was his
father.
Our second example of a seemingly harsh judgment comes from the
field of law enforcement, specifically, the constitutional obligation of
arresting police officers to advise detainees of their right to remain

silent and to speak to a lawyer. In 1979, Brian Burbine was arrested for
burglary in Cranston, Rhode Island.11 The Cranston police suspected
Burbine of being the man wanted for a murder committed in nearby
Providence, Rhode Island. They so advised their Providence colleagues
and soon three Providence officers were on their way to Cranston to
question Burbine. Meanwhile, Burbine’s sister, knowing nothing of her
brother’s possible connection to a murder, telephoned the Cranston
Public Defender’s office to seek counsel for her brother’s trouble with
the Cranston police for burglary. Allegra Munson, the public defender
assigned to Burbine’s burglary charge, called the Cranston police to
advise them that she was of counsel to Burbine. She was told her client
was in custody but that there would be no questioning that evening.
No mention was made of the possible link to the Providence murder.
Despite the assurances given to Ms Munson, police officers from
both jurisdictions interrogated Burbine. They were careful to advise
him of his Miranda rights without telling him he already had a lawyer.
During the interrogation, he signed a statement waiving his rights to
have a lawyer present and as the night wore on he eventually con-
fessed to having committed the Providence murder. He was tried and
convicted but appealed the conviction on the grounds that his con-
fession was inadmissible because the misinformation given to his
lawyer deprived him of his Miranda rights.
The Supreme Court rejected Burbine’s argument and the conviction
was upheld. In her opinion of the court, Justice O’Connor found no
merit in Burbine’s complaint that the police had misled his lawyer. The
Miranda rights were the defendant’s alone and could not be asserted
by the accused’s lawyer. The purpose of the Miranda warning was to
safeguard against coercion, or, in Justice O’Connor’s words, ‘to dis-
sipate the compulsion inherent in custodial interrogation’. There was
no evidence indicating any coercion had been used by the police in
getting Burbine to confess. Deception? Yes, but not coercion and
Miranda rights deal with coercion. At this point in her opinion, Justice
O’Connor drew a distinction between the professional ethics of the
police and the demands of constitutional law. O’Connor was clearly
displeased with the loose ethics of the police in this case but her
displeasure did not rise to the level of a constitutional infraction.
My third and final example of a seemingly harsh judgment concerns
a careless bureaucratic error in determining the benefits due to a retired
federal employee.12 Charles Richmond had worked for many years
as a welder at the Navy Public Works Center in San Diego. He took a
disability annuity from the US Navy in 1981 pursuant to a finding by

the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that his impaired vision
prevented him from doing his job. The terms of the annuity imposed
limitations on how much money he could earn without jeopardizing
the annuity itself. From 1982 to 1985, Richmond drove a school bus
on a part-time basis which brought him $12,494 annually, a sum well
within the approved guidelines. The next year, he was offered addi-
tional employment with increased compensation. Before accepting the
new position, he consulted an employee relations specialist at the
Navy Public Works Center, who assured him the increased income
would present no problem. Furthermore, he gave Richmond OPM doc-
uments from the Federal Personnel Manual to support his opinion.
Unfortunately, the documents and the specialist’s opinions were out of
date. After taking the new position, Richmond was told he had
exceeded the amount he could earn and had nearly $4,000 withheld
from his annuity income. Richmond brought suit against OPM to
recover the money he had lost due to the erroneous advice he had
received from the employee specialist. His suit worked its way through
the lower courts until it eventually reached the Supreme Court of the
United States where Richmond’s claim was defeated.
Richmond had based his case on the doctrine of ‘equitable estoppel’.
This means that ‘if A’s statement or conduct reasonably induces B’s
detrimental reliance, A will not be permitted to act inconsistently with
its statement or conduct’. In Richmond’s argument, he is B and the
federal government is A. To his detriment, he relied upon erroneous
information given by A, and therefore A should be ‘estopped’ from
taking action against him for doing so.
Writing for the court, Justice Kennedy relied primarily on Article 1,
Section 9, of the Constitution which provides: ‘No money shall be
drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made
by law’. The award Richmond seeks ‘would be in direct contravention
of the federal statute upon which his ultimate claim to the funds must
rest’. In effect, the well-intentioned Richmond is asking for money
from the US Treasury which has never been appropriated. There can be
no place for the estoppel doctrine here, ‘for the courts cannot estop the
Constitution’. Therefore the claim must be denied.
I hope you have a sense of why I consider these three decisions
somewhat harsh and unfair. To be sure, something can be said for each
of them. To Joshua’s mother we can say that at the end of the day, the
fourteenth amendment does say ‘no State shall deprive …’ (emphasis
added). We can remind Brian Burbine that the Miranda warnings were
intended to benefit the accused and not his lawyer. And we can
ask Charles Richmond if he really wants us to pay him with non-
appropriated funds.
These answers might have some merit in a technical or even literal
sense, but they still fall short of being exemplars of justice. It might be
best to characterize these decisions as constitutionally plausible but
harsh and unfair. I have selected such decisions for this chapter to
highlight the opportunity they offer to conscientious civil servants to
use their administrative discretion to bring about fairness in future
cases with similar circumstances. My point is ethical rather than
strictly legal. Supreme Court decisions upholding seemingly harsh and
unfair treatment of persons permit agencies to continue to act in the
same way in the future without requiring them to do so. Administrators
have the discretion to take a gentle line even if the law permits a
harsher line, if the circumstances warrant such gentleness. Just when
and where an administrator should be severe or gentle is a matter of
prudence which is, of course, a crucial element in the responsible exer-
cise of administrative discretion. We have already touched upon the
Supreme Court’s pedagogical role for civil servants and elected officials.
This is true not only when we see the court at its best but under less
favourable conditions as well. When it comes to moral aspiration, the
Supreme Court, like the Constitution it interprets, provides a floor not
a ceiling.
Examination of Supreme Court decisions was intended to provide
concrete examples of constitutional interpretation that civil servants
might use when faced with problems on how to implement their oath
to uphold the constitution. We looked at cases where the Supreme
Court performed admirably as well as where its performance was found
wanting. In both types of situations, the court’s reasoning is instruc-
tive. The final case concerns the long-standing practice of political
patronage, where our approach is a bit different. Rather than offer
guidance to civil servants on how they might fulfil their oath, I look
upon the civil service itself as an institution that demands serious con-
stitutional reflection and thereby contributes to the development of
constitutional doctrine. The case in question is Rutan et al. v. Republican
Party of Illinois (1990).13 On two occasions prior to Rutan, the Supreme
Court had declared dismissal of public service personnel on patronage
grounds unconstitutional. The point at issue in Rutan was whether that
doctrine should be extended to personnel actions less serious than dis-
missal, for example, denial of promotions, transfers, and recalls from
temporary layoffs. Does the Constitution forbid such decisions to be
taken on grounds of partisan loyalty? The Supreme Court said yes and
thereby triggered a spirited dissent from Justice Scalia which, in turn,
prompted a no less spirited response from Justice Stevens. Taken
together, they provided a full dress review of the crucial role of histori-
cal practice in constitutional interpretation. History was at the centre
of Scalia’s dissent. How can it be, he asks, that political patronage, a
practice as old as the Republic itself, could be unconstitutional? Justice
Stevens answers that patronage is unconstitutional because it rests on
the discredited right–privilege dichotomy which, as explained above,
opened the door to the dismissal on purely partisan grounds of persons
fully qualified and competent to hold their public office. The only pos-
sible justification for such a practice is to consider the public office as a
privilege which could be withdrawn at the pleasure of the office
holder’s superior. Thus the centrepiece of Stevens’ argument is a string
of personnel decisions from the McCarthy era of the early 1950s to the
late 1960s and culminating in Pickering v. Board of Education, which put
an end to the privilege doctrine that had dominated public personnel
law throughout the first half of the 20th century. It is quite clear that
in Justice Stevens’ jurisprudence an authoritative judicial decision
trumps constitutional practice no matter how long or how venerable.
In reply, Justice Scalia offers a brief compendium of the ‘original
intent’ doctrine which has claimed so much attention in recent years.
To Stevens’ charge that Scalia is trying to resurrect the right–privilege
dichotomy, that ‘has met with unequivocal repudiation’ by the
Supreme Court, Scalia responds:
‘That will not do. If the right-privilege distinction was once used
to explain the practice [of patronage], and if that distinction is to
be repudiated, then one must simply devise some other theory to
explain it. The order of precedence is that a constitutional theory
must be wrong if it contradicts a clear constitutional tradition, not
that a clear constitutional tradition must be wrong if it does not
conform to the current constitutional theory. On Justice Stevens’
view of the matter, this Court examines a historical practice,
endows it with an intellectual foundation, and later, by simply
undermining that foundation, relegates the constitutional tra-
dition to the dustbin of history. That is not how constitutional
adjudication works.’
Anticipating the obvious objection that racial segregation in public

schools could not have been overruled by the courts under his theory,
Scalia replies that he refers only to well-established traditions that had

been uncontroversial for decades. Racial segregation was always con-
troversial and never met with the nearly universal acceptance that
patronage enjoyed throughout most of the history of the United States.
Clearly in Scalia’s jurisprudence, judge-made constitutional theories
are no match for robust widely accepted traditions. This enlightening
debate between Stevens and Scalia finds the civil service at the heart of
one of the great constitutional controversies of our time.
Conclusion
Throughout this chapter I have tried to develop the theme of the con-
stitutional importance of American civil servants. As for responsibility,
I suggest but one innovation which would be extremely controversial
but, if accepted, would help high-ranking civil servants come to a
deeper understanding of their roles as constitutional actors. Quite
simply, I propose that members of the Senior Executive Service promise
openly and publicly that they will not vote in any local, state or federal
election as long as they hold their official positions.
My proposal will surely meet serious criticism and rightly so. Some
will argue that it will deprive the electorate of thousands of its
most informed participants. Others will say it renders nugatory the
impressive argument that career officials are model citizens for the rest
of us.
My primary reason for offering this proposal is pedagogical – to
invite the high ranking civil servant to reflect on the high status he
enjoys in the constitutional order he has sworn to uphold. It would
also give assurances to his political master of his non-partisanship – or,
to be more precise, of his bipartisanship – supported by the statutory
language on responsibility in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.
Presidents and presidential appointees should be free to pursue their
political agenda, secure in the knowledge that their high ranking civil
servants are trustworthy while at the same time they know these same
politically loyal civil servants will have the same loyalty to the next
cohort of presidential appointees and their successors. This loyalty
would include safeguarding the secrets of previous administrations as is
the traditional constitutional practice in the United Kingdom.
I do not propose a secular version of the Vicar of Bray. The twofold
loyalty I support is not grounded in the vicar’s cynicism but in the con-
scientious ideal of the highest form of public service – the preservation of
a constitutional republic.
This country shall never want for zealous partisans who enter poli-
tics for such worthy ends as stopping terrorism, effecting meaningful
healthcare policies, reforming the military services, maintaining ade-
quate force levels for all services, etc. Americans also need a small cadre
of civil servants who might have entered upon their careers many years
ago for any number of reasons but now see themselves as single-
mindedly dedicated to that cause above causes – the preservation of
the constitutional order of the Republic. They realize that the great
constitutional officers of the Republic cannot complete their appointed
rounds without adequate administrative support.
The proposal I put forward would be strictly voluntary. Any effort to
enshrine it in law or regulation would clearly violate the first amend-
ment. The political subordination to the president and to the heads of
his executive departments will not make mere ‘yes men’ of these high-
ranking civil servants I envision. Administration officials will soon
learn that these non-voting civil servants are as loyal as any member of
the administration but they are loyal in a markedly different way and
for markedly different reasons. The civil servant supports the president
of the day enthusiastically but always in a measured way so as to
reserve for the constitution itself ‘that last ounce of commitment’.14
In a word, I am suggesting a plan that might possibly start senior
American civil servants on a path that could earn them the prestige
enjoyed by their senior counterparts in Canada, France and the United
Kingdom. At the outset of this chapter, I tried to show why the consti-
tutional traditions of these three countries were less useful for peda-
gogic purposes than the US Constitution. This is not a serious problem
for high ranking civil servants in these countries because they have
earned prestige by other means. Perhaps US civil servants could link
the ‘non-voting bipartisanship’ I advocate to serious constitutional
study and reflection in order to enhance their self-awareness as men
and women who bear serious burdens of governance and deserve the
respect of their countrymen for whom they bear these burdens well.
Notes
* Several of the themes touched upon in this chapter are developed more
fully in my Civil Servants and Their Constitutions (Lawrence, KS: University
Press of Kansas, 2002). Conversely some themes touched upon in that book
are extended and more fully developed in this chapter. I wish to thank the
University Press of Kansas for granting permission to make use of my 2002
book in this chapter.
1 Reference re: Secession of Quebec, [1998] 2 R.C.S., 218.
2 François Luchaire and Gérard Conac, La Constitution de la république

française (Paris: Economica, 1987).
3 Marie-France Toinet, ‘La morale bureaucratique: Perspectives trans-
atlantiques et Franco-américaines’, Revue internationale de science politique,
9 (July 1988), 196.
4 Philip Norton, The Constitution in Flux (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), p. 5.
5 John A. Rohr, Ethics for Bureaucrats: An Essay on Law and Values (2nd edn,
New York: Dekker, 1989); and John A. Rohr, To Run a Constitution:
Legitimacy and the Administrative State (Lawrence, KS: University Press of
Kansas, 1986).
6 McAuliffe v. New Bedford, 155 Mass. 216 at 220 (1892).
7 391 U.S. 563 (1968).
8 103 S. Ct. 1684 (1983).
9 107 S. Ct. 2891 (1987).
10 109 S. Ct. 998 (1989).
11 106 S. Ct. 1135 (1986).
12 110 S. Ct. 2465 (1990).
13 110 S. Ct. 2729 (1990).
14 Richard Norton-Taylor, The Ponting Affair (London: Cecil Woolf, 1985),
p. 115.
14
Civil Service Systems and
Responsibility, Accountability and
Performance: A Multi-dimensional
Approach
Gerrit S.A. Dijkstra
Introduction
Performance is considered to stand at the very heart of modern public

management efforts aiming at the improvement of public sector pro-
ductivity and quality. Notwithstanding the often presumed modernity,
performance improvement is really a venerable topic; the roots stretch-
ing back in time to the beginnings of modern government and the
study of public administration. In its most essential meaning, perfor-
mance relates to actions taken as a response to a particular demand
more or less resulting in the accomplishment of a particular task or
tasks. This response contains both a collective (or more precisely for-
mulated: organizational) and an individual component. Often linked
to performance are appraisal of results and efforts. This appraisal (and
the mechanisms through which this is accomplished) is often what
performance discussions concentrate on, and the closely related con-
cepts of accountability and responsibility are crucial components in
this evaluative process. Given the diverse set of values involved in
assessing the results of public sector activity, appraisal has become a
compound and complex activity in which various routes can be taken
or mechanisms utilized (as explained below). In this chapter, I analyse
the role that the civil service plays in this process. Traditionally the
role of the civil service has been considered from a constitutional-legal
perspective and so evaluated as somewhat peripheral. After all, (demo-
cratic) responsibility and accountability were primarily constructed in
the context of ministerial–parliamentary relation at national level.
Thus, few of these inquiries included the aspect of civil service
accountability or responsibility and problems were perceived as easily
solved through the mechanism of hierarchy. The realization that the
216
Responsibility, Accountability and Performance 217
civil service actually has (discretionary) powers changed this perspec-

tive completely. In this contribution I argue that the issue of civil
service responsibility has a multi-dimensional nature that is best cap-
tured by four approaches. Before these are discussed, I first examine the
key concepts of performance, accountability and responsibility that
provide a start for my discussion. Subsequently the four different
approaches are discussed (sections 3–5).
The first is the moral ethical approach as defended by Mosher (1968),
Friedrich (1978), Rohr (1978), Harmon (1995), and Denhardt (2004).
A second is the often-called classical and constitutional legal approach
of internal political (hierarchical) or vertical responsibility as first
expounded by Finer. The next alternative to be examined is the
so-called horizontal approach that emphasizes external political
and societal forms. In this particular section, I also pay attention
to the legal approach encompassing the issue of how to deal with
civil service discretion. Then I consider the programmatic approach
through measurable performance standards as embodied in new
public management (NPM) theories. In the conclusion, I examine
the consequences of the multi-dimensional nature of the respon-
sibility issue involving civil service systems. The theoretical model
at the core of this contribution is that of Kiser and Ostrom (1982),
who distinguish between three worlds of action which mutually
influence each other: Level 3 (constitutional level): Values, insti-
tutional grounding Level 2 (collective choice level): Manage-
ment systems (performance measures). Level 1 (operational level):
Behaviour of individual civil servants a core thesis which of this model
is that changes at one level are likely to lead to changes at the other
levels.
The model can be complemented with Hood’s (1991: 11) three sets
of core values in public management: sigma-type values, theta-type
values en lambda-type values. Sigma values include efficiency and
effectiveness and focus on ‘keeping it lean and purposeful’. Control
and responsibility emphasize on output. Core of the theta-values
is to ‘Keep it honest and fair’. In the continental European tradition,
one could speak of democratic values (see Denhardt, 2004: 65–6)
and values derived from the rule of law (Rechtsstaat). The emphasis
of control and responsibility is on the process. Lambda values em-
phasize sustainability, to ‘keep it robust and resilient’. The emphasis of
control and responsibility lies on input as well as process. These three
types of values can be used at any of the three levels of Kiser and
Ostrom.
The concepts of performance, accountability and

responsibility: four approaches
As with many popular concepts, performance, accountability and

responsibility developed over time into rather complex and vague
terms. Each scholar and practitioner seems to have adapted these con-
cepts to their own particular needs and purposes. At the same time,
though, the different conceptualizations point to various dimensions
of the issue. In the introduction I mentioned that public performance
is considered to be at the very heart of modern public management
efforts but that it is really a topic with a long history. Administrative
history studies and official contemporary reports make it abundantly
clear that performance has been a main concern since the inception of
modern government some 200 years ago. Using quasi-perceptive taxo-
nomic schemes, we might suppose that in the (classic public adminis-
tration) past the emphasis was mainly put on procedural aspects, while
more currently the output oriented dimensions (new public manage-
ment) have become dominant. From the early days onwards, per-
formance has carried multiple connotations in which elements such as
results, effects, outputs and outcomes on the one hand and process
dimensions as legitimacy and legality on the other play a role. The
appraisal of public performance invokes a question of answerability
over past deeds and actions. In this process of answerability, a dis-
tinction needs to be made between material and procedural aspects
even though they are often intertwined. Aspects such as questions,
answers, interchanges and consequences, all point to particular pro-
cedural aspects, and not so much substance. At the same time the issue
has an individual or personal and a collective dimension.
When discussing consequences and effects of performance the twin
concepts of accountability and responsibility often appear. There is a
long-standing discussion concerning the meaning and demarcation
of both terms. Although sometimes lamented, in many cases they
are used interchangeably. Accountability is originally derived from
‘to account for’ Mulgan (2000). Bovens (2005) traced it back to the
financial dimension in Anglo-Norman times. Accountability is the
obligation to answer for an action, that is, the principle that indi-
viduals, organizations and the community are responsible for their
actions and may be required to explain them to others in a certain
forum. In this sense accountability works externally. In the respons-
ibility dimension, both an internal (personal) moral and an external
political institutional dimension can be distinguished. Both terms are
considered here as containing the same meaning; preferring the term

accountability in the external setting and responsibility for the overall
concept.
The issue of civil service responsibility has been argued to be multi-
dimensional in nature. That multi-dimensional character has to do with
the conceptualization of the concept of responsibility (or accountability).
A first clue regarding differences can be derived from the Friedrich–Finer
debate of the 1930s and the 1940s. A (vertical) political institutional
approach (Finer) was positioned against a moral and (inner) professional
approach (Friedrich). These positions still dominate discussions. However,
two additional points of view have developed in past decades: a horizon-
tal approach trying to bridge the Friedrich–Finer rift and a programmatic
approach based on performance measurement and the standardization of
professional work though protocols. Thus, a multi-dimensional per-
spective on civil service systems and their responsibility, accountability
and performance does get shape. Each of these approaches (de)empha-
sizes certain administrative values with the necessary consequences.
Before I discuss the issue of a(n) (im)possible balance at the end of the
chapter, I first examine the four approaches.
Re- and deconstructing the moral, professional and

political institutional approaches to issues responsibility
Already during the 1930s and the 1940s, the traditional and pre-
dominantly (legal constitutional) hierarchical construction of the
responsibility relationship between civil servants and politicians was
questioned by the American political scientist and German émigré
Carl Friedrich. In Friedrich’s opinion the traditional way of civil service
responsibility was more or less outdated. Friedrich started his analysis
from the idea that the number of civil servants had increased over the
decades and assumed that with it their discretionary powers must have
grown. In addition, the hierarchical mode of control could also lead
to unacceptable outcomes as, for instance, was witnessed in Nazi
Germany, when the moral and individual dimension of the respons-
ibility relationship was overlooked. Civil servants should be held
responsible in new ways. A political ethical dimension of responsibility
based on individual conscience and an inner reflection on professional
standards should be the way out of the problem. This argument
inspired the famous Friedrich–Finer debate, which still dominates
approaches to civil service responsibility: the moral professional and
the political institutional approaches.
Finer fiercely opposed Friedrich’s arguments and stated that in a

democratic society responsibility should always be reviewed and
ensured by democratic institutions. Finer had serious doubts about
Friedrich’s position and emphasized the more traditional (political-
legal) forms of responsibility. Inner professional standards and moral
convictions do not suffice in this context. In short, Finer prefers the
more traditional vertical forms of responsibility through the political
and executive chain of authority (i.e., ministers and the legislature).
Although extensive discretionary powers persist, the same is not true
for the trust in professional norms as being derived from science. To a
certain extent the faith in the power of peer review has also dimin-
ished since the first part of the last century. Nevertheless, even at
present, some authors still believe in the dominant virtues of so-called
political moral forms of responsibility. The immense confidence in
the beneficial role of science that was dominant in the first half of the
20th century (and visible in the moral professional approach), seems to
have been replaced (see the horizontal approaches below) by an over-
riding trust in modern techniques of communication that can provide
the possibility to keep in touch with ‘society’ in an effective and
efficient way. Interactive policy emerges, in which ‘politics’ is some-
times thought of as a nuisance. Although the solutions might currently
seem to differ, the debate is in essence comparable to the discussions
between Friedrich and Finer: the confrontation between moral and
institutional forms of responsibility involving civil servants. The
debate that originated in Friedrich and Finer times has at its heart the
still-relevant question concerning the precise meaning of the concepts
of ‘being held responsible’ and ‘responsibility’. Responsibility accord-
ing to the political institutional version consists of three elements (see
also Finer, 1978):
• The provision of information;

• The answerability of civil servants or directors regarding their own
functioning and that of their subordinates.
• The possible use of sanctioning if action is considered not correct.
It should be noted that responsibility according to this definition is

only complete when all three elements are present. If the third element
is left out, both other dimensions will turn meaningless. Of course this
does not imply that the provision of information by civil servants
cannot be useful (e.g., if it involves decisions which affect individual
citizens), but this will not be a complete and mature form of respons-
ibility. Due to the third dimension of formal sanctioning there can

be no absolute substitute for the political institutional expression of
responsibility. Examining the various regional studies published in the
context of the Civil Service Project, it can be concluded that the polit-
ical institutional forms of responsibility remain dominant in the majority
of countries. Nevertheless, complaints are expressed concerning the
quality of public accountability involving the civil service. Two alter-
natives are examined in the nest two sections.
The horizontal approach to accountability and

responsibility and the legal approach to civil service
discretion
In addition to the internal and political institutional approaches to

civil service responsibility we can add an external perspective: called
horizontal accountability or responsibility. Bovens (2005) pointed to
several developments that led to growing public and political interest
in horizontal (and diagonal) forms of accountability. According to him
(2005: 1996), the Weberian or Diceyan monolithic system, as he calls
it, of political and organizational accountability relations has given
way to a more diversified set of accountability relationships. In this
respect, Bovens mentions, for instance, the growing importance of
administrative accountability (ombudsmen, inspectors, etc.), the weak-
ening of direct political controls through agentification, the hori-
zontalization of accountability through the rise of quangos, and the
demand for more direct accountability as a response to diminishing
trust in government. Administrative accountability is considered
diagonal accountability. Horizontalization manifests itself through the
establishment of citizen’s charters, customer panels, Internet pub-
lications of inspections, benchmarks and visitation reports. In the
latter, we find an external form of professional accountability. At first
sight, we find a combination of internal and external political insti-
tutional responsibility on a horizontal level and the moral professional
dimension.
Some authors consider horizontal accountability approaches as a
viable alternative to vertical forms (Behn, 2001; Denhardt, 2004), but
grave objections have been raised against this. When vertical account-
ability will be replaced (for the greater part) by horizontal account-
ability, the existing democratic structure could be impaired. Direct
accountability of civil servants towards society is unworkable in a
modern democratic state (Hood, 1991; Suleiman, 2003). It must be
emphasized again that responsibility requires the possibility to sanc-

tion behaviour. This can really only be realized by intervention on the
political level. When improvements are considered necessary, these
often come from forms of vertical action. Thus, horizontal forms of
responsibility can be a useful addition to the traditional forms of
responsibility. To be sure, the former can never and may never be an
alternative to the latter. The emphasis should be on the internal (verti-
cal) responsibility by civil servants to their superiors and ultimately the
minister. Still we have the issue of administrative discretion and demo-
cratically legitimized government. There are some doubts about the
existence of this large degree of discretion enjoyed by civil servants.
One of the recent developments emphasized by public administration
and law scholars in the last few decennia is the phenomenon of
juridification. Ever more decisions of government (for the most part
decisions are made by civil servants) are checked by the judiciary. In
the countries that signed the European Convention on Human Rights
(almost all European countries, including Turkey, Russia and the
countries in Central and Eastern Europe) the interpretation that the
European Court of Human Rights gives to article 6 of this treaty is in
force. In the relation between citizen and government there should
always be access to an independent judge or arbiter. The so-called
Benthem decision has shown us that that the European Court of
Human Rights clings to very high standards in this matter. The
European Court of Human Rights decides that the Council of State
(administrative litigation division) is not an independent judge because it
only gives an advice. This advice (followed in the great majority of
cases, as happened on the present occasion) is however not binding.
The Crown is empowered to determine the dispute. The Crown is not a
judicial body as required by Article 6 of the treaty.
But juridification does not only play a part in decisions which are
taken before a judge, civil servants also anticipate on the judicial
verdict. In many essays juridification is considered a negative develop-
ment. This is not completely justified, although problems can
inevitably occur. The judicial check and the anticipation by civil ser-
vants that precedes it, lead to a situation in which there are controls in
force on the actions of civil servants and they (or their colleagues) have
to defend their decisions in court. This leads to a situation in which
they can no longer take ad hoc decisions but have to develop a con-
sistent policy. This policy can, in turn, be brought before the courts,
but it can also be discussed in the legislatures. Since the time of
Friedrich and Finer, the importance of judicial verdict has substantially
grown. The discretion of civil servants has been strongly restricted and
the amount of supervision has grown. The emphasis in judicial checks
is on the value of legality. The checks on the effectiveness, efficiency
and sustainability should be the focus of the legislature and the execu-
tive. In Western countries, these branches are assisted by advisory
bodies, courts of audit and scientific institutes. Scientific evaluations
are the order of the day. Media, activist groups and interest groups
provide representative bodies with a continuous flow of information.
Sometimes the problem seems to be that of information overflow
rather than lack of information.
Managing and ensuring the internal organizational

responsibility: the rise of NPM and performance
accountability
Next to the political vertical institutional, moral professional and the

horizontal approaches, there is a fourth; a programmatic approach
based on accountability through performance measurement and man-
agement. Seemingly simple questions and solutions are often quite
more complicated, considered at second instance, and particularly
when social science has done its work. At first glance and from a tra-
ditional legal and public administration point of view, the topic at the
heart of this chapter seems to be quite straightforward. Civil servants
should perform according to given and or prescribed standards.
Depending on the level and quality of their proven performance
records positive incentives, such as performance related bonuses,
should be awarded and personnel decisions, such as career moves,
should be taken. In case of deficient levels of performance, corrective
measures can be taken either in the realm of remuneration or sanc-
tions. We will not reiterate here the arguments concerning the prob-
lematic nature of assumptions laying at the foundation of the
argument made above. Criticism of classical public management theo-
ries (e.g., scientific management, prewar science of administration) have
not prevented that a new form of scientific management emerged: new
public management (NPM). It has often been argued that NPM is less
of a coherent management theory than a loosely coupled management
philosophy. In addition, many authors pointed to the evolutionary
character of NPM, arguing that public management always remains
new for constantly changing in adaptation to a changing environ-
ment. While Hood (1991) originally did not take a normative position
in the, often heated, debate on NPM, no one did as much to provide a
coherent framework as he did in his article ‘New Public Management

for all seasons?’. Later, in his contribution in Bekke, Perry and Toonen
(1996), Hood further elaborated how these doctrines have been imple-
mented into, mainly, Western (developed) nations (largely the mem-
bership of the OECD). In his examination of NPM, Hood (1991: 271)
differentiatesbetween seven so-called doctrinary components, of which
the second is ‘explicit standards and measures of performance’. As
Pollit and Bouckaert (2004) have illustrated with cases in their modern
classic (i.e., considering the rapidly increasing number of editions),
performance management is considered a vital dimension of NPM
reforms.
Performance measurement seems to offer a solution to a dilemma
outlined by Peter Self; later a vehement critic of NPM. Self (1972:
277–8) argues: the tensions between the requirements of responsibility
or ‘accountability’ and those of effective executive action can reason-
ably be described as the classic dilemma of public administration.
Performance measurement can thus play an important role in legit-
imizing government behavior as well as improving effectiveness and
efficiency. Using the Hood 1991 vernacular, sigma and theta values
could be served by utilizing a performance management system. Still,
on second thought, a few important questions emerge: which explicit
criteria would have to be applicable to civil service actions? How
should these criteria be operationalized, further developed and mea-
sured? Finally the question becomes urgent: what are the advantages
and disadvantages of this specific way of assessment in terms of
relevant administrative values?
Elaborating Hood’s division of administrative values it can be argued
that the actual behavior of civil servants (i.e. the operational level of
Kiser and Ostrom (1982) should be in accordance with sigma, theta and
lambda values. As is often the case with an examination of the appro-
priateness of various values (sets), it is wise to leave the general level of
discussion and make them more specific and fit for operationalization.
This becomes all the more important when developing performance
measures. In addition, how to deal with conflicting values should also
be explicated. Aberbach and Rockman (2001) argued: ‘While the re-
invention initiative emphasizes management techniques, the funda-
mental question is political: what do we want the public sector to do?
Management techniques become relevant only when that question is
answered’. Regarding the three types of values, theta (values based on
rule of law – Rechtsstaat – justice and democracy1) and lambda (sustain-
ability) are the most difficult to translate in operational terms. As a
consequence most performance measures have been emphasizing the

sigma values.
Fundamental problems can also emerge with respect to the sigma
values. The output of a government organization, and with it the
output of an individual civil servant, is often only measurable to a
certain extent (x laws, y policy documents, and z individual decisions).
The real effects (i.e., outcomes) of that output on society (effectiveness)
are far more difficult to assess. Thus at first sight efficiency seems
easiest to determine, but even this is problematic. Efficiency concerns
the issue of the input – output relationship (often quantified in terms
of money) given a certain degree of effectiveness. Therefore, per-
formance measures will have the tendency to focus on that which can
be easily calculated. This will include data that mostly deals with the
size of the output (the number of decisions within a given period of
time). De Bruijn (2002) rightly points out that performance measure-
ment can have the effect that the indicators become more important
than the values (reality) they represent and can cause a so-called
perverse influence.
Finally, it is important to determine the consequences of per-
formance measurement. When performance is assessed without atten-
tion for the consequences, the activity is of little value. This issue of
attaching consequences to performance management depends strongly
on the nature of the civil service system. For instance, when appoint-
ment and promotion are based on expertise and performances the
system might work as expected, but when a civil service system is
focused on representativeness, or when political appointments are
common, this is less likely. In the United States, for example, organiza-
tions are responsible for their results, but there are no measures that
allow individual managers to hold subordinates responsible for this
(Ingraham and Moynihan, 2003: 187). Ingraham and Moynihan appar-
ently regret this, but it should be realized that, given the characteristics
of the US civil service system (i.e., the role of political appointees), the
conditions for implementing individual performance measures (with
the possibility to sanction at the individual level) are not exactly
optimal. They consider this as is one of the reasons why proposals for
performance contracts have met with very limited success in the
United States (Ingraham and Moynihan, 2003: 175). The limitations of
individual performance measures (the collective choice level) are
strongly connected to the general characteristics of the American
system at the constitutional level. Halligan (2003: 3) argues that the
United Kingdom and the United States are two extremes when it
comes to characteristics of the civil service. In the United Kingdom the

civil service is strongly professional, while the United States has a mix
of political and professional appointments. It may be expected that in
a system with political appointments performance measures will not be
implemented, or will fail, and that in a professional civil service perfor-
mance measures can be more easily implemented. Information in the
table on page 207 of Halligan’s book seems to confirm this assumption.
The output orientation is, according to Halligan (2003: 207), ‘high’ in
the United Kingdom (professional civil servants) and ‘low’ in the
United States (political and professional appointments).
From this analysis, I conclude that performance measurement gen-
erally concentrates on easily measurable and quantifiable effects as
qualitative aspects are often more difficult to assess. This leads to a
situation in which performance measures either fail or facilitate a shift
in desired values. It is the task of politics to make clear choices, but
that often does not happen.
Implementing performance measures can lead to different con-
sequences. In terms of Kiser and Ostrom, if NPM fits the constitutional
level, implementation will be successful. Is there no fit, it will not be
successful and either disappear automatically over time or perform
only a symbolic function. Another possibility is that it is implemented,
but that it will slowly facilitate changes at the constitutional level.
While the constitutional level in the model of Kiser and Ostrom does
not restrict the two other levels, it can change because of changes in
(mostly) the middle, collective, level. Considering this, the emphasis at
the constitutional level will be more on (certain) sigma values. The
theta (justice) and lambda values will be hard pressed, something that
might be considered regrettable.
Responsibility in the political institutional approach requires sanc-
tioning. Sanctioning of the behavior of civil servants should be exer-
cised by a superior or (in the case of a senior civil servant) by the
minister. At first sight, performance measures could play an important
role in this process, despite the disadvantages discussed earlier.
Evaluation of the functioning of civil servants should be based on all
three types of values named by Hood. The indicators that are part of
performance measures may have a role in this reviewing, but they
should not be dominant. The functioning of the civil servant should
also be reviewed on criteria which are not or hardly quantifiable. Also,
where performance measures are used, one should be cautious that
they do not apply, for example only, on the size of production. For
example, it is possible to find out how many decisions by an executive
civil servant lead to appeals before the judge and which results these
appeals have. When theta, lambda and some of the sigma values cannot
be operationalized, it means that performance measures may only play
a restricted part in the assessment of the (internal) responsibility of
civil servants.
Conclusion: how to deal with the multi-dimensional

approach to performance, responsibility, accountability
and the civil service?
This chapter focuses on the different ways civil servants are held and
made responsible. In the introduction, I distinguished four possible
routes: the moral ethical route as argued by Friedrich and others, the
internal political (hierarchical) or vertical approach, the external polit-
ical societal or horizontal approach and the programmatic approach
through measurable performance standards.
The different country studies in the Civil Service Project show that
since a few decennia NPM has become an almost worldwide trend. One
of the elements of NPM is the emphasis on performance measures.
Especially an organization such as the OECD promotes a more busi-
nesslike approach not unlike NPM. In this chapter, working from a the-
oretical framework that combines Kiser and Ostrom’s (1982) levels of
analysis and Hood’s (1991) value types, some points have been raised
concerning this approach.
An important point of criticism is that performance measures cannot
be implemented at all or cannot be rightly implemented when the
institutional context is not taken into account. In terms of Kiser and
Ostrom, performance measures are part of the collective choice level
(and should have impact on decisions taken at the operational level),
so the constitutional level should be taken into account. When there is
no fit between both levels, performance measures can either not be
implemented at all, or they will inevitably fail after some time.
Adjustments at the constitutional level, be it intentional or not, need
to be pursued as well. Changes in the collective choice level must be
embedded in the constitutional level. If not, they will probably fail in
the end. Dwivedi and Halligan (2003: 170), for example, point out that
the traditional values of the Westminster system are: permanence,
objectivity, neutrality. The values important in NPM however, are:
flexibility, business orientation, results orientation, customer service
and personal responsibility. Successful implementation of NPM will
put pressure on the traditional values. In many essays on NPM, it is
seen only as a management technique, with no attention paid to the

constitutional context.
A second point is that performance measures mostly emphasize
output in terms of quantitative indicators. Important values like justice
(Hood: theta values) and sustainability (Hood: lambda values) are more
difficult to measure. By judging civil servants only on sigma values
(and then only specific parts of these), these values will be com-
promised. When civil servants are not held responsible according to
these values, the tendency may arise to pay little attention to these
values that are difficult to quantify. Again, this can lead to changes at
the constitutional level. Democratic values and values deriving from
the rule of law (Rechtsstaat) will be hard pressed. The same applies to
the sustainability of the actions of government.
In connection with the discussion about internal and external
responsibility the question whether civil servants should be held
responsible directly to ‘society’ (horizontal or external responsibility)
has been addressed (e.g., Yates, 1981). When a civil servant has exter-
nal responsibility, the whole system changes (see the model of Kiser
and Ostrom). Responsibility to parliament means that the civil servant
can be discharged by parliament and the latter will then resemble or
assume the current role of a minister. The problem then arises in
which way the relationship between minister and civil servants should
be shaped. Direct responsibility to society seems difficult to realize.
A more principal objection is that external responsibility of the civil
service is either incomplete (most often the last element of responsibil-
ity is missing: the possibility to inflict sanctions) or complete, but in
the latter case, the civil service is no longer an intermediate institution
and civil servants will become de facto politicians. I argued earlier that
the problem of random and irresponsible actions of civil servants
should not be overestimated. Because of the juridification, the discre-
tion of civil servants is ever more restricted and there are extensive
checks on civil servant behaviour. In many essays juridification is seen
as strictly negative, but that is not justified. Moreover, modern means
of communication (such as the Internet) and the increased influence of
the media lead to an increase of transparency of government in the last
decennia. In representative bodies there is no longer attention solely
on the contents of policy, in many countries there is also extensive
attention on the execution of that policy. In his well-known article
Friedrich implicitly assumes that representative bodies only focus on
policy issues. If this has ever been the case in the past, in the present
this no longer applies to many countries.
When the internal responsibility of civil servants has to be improved,

all three types of values Hood distinguishes should be taken into
account. This means that when reviewing civil servants’ performance,
not only quantifiable output data should be taken into account, but
also less quantifiable aspects in relation to quality in the wider sense,
such as rule of law qualities.
Note
1 There might even be some need to divide sigma values in sigma 1 (legality)
and sigma 2 (democracy). But then again where would the limit be as within
sigma 2 values a distinction between formal democratic values (sigma2a) and
responsiveness could be made (sigma 2b). This distinction is relevant for
demarcating vertical and horizontal forms of responsibility.
References
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Institute, 2001).
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conceptualizing civil service systems. In Hans A.G.M. Bekke, James L. Perry
and Theo A.J. Toonen (eds), Civil Service Systems in Comparative Perspective
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and management. In John Halligan (ed.), Civil Service Systems in Anglo-
American Countries (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003), pp. 148–73.
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Government (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995).
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(UK), 69(1), 3–19.
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trative Reform in the United States. In John Halligan (ed.), Civil Service Systems
in Anglo-American Countries (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003).
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thesis of Institutional Approaches. In Strategies of Political inquiry (Beverly
Hills: Sage, 1982).
Mosher, Frederick, Democracy and the Public Service (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1968).
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parative Analysis (2nd edn, Oxford: 2004).
Rohr, John, Ethics for Bureaucrats (New York: Dekker, 1978).
Self, Peter, Administrative Theories and Politics (London: George Allen & Unwin,
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Suleiman, Ezra N., Dismantling Democratic States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Yates, Douglas T., Hard Choices: Justifying Bureaucratic Decisions. In Joel
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15
Governance and Civil Service
Systems: From Easy Answers to
Hard Questions
B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre
Public administration research and teaching over the past couple of

decades have become increasingly focused on theorizing and explaining
institutional change in civil service systems. It could perhaps be argued
that organizational change always has been an important feature of the
discipline, with literatures such as organizational development focusing
on endogenous sources of change in public organizations. The changes
brought about by cutback policies, new public management (NPM) and
the development towards governance, however, pose major new exoge-
nous challenges to the Western civil service systems. This focus on
change, both within the civil service and also in its relationship with
actors in its environment, has entailed problems of different kinds. One
type of problem stems from many public administration theories’ relative
lack of interest in change. Much of the organizational theory on public
organizations, for instance, was mainly concerned with organizational
structure as such and had little reason to conceptualize major changes in
public organizations. Similarly, early schools of human resource manage-
ment departed to a large extent from the assumption that public and
private careers tracks were not communicating vessels, hence there was
little need to look at public employment strategies in a competitive
perspective. And, most obviously, managing public organizations was
believed to be a wholly different enterprise compared to private organiza-
tions; while change and adaptive strategies were believed to be critical to
corporate organizations, very little was said along those lines with regard
to the public sector (see Allison, 1972)
Thus, the conventional models of civil service systems that had
grown up over decades in the industrialized democracies tended to
provide relatively easy answers to the difficult questions of how to
administer public policies. That capacity to provide answers was
231
certainly true of Weberian/Wilsonian hierarchical systems that focused

on the career, neutrally competent civil servant as the best means, in
both normative and empirical terms, of translating policies into action
(Derlien, 1999; Kettl, 2002). More recent approaches to management in
the public sector, such as the ‘human relations’ approach or organiza-
tional development, also provided clear and relatively unambiguous
answers to questions of what to do in government. These answers now
are often considered inadequate or just wrong, but at the time they
were capable of organizing administrative life.
Challenges to government and the civil service
The analysis presented in the original Bekke, Perry and Toonen (1996)
volume on comparative civil service systems proposed that the dis-
juncture between constitutional provisions and functional demands for
administration was the principal source of change pressures in civil
service systems (p. 323–4). They also argued that disparities existing
between the socio-economic and political environment of administration
and the civil service were important sources of tension and change
(p. 324–5).1 In short, the civil service system operates within a social, cul-
tural and political environment, and if there is inadequate congruence
between the administrative systems and that environment then there will
be strong pressures to move toward a more congruent system.
Those two propositions about institutional change were well justified
from the evidence available to the project at that time, and represent
some general truths about organizational change in the public sector. The
changes in politics and government since that time, however, have made
these ideas about change all the more germane. In the first place, the
reforms in public administration associated with NPM have tended to
devalue, or more commonly to ignore, the constitutional position and
legal position of the civil service system (Suleiman, 2003). The career civil
service has been denigrated in favour of a model of generic management,
a view within which civil servants are not partners in the management of
the state but rather are often seen as impediments to the efficient man-
agement of the public sector (Hood, 1990; 2001; but see Du Gay, 2000).
Crisis and change
Contemporary political events also have produced a disjuncture

between the reality of administration and conventional formal state-
ments about the role of the civil service in many countries. In
Governance and Civil Service Systems 233
particular, the termination of socialist systems in Central and Eastern

European countries resulted in a clear distinction between the inher-
ited system of administration and the assumed role for administration
in democratic political systems (see Coombes and Verheijen, 1998).
This disjuncture has been become all the more apparent as the major-
ity of these countries have applied for membership in the European
Union and their ability to administer the acquis in an effective and
responsible manner becomes an issue in the accession debates. Demo-
cratic transformations in Asia and Latin America have produced other
marked disparities between the reality and the stated principles of
administration (see Burns and Bowornwathana, 2001). Also, adminis-
trative systems in nearly all countries have faced a major challenge in
the post-9/11 struggle to combat terrorism. The creation of the
Department of Homeland Security in the United States is perhaps the
most conspicuous case of the political, administrative and institutional
measures that have been implemented to address these problems.
However, all Western countries have responded to these issues in
different ways but the common denominator seems to be that the
new politics of national security, broadly defined, has had significant
ramifications on the national administrative systems.
This list of external shocks to national systems would not be com-
plete without the handling of the tsunami disaster in Indonesia in
2004 and the Katrina and Rita hurricane disasters in the American
South in 2005. Without going into the name-and-shame game, it is
clear that particularly the New Orleans disaster revealed serious prob-
lems in coordinating rescue efforts. The same observation also applies
to the handling of the post-tsunami situation in a large number of
countries, including the Scandinavian countries that had thousands of
tourists in the area at the time of the disaster. Likewise, although
having learned a great deal from the problems in the United States, the
Mexican government was overwhelmed relatively quickly to a major
hurricane crisis in Yucatan.
One of the characteristics of the contemporary environment of gov-
ernment is thus the increasing instability of that environment, and
that natural and man-made crises are to be continuing features of that
environment.2 Therefore, even with the range of persuasive ideas for
how to improve public management we need to consider the tasks that
must be undertaken and the range of challenges that are presented. In
terms of the civil service, per se, we must be concerned if the civil
service systems being built are appropriate for the challenges being
faced, both the quotidian problems and the more extreme challenges.
All of these cases, albeit in different manifestations and shaped by

different political contexts, suggest that national civil service systems
have not performed very well when it comes to dealing with extra-
ordinary situations. Both vertical and horizontal coordination present
themselves as major problems, in addition to the management of acute
issues which require substantial autonomy for front-line staff. While
this to some extent would have been the predicted outcome of hierar-
chically ordered Weberian civil service systems, it is ironic in some
ways to note that the managerial revolution in the public sector does
not seem to have left an imprint on the capabilities of the public sector
to address extraordinary situations or crises.
Linking state and society
The recent challenge is, however, not confined to taking rapid and appro-
priate action in the wake of natural disasters but has to do with dealing
with contingencies more generally. For the purposes of this chapter
perhaps the most crucial shift in the position of public administration has
been the movement away from a concentration on government per se
and toward more concern with governance. Much of the discussion of
governance has focused on the role of non-governmental actors in pro-
ducing public policies. This shift in emphasis has occurred both in the
real world of government and in the academic literature on the subject. It
has been easy to overemphasize this transformation in the style of achiev-
ing collective goals, and to assume that ‘governance without government’
is a real possibility (see Rhodes, 1996). Despite the importance of net-
works and connections of government organizations with organizations
in the civil society, there is still a central role for government to play.
The shift toward a governance conception in collective goal-setting
has a number of implications for the role of administration. In descrip-
tive terms the shift toward governance means that government is now
more the enabling state than it is a hierarchical, commanding state.
Over the past several decades a number of cooperative instruments for
delivering public programmes have become standard components
in the repertoire of government when confronting policy problems,
especially in social, health and urban policy (Salamon, 2002). Govern-
ments now use contracts, partnerships, co-production and co-finance,
and other creative arrangements to find the means of delivering
policies. Using these instruments, however, does not preclude the con-
tinuing use of hierarchical methods and hierarchical management
within the public sector.
In more analytical and theoretical terms governance means that

rather than there being clear and widely accepted answers to most
questions in government, many of the issues of structure and process
are open and subject to negotiation, bargaining and creative forms of
institutional design. The answers of how to approach any particular
policy delivery question are no longer programmed, with the assump-
tion that government and its civil service will deliver the service
(Walsh and Stewart, 1992). As noted above, the selection of instru-
ments for achieving public purposes now extends beyond simply those
involving government itself and includes a range of cooperative
arrangements, and these may be selected by bargaining with the
affected actors rather than by fiat within government.
One of the clearest arguments concerning the indeterminate and
bargained nature of governance arrangements can be found in the
literature on multi-level governance (Bache and Flinders, 2004; Pierre
and Stoker, 2000; Smith, 1997). Whereas formalized models of federal-
ism rely on legal or constitutional arrangements to specify patterns of
interaction among the parties involved, multi-level governance (and
intergovernmental politics in the United States model (Wright, 1981))
depend upon negotiating relationships among the actors involved.
This bargaining has been lauded by the advocates of this form of gov-
ernance as promoting greater democracy and openness in government.
However, the absence of legal provisions specifying power positions
may well strengthen the already more powerful actors, defined both by
level of government and by their political power. Thus, multi-level
governance and its bargaining arrangements may well be a Faustian
bargain in which the presumed democratic advantages of greater bar-
gaining and openness are offset by the capacity of institutions and
dominant interests to dominate that bargaining (Peters and Pierre,
2004).
Multiple demands and a single civil service
The descriptions above of two types of challenges to governing that

face the contemporary public sector have obvious implications for the
civil service, and also for the style of management that may be
required within government. On the one hand, governments will
require a capacity to respond quickly and decisively to crises, whether
the cause of those crises is human or natural. That demand is hardly
new, but its importance has been made more apparent in the past
several years. On the other hand, governments require the capacity to
cope continuously with more routine matters that to an increasing

extent involve extensive negotiation with social actors. These two tasks
are both important but appear to involve rather different types of per-
sonnel and also different structures of the administrative system.
In addition to those challenges, a great deal of the work of government
continues to be suitable to more traditional administrative approaches to
governing, and require first and foremost good routine handling of rela-
tively familiar tasks. Some of these tasks are the routine ‘paper pushing’
tasks usually associated with bureaucracy, and which may well be per-
formed well by such a formal bureaucracy. Some of the other familiar
tasks of government are more professional, in areas such as health
and education, in which the individual cases may quite diverse but that
diversity if coped with through the expertise of the public employees.
Thus, despite the attempts on the part of reformers from both the NPM
camp and the governance camp to press for one type of organization
or another, there are many different personnel needs for government.
Governments continue to need skillful personnel in management posi-
tions, and also continue to need service delivery personnel at the bottom
of organizations, but they also need individuals capable of managing
social networks, writing and monitoring effective contracts for public ser-
vices, and managing complex information systems now at the heart of
both management and relations with citizens.
Governance and the civil service
Although we need to understand that these changes are part of a larger

set of personnel issues for the public sector, we will focus attention on
the changes generally referred to as ‘governance’. The shift toward gov-
ernance has several important implications for civil service systems.
One such implication is that the concept of a permanent, hierarchi-
cally organized civil service is significantly less viable than in the past.
Like governance itself, the personnel systems of government will
require additional flexibility, and greater openness to a range of career
and management arrangements, than do traditional formalized person-
nel systems. By using contracting and allied devices to involve person-
nel in government that openness can be obtained, albeit again at some
cost. Further, as public sector organizations become more involved
with networks and other informal means of governing, skills at nego-
tiation become more important than the ability to command. The
important point here is that the growing emphasis on governance to
some extent alters the job specification on public sector employment;
skills that were believed to be critical to public service 25 years ago are
(believed to be) less important today (public law would be the prime
example) whereas new types of skills are becoming more sought after
(social skills, business management, language skills).
As with multi-level governance, the openness of governance arrange-
ments and the involvement of actors from civil society appear to be
important democratic transformations of what had been perceived as
rigid bureaucratic arrangements for administering public policies. The
central issue in all such shifting of roles and responsibilities, however,
appears to be the capacity to retain the public nature of the public
sector (Wright, 2000). For personnel management, the increasing
adoption of both governance and NPM concepts means that the civil
service is valued less in the delivery of services or in the overall man-
agement of the state. Both the recruitment of more managers from
outside of the career system and the use of personnel in not-for-profit,
for-profit, or client organizations to implement programmes means
that a significant number of the people making decisions about gover-
nance will not have been socialized into the career values of the public
service (Chapman, 2000).
Emerging questions
These changes in recruitment and in involvement of non-governmental

actors place the most fundamental question about the civil service –
accountability – at the centre of the discussion of public personnel. We
would argue that accountability is one of the principal requirements for
an effective governance system (Pierre and Peters, 2005). In the tradi-
tional civil service system the model of accountability was well estab-
lished, and was generally accepted by the participants in the political
process. As governance becomes a dominant mode for delivering public
services the capacity to hold the individuals and organizations involved
accountable for their actions becomes diminished (Barberis, 1998). Pri-
vate sector organizations – whether not-for-profit or for profit – have
rather different concepts of accountability than those usually imposed in
the public sector and producing the type of control over service delivery
that might be expected within government itself would be difficult.
In governance-style arrangements for the delivery of public services
the chain of accountability for administration is attenuated and there-
fore alternative means of both detecting abuse and correcting it must
be developed. Fortunately, the changes in personnel and service deliv-
ery coincide with development of improved systems of performance
management, so the focus can be placed on the quantity and quality of

service provided rather than simply on the legality of action, or the
possibility of egregious errors that may embarrass a government. Thus,
even if services are provided through contracts or are bargained out in
network settings, the actors involved must still demonstrate that they
are delivering those services.
In terms of civil service systems the movement toward governance (and
the coterminous adoption of NPM ideas3) deinstitutionalizes these
systems in structural terms, yet paradoxically also may enhance the func-
tional power of the civil servants who remain after the reforms. As argued
above with respect to multi-level governance, the loosening of constraints
over previously determinate systems, and the substitution of bargaining
and negotiation for hierarchy and rules, differentially empowers individ-
uals and institutions with clear preferences. Thus, the career civil service
may be able to exert substantial control over governance even after it has
been nominally devalued. As a result, there is an empirical question about
the relative power position of civil servants in reformed administrative
arrangements under governance regimes. Also, even if the civil service
remains a source of steering and control, we need to remind ourselves
that this to some extent is less a control that comes from public office in a
narrow sense and more a matter of control that is derived from an ability
to coordinate and engage other actors.
In addition to the loosening of the conventional institutional con-
straints on policy and administration, shifts toward governance also
change the instruments used to govern, and extend the role of bargain-
ing and negotiation. Much of that bargaining will be done by lower
echelon officials in the public sector, and therefore their discretion will
be enhanced (Page and Jenkins, 2005). Law and legal controls will to
some extent have been de-emphasized so that the discretion of the
street level bureaucrat, or the ‘street level negotiator’ will be enhanced.
This increased discretion at the bottom of organizations, in turn, feeds
back into the accountability question raised above, and monitoring
contracts and framework agreements becomes a more central aspect of
the job of political actors and senior officials in the public sector.
Governance and public administration in the classroom
How do these developments in the public administrations relationship

with its external environment and in its own internal management
play out in the classroom? Anyone who has taught Weber’s theory of
public bureaucracy and public office knows that the real pedagogical
challenge for the teacher is to explain the overarching theoretical

assumptions. As soon as the students share the understanding of those
assumptions, they can apply values like professionalism, ethics and
rationality to any given aspect of the public administration. It is almost
in the nature of an idealized model such as Weber’s theory that deduc-
tive reasoning makes the model more or less self-explanatory. This is
usually also the case in teaching several other theories of bureaucracy.
The increasing attention to the role of the public administration in
societal governance has had a significant impact on how we teach
public administration. The previously discussed disjuncture between
the constitutional provisions and rules, on the one hand, and the func-
tional demands for administration, on the other hand, introduces a
series of challenges public administration and governance teachers.
While Weber’s model was rather simple to explain, and has a theor-
etically integrated conception of the state and its administration,
governance is a significantly more difficult phenomenon to present to
the average group of students.
One pedagogical problem is to explain the tasks involved in bringing
together a large number of actors from all sectors of society that are, or
can be, involved in governance. These actors tend to have different
objectives and organizational structures, which means that it is not
easy to fit them all into a common analytical context in ways which
make sense to a class. Private business and corporate actors are par-
ticularly difficult to discuss in the same context as the public adminis-
tration for these reasons. Further, each governance situation may
be different – different types of actors, different goals, etc. – so that
all the lessons learned in one may not be readily transferable to the
next.
Another problem in seminars and classes on governance is the
bounded rationality that is typical to governance. The notion of bounded
rationality allows the analysis to accept that actors have vague and
incomplete images of objectives. While this certainly makes the model
more realistic, it also makes it more complex because it requires that
the student relates objectives to particular contexts. Furthermore,
bringing context into the analysis makes it more difficult for the
ambitious student to relate governance theory to other theories; the
cumulation of theoretical arguments presupposes that theories are not
too grounded in complex and contradictory empirical realities to make
them incommensurable. Simply telling a student that ‘it depends’
is not likely to satisfy the student, or the instructor, even if it is
ultimately the correct answer.
Governance also implies a new set of competencies for training

future public managers. As well as being competent to manage within
their own organizations, these managers will need more skills in man-
aging with their external environment. They will also need to be able
to manage a broader range of policy instruments. They need to be
able to work effectively with the not-for-profit sector, as well as the
for-profit sector, and understand the different values that these actors
have about service provision. In short, the need to manage collabora-
tion (Agranoff and McGuire, 1998; Sorenson and Torfing, 2002) is
crucial for emerging public management training.
Perhaps the biggest problem is related to teaching contingencies and
the significant, if not decisive, role of context in governance research.
While flexibility – which is the predicted organizational response to
contingencies – is easy to grasp, understanding the many different
forms and consequences of contingency is more difficult, largely
because there is no single manifestation of contingencies or its con-
sequences for the organization. These contingencies have become
more complex as governments also alter their own instruments of gov-
erning in order to provide governance in a less intrusive manner
(Salamon, 2002). In addition, for many governments, these domestic
contingencies are compounded by their increasing exposure to inter-
national pressures and the need to make domestic governance work
within that international environment.
All of these changes in the environment of governing, as well as
within government itself, mean that the linear thinking which is
typical to the Weberian model of public administration does not work
very well when it comes to understanding governance. Students will
invariably raise questions at a rather general level, only to learn that
there are not very often any general answers available. Answers such as
‘it depends’ or ‘it varies according to a large number of factors’ are not
satisfactory and are not very likely to go down well in course evalu-
ation. The obvious and typical follow-up question raised in these
discussions is ‘depends on what?’, a question to which is equally
difficult to provide an easy, straightforward answer.
Ironically, governance theory is appealing not least because it has a
flavour of reality; it highlights the limits of hierarchical political power,
the complex relationship between state and society, and the impact of
exchanges among social and political institutions at different levels.
Thus, we appear to be facing what could be called a ‘paradox of sim-
plicity’; analytical models which embrace the complexity of society
present a much greater pedagogical challenge than models which
depart from a limited number of theoretical assumptions and apply

them to some particular social or political phenomenon. At the same
time, however, teaching public administration must not become too
focused on the role of public administration in governance but also
needs to focus on public administration strictu sensu. Thus, students of
public bureaucracies need to study both the formal and legal pro-
visions of the public administration only to realize later that man-
agement reform and the development towards a governance role for
public institutions to some extent downplays the significance of the
constitutional foundation of the public administration.
The discussion of governance in the classroom assumes that we are
attempting to make this approach more comprehensible to the student
interested in social science theory. What about the student interested
in practice, and the role of governance in the professional education of
future public servants? Can we give these students any useful advice,
other than to watch out for the numerous contingencies that will
present themselves?
There appear to be at least two answers to those questions. The first
is that understanding the complex world into which he or she will be
thrust as a public administrator is crucial. Management in the public
sector has always been more demanding than management in the
private sector (Allison, 1972), and that difficulty appears to be increas-
ing exponentially. Therefore, attempts to make the student understand
more fully those difficulties are important.
The second answer is to provide the student with a different set of
skills than might have been appropriate for the Weberian bureaucrat.
Rather than thinking about the hierarchical management of organiza-
tions, future public administrators may need to develop the capacity to
negotiate effectively with society, and to manage complex networks of
social and public sector actors. Likewise, rather than being concerned
with direct implementation, the contemporary public servant needs to
understand contracting and the use of a range of informal instruments
for achieving public goals. Thus, governance does not just involve
theory, it also has implications for training civil servants and manag-
ing organizations.
Summary
Civil service systems have experienced a good deal of pressure for

change over the past several decades. These pressures for change have
been discussed primarily from the perspective of NPM but the move
toward governance as the means of conceptualizing public service

delivery also can have a substantial effect on personnel systems in the
public sector. The governance concept requires thinking about per-
sonnel systems from the perspective not just of recruiting and manag-
ing personnel in government itself, but also from the perspective of
managing interactions with the private sector and with the clients of
the programmes. Although there are several important challenges
arising from this shift, accountability and control of discretion appear
central to the changes that are being observed. Accountability is always
a difficult concept to achieve in practice, but the spread of governance
style arrangements makes accountability even more problematic.
This change in analytical focus has several implications for how public
administration can be, and perhaps ought to be, taught and researched.
Most importantly, perhaps, there is a need to highlight the consequences
of the disjuncture between the constitutional and functional aspects of
the public administration. This issue should be addressed at the organiza-
tional and the democratic level. We have identified several problems asso-
ciated with teaching contextually defined governance as opposed to the
Weberian theory of the public bureaucracy, and students need to be
given a set of skills to understand and to manage the changes.
The above having been said, post-bureaucratic methods for con-
ceptualizing public management, whether they come from an NPM
or a governance perspective should not be considered a panacea for
the problems of the public sector. Any simple answer that assumes
that one size fits all is likely to excessively simplify the challenges
facing government and the means of confronting those challenges.
The three alternative models in this discussion – Weberian, NPM, and
governance – have each some strengths and weaknesses, in part
contingent upon the situation in which it is being used.
Notes
1 This explanation for change is similar to that central to the normative
version of institutionalism. Brunsson and Olsen (1993), (see also Brunsson,
1989) argue that a marked disjuncture between action and stated norms will
be a primary motivation for change in institutions.
2 We need only look at globalization of economies, the multi-polar nature of
international relations, and insecurities surrounding the Welfare State to
understand this instability.
3 These two changes in the political and administrative systems to some
extent employ similar ideas about governing, but may do so for rather differ-
ent reasons. For example, both bodies of literature emphasize ideas like
‘Steer, don’t Row’, a phrase made popular by the execrable Osborne and
Gaebler book (1992). In the NPM world the use of non-governmental actors
is to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and limit the power of the State. In the
governance approach there are some elements of efficiency but the principal
justification is to involve the civil society, enhance participation, and recog-
nize the capacity of networks in civil society to provide at least a certain
degree of self-management in their policy areas.
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Part IV
Beyond Civil Service Systems?
16
Is Past Prologue to 21st Century
Civil Service Systems? Exploring
Historical Frames for Discovering
Lessons About Institutional Futures
Richard J. Stillman II
George Santayana’s famous aphorism, ‘Those who cannot remember

the past are condemned to repeat it’, explicitly reminds us that knowl-
edge of history offers invaluable guidance decisions. Historical under-
standing conveys wisdom; ignorance of it invites disaster. Thus anyone
with a modicum of good sense studies history, not for history’s sake,
but for sheer self-interest in order to improve one’s own capacity for
improving the odds of making better choices about what courses of
action to take in the future. Increased historical awareness yields
numerous benefits.
However, recall Santayana’s other, more pessimistic prediction,
‘Experience abounds, and teaches us nothing’ (l940: 367). Here he
underscores that more often than not, we give lip service to history
rather than finding and following its meaning. Or, in other words, we
all live within the stream of history, even preach the value of learning
from it, but fail to practice its virtues. Neither one’s educational accom-
plishments nor work seems to give much incentive to do so nowadays.
Indeed, masters-level as well as doctoral training in public administra-
tion, at least in the United States, affords little if any serious study of
history. Equally, the day-to-day grind of a geometrically increasing
clamour of cell phones, e-mail, faxes and the like forcefully imprison
us in the present tense by shutting out time to reflect on the past. The
reality, sad to say, is that historical awareness is more talked about
than followed in practice throughout public administration – and the
field suffers as a result.
This essay argues that a little history is not only a good thing, but
can be a vital aid to understanding the future, particularly in this case,
the future directions of civil service systems. Appreciation of past con-
tours of institutional development can provide significant insights into
247
where, why, how, and in what directions they are heading. Specifically,
through exploring one institution as a case in point, America’s Senior
Executive Service (SES), this chapter endeavours to underscore how
effective lessons for the new millennium can be drawn in this key
element of the US civil service system.
The choice of what aspect of the civil service system to select for
analysis is really unimportant. What is important is the demonstration
of a method for analysis. To better appreciate 21st century civil service
systems, I advance the argument (undoubtedly controversial and
unconvincing to some) that by analysing a single stream of institu-
tional history via various ‘historic frames’, perspectives, useful lessons
about the SES’s future can be gleaned. The variety of historic frames
that will be used for appreciating diverse aspects of SES development
through time include: institutional comparisons, innovation and diffu-
sion of ideas, empirical learning processes, executive leadership,
windows of policy opportunity, gaps between its promise and perfor-
mance, changing workplace norms, and best practitioner experiences.
Other frames could well be devised and then added to this list, but the
point is that each perspective offers helpful insights, or lessons, about
where the SES is heading in the 21st century.
In other words, this single case study exercise provides a ‘laboratory
experiment’ to illustrate how tomorrow’s direction of one aspect of a
civil service system, SES, may be inferred, generalized from, or possibly
‘discovered’ from its past institutional experience when analysed
through a variety of historic lenses. In short, the aim of the following
example is to explore how hindsight may supply foresight.
The SES is a personnel system within the federal career service that is
not made up of political appointees (i.e., serving at the pleasure of the
US President), nor those permanent career employees holding classified
positions GS-1 (the lowest level) to GS-15 (the highest career rank with
the highest pay and greatest job responsibilities). The SES was estab-
lished in 1978 as title IV of the Civil Service Reform Act and today
comprises 6,800 careerists (within which up to 10 percent can be
appointed by the President as non-careerists) who are in theory
selected into the SES based upon their general management leadership
capabilities. They are not assigned GS rankings but hold ranks from SES
I to SES IV with ‘rank in person’ as opposed to ‘rank in position’ (i.e.,
‘rank in person’ means held by the individual regardless of where he or
she serves, as opposed to GS assignments based upon rank in position
(i.e., the rank is determined by the assigned position of the individual
and not transferable if that person moves elsewhere).
Is Past Prologue? 249
The SESers manage just about every federal government activity in

75 agencies and occupy posts just below political appointees, serving as
a critical link between top policy-makers and the rest of the federal
workforce. The SES was established to improve government productiv-
ity and performance by allowing the President to move top managers
easily into slots where they are needed and to develop an effective, per-
manent cadre of senior public managers that heretofore had been
missing at the federal level. The Director of the Office of Personnel
Management, appointed by and reporting directly to the President, is
responsible for managing all human resources of the federal govern-
ment including SES recruitment, selection, training, and appointment
throughout the US Government.
Historic frame No. 1: From the historical comparative

perspective
First, if America’s SES is viewed in contrast to the European higher civil

service historic experience, there is no one higher civil service, but
rather many. American cities, counties, special districts, and states
operate distinct, independent civil service systems, thanks to fed-
eralism that insures a degree of local autonomy as safeguarded by
the US Constitution. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CRS)
consolidated roughly 60 civil service systems at the federal level,
but several separate higher federal civil service systems remain
still which are not part of SES (in foreign affairs, public health,
national security and intelligence gathering). The basic consti-
tutional concept of separation of powers insures systemic frag-
mentation prevails vertically throughout the national government,
just as federalism sustains local civil service jurisdictional autonomy
horizontally.
Second, also differing from Europe, the SES arrived late to the
other side of the Atlantic. The British trace the roots of their
higher civil service back to the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan Report,
the Germans further back to Frederick the Great of Prussia, and the
French still earlier to Louis XIV. Yet, it took a century after the
US Constitution, 1883 to be precise, for the US Congress to adopt
a Civil Service Act – and that law at first covered only 10 percent
of federal workers and made no mention of a higher civil service.
Not until the 1930s were separate entrance examinations developed
for college graduates to permit them to apply directly for mid-level
jobs. A mere 25 years ago the US Congress enacted the SES.
Third, also dissimilar to Europe, a rural, self-sufficient, isolated

United States had little need until the 20th century for much govern-
ment, let alone a professional higher civil service. Throughout the first
century of the ‘first new nation’s life’, the post office employed the
largest public workforce and, as Leonard White pointed out, its activi-
ties were largely ‘routine and repetitive’, requiring little advanced man-
agerial skills. Around 1900, rapid urbanization, immigration from
abroad, technological change, large-scale industrialization, the closing
of the frontier, expanded suffrage, and increasing international com-
mitments brought about the need for a professional civil service, mili-
tary and diplomatic corps. The sudden advent of modern life within
the last century or so demanded for the first time that the United
States delivers large-scale, complex, and modern public services. Thus,
the United States established its constitutional democracy well before
developing an administrative state, as opposed to Europe, where strong
states preceded constitutional democracy. And so, if European states
survive while their written constitutions come and go frequently, the
US Constitution remains as an enduring sacred document, little
changed from 1787, whereas its administrative state is relative new,
always in flux, and enduring continuous reform.
Fourth, unlike top-down, European nation-state building forged by
strong monarchs, America’s state building mostly ‘bubbled up’ from
below. Grass-roots reforms imbued by protestant ‘moral uplift’ and
backed by good government associations such as the National Civil
Service Reform League first sponsored city and state-level civil service
reforms to root out ‘corrupt boss rule’ and ‘political machines’. Only
later did the civil service concept advance upward to the federal level.
Similarly the development of the SES idea began at the grassroots with
the early 20th century institutional invention of ‘city managers’, due
to the widespread adoption of council-manager plans, which in turn
brought able leadership to the helm of municipal governments. States
began experimenting with SES systems in 1963. The SES thus was a
product of local experimentation, incremental tinkering, powered by
popular reformist ideals, slowly percolating upwards, often impercepti-
bly as well as imperfectly, at least according to no-one-best-way model.
Fifth, unlike continental Europe where ‘reason of state’ coupled with
a positive law tradition defined the rationale, purpose, and preferred
training for higher civil service, for American top public administrators
neither purpose nor training from the beginning were ever so clear cut.
‘Reason of state’ remains a foreign and largely unknown concept in the
United States because there is little sense of ‘state’, at least according to
the European definition of the word (for most Americans, ‘state’ refers
simply to a territorial subdivision of the nation, such as the State of
Colorado). Moreover, the United States is rooted in the common law
tradition, and only in the 20th century did positive law or administra-
tive law emerge as a recognized legal discipline. Nor was there any
sense of hierarchy in civil service recruitment and selection. Every
attempt to introduce a sorting of public service jobs by class or univer-
sity background always was – and still is – vigorously opposed. The
1883 Civil Service Act, which largely remains in effect today, requires
open, competitive exams. Candidates can compete for any open posi-
tion, regardless of their background or present rank in the civil service,
with selection determined on the basis of an applicant’s practical skill-
fit to the specific task requirements. In other words, equality to apply
for any position and pragmatic job-related selection processes govern
the criteria for most civil service appointments to date, as opposed to
the European tendency to define more precisely the ideal training, to
use generalist entrance exams, and to prescribe the precise entry
points, as well as routes of formal advancement in public service, espe-
cially at the higher levels.
Finally, within the US public service, unlike Europe’s, political
appointees have always played a larger, if not far more powerful and
complex role in shaping bureaucratic outcomes. For the most part,
throughout Europe, political appointees occupy only a few top spots
throughout government departments, with the rest belonging to
careerists, and with a clear-cut differentiation between the two. The US
President appoints 6,478 political appointees to fill not just the top
cabinet posts, but also positions many rungs down. If a major scandal
erupted in the British Government over the Prime Minister’s political
staff potentially influencing favourable intelligence estimates before
the Second Gulf War began in March 2003, by contrast there was sur-
prisingly little public outcry in the United States over the Vice
President and his immediate political staff on several occasions visiting
the CIA to press for ‘better estimates’ of weapons of mass destruction
(WMDs). No British-style Butler Report explored this most sensitive
national security issue largely because deeper political participation
within bureaucratic decision-making is not merely accepted, but
valued, given the pervasive public hostility toward bureaucrats of any
stripe. Of course, the up-side is a more open, noisy, less secret, more
participatory higher civil service, but the down-side is obvious (i.e.,
top-level careerists may be more prone to political pressures). So being
forthright and honest in the application of their particular expertise to
sensitive decisions can be harmful to their longevity and success at

pursuing government careers.
Lesson No. 1 for the future

Institutional reform ideas such as the SES are fashioned by a peculiar
cultural context, above all else. Thus a decentralized, equalitarian, plu-
ralistic, open, competitive political culture such as the United States,
yields a higher civil service that was – and will remain – decentralized
(growing up from grass-roots experiments), equalitarian (without
‘high-toned’, elitist ‘Oxbridge’ tests for entrance but rather based upon
pragmatic job-related examinations as the criteria to decide on specific
government appointments), pluralistic (the SES remains one of several
higher civil service systems operating inside the Federal Government),
open (the SES includes up to 10 percent outside political appointees as
well as being open on the inside to diverse skills and backgrounds),
and competitive (because it must continue to jockey for position,
status, resources and support relative to other high-level, government
personnel systems).
Historic frame No. 2: From the innovation and diffusion

of ideas
Institutional innovation of any sort neither happens spontaneously

nor overnight in American political life, but rather is a product of trial
and error at the grass roots. It only is adopted out of necessity. As was
mentioned before, the SES was a reform idea that had roots in local
management as well as prior state experiments with higher civil service
systems. Real need for professional general staff military officers after
the disastrous logistical planning for the Spanish-American War in
1898 brought about the Root Reforms in 1902. The US First World War
involvement led to new requirements for foreign affairs experts, and so
the Rogers Act of 1924 created the modem professional diplomatic
corps. Mounting threats to internal security spurred professionalization
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover in
the 1920s and the 1930s.
So too, necessity spawned the SES. Until the Great Depression in the
1930s, the federal government was relatively small, consisting of fewer
than 500,000 people, but grew to 2.5 million civilians by the end of
the Second World War. The First Hoover Commission Report in 1947
and 1949 recommended establishing Schedule C appointments (new
super grade positions at the GS-16, 17 and 18 levels) in order to retain
and attract top civilian careerists in postwar federal domestic, inter-

national, and national security agencies. Particularly after 20 years
of Democratic control over the executive branch (1932–52), a new
Republican administration in 1953 under President Dwight Eisenhower
clamoured for more top political slots and thus stimulated expansion
of Schedule C appointments. The second Hoover Commission Report
(1955) first proposed the senior civil service idea, but it was never
implemented due to Congressional opposition (Democrats held both
Houses of Congress). The rapid expansion of defence priorities in the
1960s due to the cold war and Vietnam, as well as growth of President
Johnson’s Great Society domestic programmes stimulated further dis-
cussion of a higher civil service concept. Again events overtook any
formal legislative enactment of the idea due to public controversies
focusing upon Watergate and Vietnam. Fear of government, not
demands for increased public service or its effective management, pre-
vailed in the early 1970s. A wave of anti-Washington sentiment elected
Jimmy Carter as President in 1976 with Civil Service Reform (CSR) at
the top of his political agenda. Carter came into the White House as a
harsh critic in favour of ‘cleaning-up’ the government mess with a bold
reform agenda – it also helped that his party, the Democrats, con-
trolled impressive majorities in both Houses of Congress and ‘got the
same message’ loud and clear from the general public. While the polit-
ical rhetoric demanded change, the administrative need for improved
top-level executive management remained – indeed grew – as govern-
ment itself expanded to provide more goods and services to the public
in the 1960s and the 1970s.

As with most institutional innovations and their diffusion in America,
SES, as an idea, was around a long time, first tested at lower levels, and
debated extensively prior to being fashioned into a peculiar personnel
system that bubbled upward and was ultimately enacted at the federal
level based upon ‘what works’ rather than conforming to any pre-
scribed ideal.
Lesson No. 2.5 for the future

Civil Service Reform (of which the SES was a small part, Title IV of
CSR) depended upon a politically popular idea advocated by an elected
chief executive, but often (as in the case of Carter’s election, to cut,
squeeze, and trim big government) its general political rationale for
adopting CSR or any reform idea can turn out to be quite different
from its ‘real’ administrative rationale for practical improvement of gov-

ernmental performance (which as Frank Sherwood (1978) pointed out
was to provide a specific system that recognized and treated top execu-
tives distinctly, minimized specialization, encouraged mobility, provided
a more flexible tool to deploy executives, and encouraged risk-taking).
Historic frame No. 3: From empirical learning processes
Recall that the idea of a federal higher civil service had been wrestled
with for 30 years prior to 1978 as well as actually crafted for legislation
by the Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon administrations. Each defeat
nonetheless proved a positive learning process for reformers because
advocates had to go back to the drawing board and fine-tune the pro-
posal which, in turn, improved is public salability. Particularly during
the late Johnson and early Nixon administrations, the Civil Service
Commission conducted extensive staff analyses of data and informa-
tion about top federal employees, focusing upon their pay, selection,
retention, mobility, status, work content, and so forth. These detailed,
empirical examinations of the federal higher civil service highlighted
glaring issues of poor pay, lack of mobility, the necessity for a distinct
cadre of top general public managers and low status. The easy avail-
ability of these studies and knowledge of what went wrong with prior
legislative reform attempts were what Carter’s CSR initiative built upon
and used successfully to justify and then push through SES.

An unacknowledged secret to SES’s successful enactment as a major
personnel reform, despite the intense, anti-government rationale for
propelling its enactment within the broader CSR legislation, is that it
was well-researched empirically and well-honed legally prior to public
discussions.
Historic frame No. 4: From an executive leadership

vantage point
President Carter’s appointment of Alan K. Campbell to chair the US

Civil Service Commission, in retrospect, is viewed by many as one of
his smartest top political selections (Huddleston and Boyer, 1996).
Campbell had formerly been Dean of the Maxwell School, Syracuse
University, and was politically seasoned by the rough and tumble of
New York politics, having unsuccessfully sought the governorship and
serving as head of the New York Constitutional Reform Commission.

After his appointment, Campbell went to work quickly with the civil
service staff by assigning nine task forces to study CRS proposals. His
close ties with the White House to craft legislation as well as with key
legislative committees that would be charged with enacting CRS
showed keen political insight into the ways of Washington.
Campbell was especially shrewd to involve all the major interests, such
as public employee unions, in both the study and crafting of CRS ahead
of time, so that there was widespread agreement and support by all major
parties before Congress began public hearings. Thus there were no sur-
prises since interest group ‘buy-in’ had been obtained quietly before
broad public discussions ensued. When they did occur, Campbell was on
the offensive, out in front on national television, and by writing editorials
in leading newspapers in key states of important congressional leaders in
order to secure their support. Both Houses passed CSR near unanimously.
His timing could not have been better. For if legislation had waited one
more year, it probably would not have succeeded due to the serious
foreign affairs controversies over the Panama Canal Treaty and Iran
hostages, which increasingly diverted both presidential and public atten-
tion away from domestic reforms. Carter’s defeat by Reagan in 1980
further sealed any possibilities for CSR enactment for the next decade or
more, since Reagan’s priorities stressed cutting the overall federal work
force, not enhancing its micro-managerial proficiencies.

Astute leadership matters – along with a lot of good luck – for the suc-
cessful creation of any major institutional reform, particularly having
the unequivocal support of the top elected official, obtaining key inter-
est group buy-in prior to public discussions, actively promoting the
reform agenda in the media, and strategically moving the idea along
throughout its legislative approval phase.
Historic frame No. 5: From the standpoint of windows

policy opportunity
The first American Civil Service Act of 1883 was passed as a result of
President James Garfield’s assassination in 1881 by a disappointed
political office seeker who purportedly was not given his desired post.
The assassination stunned the nation and resulted in public outrage
and Congress’s enactment of civil service legislation. Likewise, the
innovative 1978 Civil Service Reform proposal would not have been
approved were it not for the confluence of events of Watergate,

Vietnam, and Carter’s election on a popular anti-Washington agenda,
along with continued Democratic control of both the Senate and
House of Representatives. These events allowed a unique window of
opportunity to open for CSR’s passage during the first two years of the
Carter administration. However, unforeseen crises overseas shut that
opening just a quickly – and forcefully – during the last two years of
his presidency. The 1978 CRS seemed to repeat the 1883 CS experience.

Windows of opportunity for CSR, like any innovative institutional
reform, open and close quickly, due to rapidly shifting, unpredictable
events, and thus must be seized upon without delay.
Historic frame No. 6: From the lens of transitions in

political power
Reform throughout the US Governmental System may well be as

American as baseball and apple pie, but institutional reformers also habit-
ually forget, as Norton Long (1949) once reminded us, that power is the
lifeblood of institutional survival and if it is ignored in their establish-
ment, those institutions’ longevity will be jeopardized, especially during
periodic presidential transitions. Rooting out evil one day does not ensure
that it will not reappear tomorrow. Setting up the SES in 1978 did not
anticipate the Reagan revolution of 1980 with its avowed campaign
pledge to cut, squeeze, and trim the size of the federal domestic work-
force. Ironically, CSR only made it simpler for President Reagan to initiate
his radical down-sizing agenda by eliminating the independent civil
service commission and placing the direction of federal personnel policies
under the White House’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The
1976 CSR advocates rationalized this shift away from an independent,
neutral commission to White House direct control as a means to improve
public personnel responsiveness to the elected chief executive’s agenda.
They likened OPM to the 1970 Ash Council that had urged the creation
of the Office of Management and Budget as an arm of the White House to
ensure that fiscal policy is in accord with the President’s priorities. The
CSR reformers assumed that support for the SES would remain regardless
of who occupied the White House and that an Alan Campbell-sort-of-guy
would be in charge of the OPM. They forgot that an independent civil
service commission afforded at least a modicum of political distance and
autonomy from rapid transformations in the political landscape that are
eventual, even predictable, in US politics. True to his word, President

Reagan selected Donald Devine as his new OPM Director, who was an
outspoken critic of federal civil service. During his four-year tenure, SES
personnel suffered low morale and high turnover, many fearing for their
jobs given the increased latitude SES legislation afforded the chief execu-
tive to move top federal personnel according to his political agenda.
(A case in point: A transfer to Billings, Montana after an entire career
in Washington, DC can be a sobering, if not devastating personal experi-
ence for a married, middle-aged careerist whose spouse also works in
Washington and depends upon two incomes to support the family
household.)

The key problem that CSR failed to anticipate – and resolve – was that
presidential transitions are inevitable within every constitutional
democracy and so the closer any institution is to the fast-shifting
winds of politics, its institutional integrity may more easily be compro-
mised. Particularly if the next elected chief executive is not supportive
of SES, indeed even hostile towards federal civil service as a whole, its
very survival may be in doubt.
Historic frame No. 7: From the gap between promise vs.

performance
Recent studies of the SES are striking in that they raise many of the
same issues with the senior civil service that the CSR was meant
to resolve. The National Academy of Public Administration Report
(2002: 7) re-emphasized the original goals of CSR:
‘The law envisioned an SES whose members possess shared values, a

broad perspective of government and solid executive … The govern-
ment’s senior executives would be held accountable for individual
and organizational performance. To achieve this purpose, the act
gave greater authority to agencies to manage their executive
resources and assigned the responsibility for government-wide lead-
ership, direction, and oversight to OPM’.
But the Report’s research findings discovered:
‘SES’s structure and composition have barriers that impede the fed-
eral government’s ability to recruit, retain, develop, and capitalize
on one of the nation’s greatest resources [its senior leaders].

Specialization and selection, based on technical qualifications, char-
acterize SES’ composition … The SES compensation and rewards
subsystems do not provide the appropriate incentives to recognize
and reinforce the linkage between senior executive and organiza-
tional performance’. (pp. 1–2)
In the end, the NAPA report repeated numerous recommendations that

CSR advocates originally used to justify establishing SES, namely
(1) create a SES cadre with generalist managerial skills, as opposed to
technical or specialized expertise; (2) improve the mobility of SESers
across organizations; (3) implement a structured leadership develop-
ment plan for SES government-wide; and (4) develop a performance
management process for SES that links individual, team and unit
performance with organizational results (pp. 29–37).

Like most institutional reforms, SES was oversold and during the
last 25 years its actual practice never fully lived up to its founders’
high expectations. Thus, initial reform strategies would wisely lower
expectations about ‘great’ possible future achievements derived
from any measure they propose so as not to oversell its potential
‘cures’.
Historic frame No. 8: From changing workplace norms
The SES was established in a bygone era of government without com-

puters, e-mails, faxes, and the like. It also was assumed that those
entering government careers would stay for their entire professional
lifetimes, moving upward in the personnel ranks to positions of higher
responsibility with commensurately increasing pay. Yet, as Light
(1999) reports, the federal public service reflects significant changes:
first, increasing diversity in race and gender and also age, namely
‘Students are also entering graduate school later and later in their
careers, bringing substantial work experience into the classroom, much
of it coming from service in the private and nonprofit sectors’ (p. 127).
A second characteristic is, as Light points out, that those in govern-
ment increasingly prefer nongovernmental jobs as their ultimate desti-
nation, ‘particularly in the nonprofit sector’ (p. 127). Third, switching
careers several times through their professional life is commonplace.
Light observes, ‘Government does not just trail the private and
nonprofit sectors in the competition for new graduates, it is also the

least likely to hold its talent over time’ (p. 128). ‘The fourth and final
characteristic of the new public service is its deep commitment to
making a difference in the world.’ They ‘shared a common motivation
to serve and a common concern for finding challenging and rewarding
work and the opportunity to learn’ (p. 128).
Light’s advice to government is simple and straightforward: ‘Offer a
good job with room to grow and advance, and recruitment and reten-
tion will be easy. Offer dead-end jobs in towering bureaucracies, with
no funding for training, no hope for good work, and no chance to rise,
and new recruits will leave at the first chance.’ Unfortunately, high
hopes for SES to foster such a challenging work environment never
materialized. According to Light,
‘… the twentieth anniversary of the 1978 federal Civil Service

Reform Act was more a cause for black crepe than celebration, its
plans for pay for performance an acknowledged failure, its design
for an elite, highly mobile Senior Executive Service an insular dis-
appointment, its invitation to experimentation mostly forgotten
in a series of tiny initiatives, and its grand inventory of new oppor-
tunities for learning and growth, a distant, unfounded mirage’.
(p. 136)

An underlying fundamental assumption about public personnel
motivation shifted dramatically during the last quarter century, which
further exacerbated SES’s aforementioned issues, and underscores how
institutional reform of all varieties needs to allow for elasticity and
openness to change.
Historic frame No. 9: From best practitioner experiences
In her book (1995) about top-level, career federal civil servants,

Riccucci mentions SES only twice, briefly on two pages of her 251-page
book. The oversight was not intentional but rather, I suspect, more
accurately reflects the realities of innovative leadership within
modern American government. Her detailed portraits of six men
and women who achieved extraordinary leadership accomplish-
ments in the federal service had little to do with SES processes
and everything to do with their unique courage, character and
expertise.

Despite its shortcomings, the SES remains a platform for potentially
exercising innovative leadership, but whether or not such leadership is
exercised within the federal government ultimately depends upon the
individual character of the person holding the position, rather than
automatically resulting from the position itself.
Questions, questions and more questions
While the nine lessons do not exhaust the numerous possibilities that
can be drawn for the future, this framing exercise raises several other
possible problems to ponder. Such questions can turn into stimulating
sources for speculating about devising new historic frames useful for
further lesson drawing about tomorrow’s civil service systems, such as:
• Can examining the American SES experience hold any useful lessons
for nations beyond its shores? Or, is the US political culture so dis-
similar from others that such lesson-drawing comparisons are of
little help across cultures?
• Does the effective institutionalization of the SES for America and
other nations also turn ultimately on effective political support, sus-
tained even through difficult government transitions? And if so,
how is that ongoing political backing best maintained?
• Is individual character what counts more than any sort of higher
civil service system for insuring innovative leadership at the top?
And if so, how can that human quality be found, nurtured and
put into elite career positions? If not via the SES, how? Are recent
attitudinal changes toward work as evidenced by a younger gen-
eration entering government service significantly affecting the SES’s
original fundamental assumptions, and in turn, exacerbating its
contemporary problems? And if so, how can the SES best adapt to
such changing workplace norms?
• Is the entire issue of adopting the SES really more about the broader
theoretical problem of how and where government – any govern-
ment – draws the line between politics and administration, meaning
that the creation of any kind of effective higher civil service system
depends upon insuring administrative discretion for top-level,
career public managers?
• What is the link between university preparation and higher civil
service innovative leadership? Do increasing university special-
izations negate fostering broader innovate leadership by senior
bureaucrats? Or, can the subject be taught best at mid-level ranks?

But can innovative leadership be taught at all? Or, is advanced gen-
eralist training to promote innovative leadership within the higher
public service something impossible to teach, at least within any
formal classroom setting?
• Ultimately, does the far more globally interconnected, rapidly
changing, and fluid 21st century state require an entirely new form
of SES, one not shaped in an older, more static, hierarchical, indus-
trial mode of operation? Is some method that we have yet to
imagine or ‘invent’ required for energizing innovative leadership
throughout government in the new millennium? And, how can we
begin to conceive of that alternative – then realize it in practice?
Caveats and cautions about generalizing foresight from

hindsight
To sum up, this SES ‘lab experiment’, in using the institutional past to
generalize about its possible 21st century directions, demonstrated
some pluses as a method to focus on different time dimensions of one
institution, as well as for carefully examining the factual information
relative to that particular historic frame, raising questions about those
facts, and then permitting some tentative generalizations to emerge
relative to what that particular frame implies for today and tomorrow’s
institutional development. However, this experiment also underscores
its many limitations.
No scientific law can be discovered by using this method. It will not
create nomothetic knowledge, but rather uses idiographic knowledge
of history to analyse individual aspects of reality that give meaning to
the present and future.
The experiment was confined to one institutional history within one
political culture. Since there was no attempt to apply its findings
outside its national boundaries, it did not and perhaps cannot address
the substance of higher civil service futures elsewhere. Though its
methodology may be applicable elsewhere, there are caveats even here.
First, the choice of institution to analyse presupposes it had a history
to analyse. Without a past, this historic framing exercise could not
apply to examining prospects for something that is an entirely ‘new’
institutional innovation.
Second, selecting the historic frames and lessons drawn, even the
choice of facts to present within each frame, are ultimately subjectively
determined. There is no ‘one best way’ to decide. So as in all social
science research, this method is prone to human error and imperfec-

tion, no matter the political culture to which it is applied.
Third, the entire experiment depends upon an inclination to think
historically and dig for information diligently, with the expectation
that ‘factual’ information will be available to research. Such assump-
tions may or may not be true in every investigation.
Fourth, the lesson drawing demands creativity and insight on the part
of the analyst who may or many not be talented in such an enterprise.
But, it should be quickly added, this approach does not require a profes-
sionally trained historian, but only someone with an inquiring mind and
a willingness to pursue problems regarding institutional development.
Fifth, social science lesson drawing cannot be validated or replicated
in another lab experiment as in the natural sciences. Humans are
unpredictable, prone to feelings, beliefs and all sorts of behaviour, and
certainly cannot be locked in a ‘clean lab’ to replicate the testing over
and over in the same way.
Sixth, multiple, often contradictory, lessons can be drawn from
historic frames. There is never only one right or wrong lesson that can
be inferred and their inference always remains tentative with qua-
lifications of ‘if’, ‘perhaps’, ‘maybe’, and other caveats. In fact, the only
way to prove or disprove ‘a lesson’ is, in the last analysis, with the
passage of time – sometimes centuries.
Finally, the entire exercise assumes that there will be a future and
that the past and future share similarities or patterns that can be
studied, found, then understood and given meaning. History, in short,
may not repeat itself exactly, but rather in the words of Karl (1976), we
assume that it will rhyme.
References
Huddleston, M. and W. Boyer, The Higher Civil Service the United States: Quest for
Reform (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996).
Karl, B., ‘Public Administration and American History: A Century of Professional-
ism’, Public Administration Review, 36 (1975), 489–503.
Light, P., The New Public Service (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999).
Long, N., ‘Power and Administration’, Public Administration Review, 9 (1949),
257–64.
National Academy of Public Administration, Strengthening Senior Leadership in the
US Government (Washington, DC: NAPA, 2002).
Riccucci, N., Unsung Heroes: Federal Execucrats Making a Difference (Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press, 1995).
Santayana, G., Apologia Pro Mente Sua. In Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy
of George Santayana (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 1940).Sherwood, F., Summary
Statement on the New Senior Executive Service (unpublished report, 1978)
17
Political–Administrative Relations
Luc Rouban
In the past two decades political–administrative relations have been at the

heart of civil service reform in most industrialized countries. Many civil
service reforms are dedicated to improve responsiveness to citizens and to
enhance sensitivity to budget savings and national economic constraints
in a time of globalization, market pressure and competitiveness. Often
referred to as new public management (NPM), these NPM (personnel)
reforms are essentially political, aiming at changing the balance of power
between politics and public administration (Peters and Pierre, 2001).
It could be argued that at its core NPM is designed to uphold the
traditional ‘Weberian-Wilsonian’ rule of the game of a clear-cut separa-
tion between political leaders and senior civil servants (Pollitt, 1990;
Bouckaert and Pollitt, 2004) operating in a hierarchically structured
and legally based public administration. While this is indeed the case
there is a huge difference in the original theory and NPM: the ‘public-
ness’ of public administration was to disappear so that business tools
could be implemented. Civil servants’ rights and social status had to be
harmonized with those observed in private business firms. Public
administration, and thus NPM, had little to do with politics.
Consequentially, NPM reforms challenge the global philosophy of
public action:as that public policies cannot be elaborated and insti-
tutionalized without political control. Whatever the degree to which
NPM reforms have been implemented in various countries, a new set of
concepts has been elaborated in order to strengthen the political class at a
time of low public trust. Political elites, not senior civil servants, were to
legitimize public policy. Indeed, senior civil servants were regarded as
subordinates and not co-decision-makers. Public administration was no
longer expected to be ‘political’ even if ‘politicization’ was likely in
order to comply with the new institutional order.
263
The history of this ‘new deal’ is not simple and cannot be reduced to
a confrontation between politicians and senior bureaucrats. Other
actors, especially citizens and rank-and-file bureaucrats both as users
and voters, play a central role in the new strategic game. Civil servants
share political values and the ‘human resource’ cannot be managed
like a natural resource on the basis of top-down decisions. Senior civil
servants themselves have to deal with their subordinates or field agents
and cannot ignore their demands or their professional ethos. From a
political science point of view, the NPM reform is just one aspect of a
more complex change concerning public action as a whole that
includes: integration within a globalization process, budget savings
and/or state retrenchment, more governance and less government, and
more citizen involvement and less bureaucratic intervention.
To make matters more complex, the starting point of NPM reforms is
not the same from one country to the other because political–administra-
tive relations are basically the result of decades or centuries of conflicts
and compromises between social groups (e.g., religion-based in the
Netherlands, politics-based in the UK, professional by nature in France).
National historical trajectories cannot be underestimated and it would be
a bit foolish to draw a comparative sketch which could explain all the dif-
ferences through the interaction of a limited number of variables. The
ambition of this chapter is to highlight just a few aspects in order to
understand what happened in political–administrative relations in the
past 20 years.
The consequences of the civil service (NPM) reforms for the
political–administrative relations is explored through two main
questions:
(1) To what extent has the renewal of political steering been translated
into a subordination process of the civil service and to what extent
have civil servants been politicized?
(2) How have policy roles evolved and have NPM reforms resulted in a
professional decline or a revival for senior civil servants? Finally,
one may ask who wins in the competition for legitimacy and
citizen’s trust.
These questions are answered with regard to industrialized countries

along the lines of a ‘neo-Weberian’ theory of public administration. In
most developing countries, this is quite another story as privatization
of the state has been used in order to break traditional networks and
clientelism (Hibou, 2004). I focus here only on European countries
Political–Administrative Relations 265
because African, Asian, and Anglo-American countries are discussed in

other chapters.
The new alliance: Politicians and taxpayers versus

bureaucrats
From the first reform steps of the British civil service in the early 1980s
to the privatization of the Italian civil service in 1993 or the reform
stance of the French Raffarin’s government in the 2000s, NPM style
reforms have been built upon a series of criticisms against a civil
service alternatively or cumulatively viewed as ‘social-democrat’,
‘Welfare proactive’ or ‘conservative’. Civil servants became the ‘enemy’
from within. In post-Gaullist France, President Chirac said during the
1995 electoral campaign that it was necessary to ‘get rid of the tech-
nocrats’. From an historical point of view, this may be regarded as a
reversal of alliance: the politicians allied with the taxpayers against
their own civil servants while the modernity bargain of the 1960s had
been largely built upon the alliance of the elites, whether public or
private, against the ‘civil society’ (i.e., the working class and the middle
class) in the name of new major government technocratic programs.
A set of new strategies have been used by the various European gov-
ernments in order to subordinate their ‘arrogant’ and ‘tricky’ civil
servants.
The Civil Service subordination process

In their various national expressions, NPM reforms constitute a major
attempt to control civil servants and to diminish their strategic or pro-
fessional sphere of autonomy in several ways (Campbell and Wilson,
1995).
First, NPM reform programmes were elaborated with the help of
experts from outside the inner circles of the higher civil service and
thus bypassing their traditional expertise. These outside experts
included private management consultants, international organizations
(e.g., OECD PUMA, EU Commission expert committees), or academics.
This was, for example, the case in France, where the grands corps tra-
ditionally held a quasi-monopoly on state reform, but was supple-
mented in the 1980s and the 1990s by such, hitherto, peripheral
institutions such as the Commissariat Général du Plan that became the
nodal point for elaborating reform strategies with the help of academic
networks. The same happened a few years earlier in Great Britain, when
Margaret Thatcher systematically used projects from think tanks (e.g.,
Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Studies). Similar alliances

emerged between governmental reforming circles and external exper-
tise in many other European countries. A new ‘industry’ appeared and
many private consulting firms decided to create specific public affairs
units.
Second, core features of NPM reforms, that is, reduction-in-force, pri-
vatization, and contracting out, must be taken into account. These
organizational reforms, including the ‘agencification’ and the appear-
ance of private sector managers, have supported a new professional
culture focusing much more on results and performances than on
legalistic procedures and equal treatment of public service users. These
elements have been developed in other chapters of this book and
I would like to discuss here only their social meaning in and impact
upon European countries.
Especially in Southern Europe, the civil service used to provide a
major opportunity for social promotion since the 19th century. This is
particularly true, for instance, in Italy where most Southerners had no
other choice than entering the civil service in order to get both a stable
and a bourgeois social status. The same could be said in France, where
the ratio between the number of candidates and the number of posi-
tions offered at the low levels of the civil service was still of 26 to 1 in
2004. This explains why the various French governments, even the
Conservatives, never favoured a systematic reduction in force of the
national civil service but instead encouraged decentralization and pri-
vatizations. In Greece, Portugal and Spain, civil service policies had to
balance the advantages of public management and their social role in
fighting unemployment and compensating for geographical disparities
(Spanou, 2001). Whatever the institutional differences between nation-
states in Southern Europe, the civil service remains a major political
concern because its evolution affects the national economy and the
social equilibrium. Indeed, in comparative studies they are often
depicted as poor in management. Therefore, it is important to distin-
guish countries where the civil service depends upon a ‘societal’ model
and countries, such as Denmark, the United Kingdom, Sweden and, to
a lesser extent, Germany or the Netherlands, where the civil service
depends upon a ‘professional’ model. In the first case, NPM reforms
may be regarded as revolutionary, calling for ‘counter-measures’, such
as politicization of civil service positions at the local and even at the
national level. In the second group of countries, NPM reforms have less
political and emotional weight because civil servants are largely
regarded, if not managed, like private sector wage earners. The civil
service is not a social privilege but a profession among many others. In

economic terms, this equation could be put like this: in the societal
model, the demand for civil service positions is greater than the supply
while it is the opposite in the professional model since the private
sector offers better positions and career opportunities.
However, the situation in Southern Europe has changed since big
business firms have developed their own human resources manage-
ment policies in order to attract the best students. The result is
twofold: Southern countries suffer from a ‘brain drain’ since students
leave their home country, and the national civil service is more and
more competing with private business for top students.
Another important dimension of NPM-flavoured reforms concerns
the state’s retrenchment from economic sectors (e.g., banking, insur-
ance) as well as the European deregulation of transport, energy and
telecommunications networks. This implies that there are fewer oppor-
tunities for senior civil servants to temporarily quit the public service
in order to enter business. For instance, in France, pantouflage, existing
for its social utility for the private sector (the access to ministerial
circles) and for the government (the coordination of industrial poli-
cies), is no longer what it used to be. Senior civil servants deciding to
quit have to choose now more clearly between a public service career
or a business career. They make this decision at a younger age, occupy
private jobs of a lower rank than before, and do not go back into the
civil service a few years later (Rouban, 2004).
The main consequence of this is that elites differentiate. Senior
bureaucrats are now supposed to serve as managers, while their private
business counterparts follow their own career paths. This means the
end of the ‘generalist’ culture which was a distinctive feature, for
instance, of the British or French ‘mandarins’ in the 1960s. The NPM
reforms call for specialists and technicians along the lines of a profes-
sional management. Public management theory and practice is far
removed from the ‘amateur’ and the ‘old boy’ who could occupy
various jobs without too much relevant technical expertise. From a
sociological point of view, this evolution is much more favourable to
middle classes than to upper classes. Surveys show that senior civil ser-
vants with scientific, engineering or even legal degrees are coming
from lower social origins than those who have been trained in admin-
istrative schools, such as the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in France,
or in elite academic programmes, such as the Oxbridge fellows in the
UK (Theakston and Fry, 1989; Rouban, 1995). Margaret Thatcher did
not hide the fact that she distrusted British traditional elites, whether
they came from the City or from within her own party (Thatcher,
1993).
Generally, NPM reforms may be seen as a ‘revenge’ of the middle
class upon the higher layers of society, especially in those countries
where senior civil service positions traditionally were reserved for the
elite. This may explain why Tony Blair did not undo the legacy
Thatcher’s reform. This aspect of the NPM reforms is rarely raised
but comparison of European political and administrative elites shows
that the former, and noticeably the MPs, are generally from modest
social origin while the latter are coming from upper classes (Page and
Wright, 1999; Best and Cotta, 2000). In other words, NPM reforms are
linked to a new definition of political elites. This historical transforma-
tion can be interpreted as instrumental, that is, a means to modify the
way nation-states are managed with more dedication to budget
savings, or, in terms of social evolution, as a means to drastically
diminish the power of those who traditionally defended the nation-
state. A good example of instrumentalism is that outside of the UK, NPM
reforms have been adopted easily in countries where the higher civil
service is rooted in middle classes (e.g., Denmark, the Netherlands,
Sweden).
From political reforms to politicization

If the political dimension of NPM reforms cannot easily be denied,
their consequences for the degree to which the civil service has been
politicized are debatable. Much has been written about the fact that
‘politicization’ involves at least three interrelated dimensions of the
administrative–political relation (Peters, 1988; Pierre and Peters, 2004).
First, the political affiliation of senior civil servants when appointed to
top positions. Second, the involvement of civil servants in the policy-
making process either in a legitimate (advice, expertise) or an illegiti-
mate manner (capture of the political legitimacy or ‘policy hijacking’).
Finally, the classical political science notion of partisanship and politi-
cal activism, since civil servants share values with and may act politi-
cally just as any other citizen even if the expression of their political
commitment can be restrained by legal rules and professional regula-
tions as is the case in most European countries. The focus here is on
the first meaning of the word.
The NPM reforms have generally been associated with a new wave
of politicization along a continuum from real spoils on the one end
to personal trust between politicians and senior civil servants on the
other end. Politicization trends have been observed in most countries
where NPM reforms have been implemented in the 1980s and the
1990s. The two processes are simultaneous but are they correlated?
In the UK, where civil service political neutrality is a major component
of the political culture, NPM measures included politically oriented nom-
inations within ministries as well as agencies. Of course, Thatcher did not
ask for Conservative senior civil servants but she looked to substitute
senior civil service ‘but-sayers’ by ‘can-doers’ (Clifford and Wright, 1998).
Politicization amplified with John Major’s government. The number of
the Prime Minister’s personal advisers doubled then and the trend toward
politicization was confirmed during the Blair administration. However,
this politicization only concerned pressure or political control over higher
civil servants and not any kind of real partisan appointment policy.
In Italy, where the separation of the administrative and political
worlds is a constitutional principle since 1948, recent NPM reforms
(1993, 1998) produced a subtle mixture of privatization and politiciza-
tion of the dirigenza, that is, the higher positions in the national public
administration. Members of the dirigenza are now appointed on the
basis of temporary contractual arrangements determining their profes-
sional objectives and salaries. Their dependence upon the minister has
been reinforced since they can be replaced when a new government is
elected or when their performance is not satisfying (Battini, 1998). As
in the UK, politicization means political trust and more personal ties
between the higher civil servants and the elected leaders.
In Spain, the starting point of NPM reforms was in 1997 when upper
administrative positions were organized and defined, but giving such
control to the ministers that actually an almost traditional spoils
system was created. One year later, when the Conservative Partido
Popular took power, a new wave of political appointments occurred.
Similarly, the devolution process, giving the ‘autonomous communi-
ties’ a crucial role in most domestic policies, has reinforced politiciza-
tion at the regional level, giving even more power to the political
parties in choosing the local managers (Alba, 1998).
In two other countries, politicization has been enhanced or main-
tained although these countries are characterized by the absence of any
real NPM reform at least at the national level and as far as the higher
civil service is concerned. First, in France, where ministerial cabinets have
become much more controlling of most of the policy-making process,
and where a systematic turnover of senior civil servants has occurred
(both in top level ministerial positions and in strategic local positions,
such as the prefects) (Rouban, 1998). Second, in Germany, where scholars
observed that the political influence over the upper administrative
positions intensified in the 1990s, while a growing number of politis-

cher beamte have been dismissed, that is, invited to retire at an early age
(Derlien, 1995; Schröter, 2004). At the same time, though, it is clear
that the newly appointed are generally professional civil servants with
sectoral expertise.
In countries with coalition governments, such as Austria, Belgium,
and the Netherlands, civil service politicization has another meaning
as it contributes to the equilibrium between the various partners
within the winning coalition. In those cases, the impact of the politi-
cization process can be absorbed or ‘regulated’ because the appointed
leaders in the various ministries and agencies do not necessarily share
the same political affiliation yet share basic values. In the Netherlands,
for instance, appointments are connected to political networks but
there is not a real spoils system (Van der Meer and Raadschelders,
1998; 2007) while politicization practices in Belgium have been always
rougher whatever the NPM reforms effect (Hondeghem, 1998).
Generally, higher civil servants are more ‘politicized’ in most
European countries since the early 1990s. That this coincided with
NPM reform is neither sign of a causal effect nor the sign of a random
effect. It could be hard to demonstrate that NPM reforms call for more
politicization especially since the extensive use of business tools and
performance indicators is pushing for a new distinction between polit-
icians and public managers. But it may be misleading to think that the
two phenomenons are independent or contradictory. As European gov-
ernments are evaluated on the basis of economic criteria, they need to
rely on friendly networks without losing too much time and efforts in
bargaining with reluctant civil servants. Modern public action requires
also quick information flows, involving more and more complex files,
and a growing number of participants (e.g., associations, private or
public interest groups). Thus politicization and NPM reforms together
have a major consequence on the structure of the inner circles of
power, separating more clearly those who are in charge of political pri-
orities and those who only manage budget resources and personnel. In
return, politicization of appointments is the simplest solution for gov-
ernments under high media pressure with a very short time to demon-
strate their capacity.
Strategic change and social inertia
The NPM reforms have been implemented in a context of subordinating

the higher civil service. Nevertheless, these reforms offer civil servants
ways and means to effectively manage public policies and, thus, to

accelerate or impede the political will. Any real NPM reform asks for
more managerial independence and decentralization. Policy imple-
mentation, traditionally rather trivial to politicians, has gained a
specific importance with the new political environment that can no
longer accept a top-down decision-making process or live with political
indifference to technical matters. In other words, in a complex and
science-dominated world, there are no more ‘details’ especially when,
for example, citizens expect a high level of care. This could be inter-
preted as the revenge of the civil servants since every day they are con-
fronted with the demands for expertise, advice and technical
adjustments that give political decisions their meaning and reach.
Hence, we need to discuss policy roles and their evolution and whether
NPM reforms have really changed something in the legitimacy of
politicians vis-à-vis citizens as well as civil servants.
Policy roles and their evolution

As pointed out by Bouckaert and Pollitt: ‘… it could be simultaneously
true that politicians are intervening more in public administration and
that the sphere of public management has begun to encompass more
and more issues which used to be mainly the preserve of politicians’
(Bouckaert and Pollitt, 2004: 135). One of the most traditional strate-
gies for politicians is to let managers handle difficult cases in order to
avoid blame and to claim that management is so poor that their deci-
sions have been betrayed or ignored. This is precisely the role devoted
to subordinates, especially when they have been given a new func-
tional autonomy. The overlap of the political world with the higher
civil service world is always a risk for the former because it is held
accountable for a failure. In the ‘village’ model described by Peters
(Peters, 1987), the functional solidarity between elected politicians and
civil servants cannot neutralize the democratic game as soon as there is
a scandal or a catastrophe, as illustrated by the ‘contaminated blood’
case in France in the 1980s or, to some extent, with the crisis of the EU
Santer Commission: politicians are accused to have appointed only
friends without checking their missions, while civil servants are sup-
posed to have received hidden instructions.
The difficulty in addressing this question is twofold. First, the trans-
fer of the political risk has not involved only NPM procedures but also
the devolution of political authority to local governments or regional
entities (e.g., Italy, Spain or the UK in the 1990s; France in the 2000s).
Second, the strategy to ‘let the managers manage’ has been useful
especially in Westminster models, where politicians have been always

regarded as too much involved in civil society and consumers’ busi-
ness. The NPM reforms have allowed them to play the role of ‘referees’,
focussing more on results and less on budget inputs. In other coun-
tries, such as France, Italy or Spain, where political elites have not
given up their traditional willingness to change social rules and a ‘vol-
untaristic’ policy style, the benefit of such transfers is not crystal clear.
Politicians do not want to be deprived from the traditional authority
they have to decide upon individual cases and specific files in order to
show that they take care of citizens, regarded in a paternalistic manner,
and to demonstrate that the political class is still the major integrating
force in the country.
There are also some limits to the ‘let the managers manage’ strategy.
Agencification offers the means to separate political from managerial
responsibilities, upon the idea that implementation problems are not
political. But, systematic transfers to the private sector, as illustrated by
the UK railway system, are much more risky. Customers discover that,
when things go wrong, they have no other choice than complaining
to their local elected politicians. Political involvement is still more
efficient than endless and costly judicial suits, especially when there is
no fault but only a poor quality/price ratio. The other limit has been
observed in the mid-1990s in the Netherlands as well as in some
Nordic countries such as Sweden. The multiplication of independent
administrative authorities and ‘quangos’ has been criticized by polit-
icians themselves who did not know any more what was going on and
asked for a recentralization of governmental tasks within ministerial
departments.
Nobody can say who will be the winner in the ‘deconstruction’
process of the bureaucratic apparatus and it seems that the answer lies
in a case-by-case or a sectoral basis in each country. Empirical research
about ministerial involvement in British agencies shows that situations
vary significantly: ‘The key determinant of the extent of ministerial
involvement appears to be the political sensitivity of the work of
the agency, rather than agency status as such’ (Hogwood, Judge
and McVicar, 2001: 40). Structural changes cannot modify political
priorities.
Another point is that many independent variables may influence a
policy result which cannot be itself entirely determinant on the level
of citizens’ electoral satisfaction. This is a serious impediment in any
political and political science attempt to link policy accomplishments
and political success. If operational results lead to some serious budget
savings, politicians may demonstrate that they are good managers of

the taxpayers’ money but they cannot escape the strategic choice they
face in determining the future use of these savings. If policy problems
arise, it is highly unlikely that users will criticize only bureaucrats,
especially at the local level where politicians are easy to contact. In any
case, the ‘political job’ has not faded away: it would be political suicide
for politicians to ignore or reject the human dimension of policy fail-
ures and just say ‘go and see the manager’. Generally, no doctrine has
been elaborated about policy roles even in countries such as the UK,
where managerial decentralization processes have been pushed to their
limits.
Two questions may be asked in order to summarize the evolution of
policy roles: have politicians restrained themselves from any interven-
tion outside the sphere of general strategic or budget choices? Of
course, the answer is no. Politicians’ interventions have become more
frequent with the rise of international security problems and terrorism
and with the tremendous political impact of technological and health
crises. However, have higher civil servants adopted a pure managerial-
ist role understanding? Again, the answer is no. Senior officials have
given strong attention to financial results and performance because
they share an economic interpretation of modern state action with
politicians and, partially, because they are more and more involved
personally through performance bonuses in the management of their
organization even in countries such as France. On the whole, there is
no evidence that higher civil servants have given up their policy expert
role. We are confronted here with the inner social hierarchy of each
national bureaucracy. As far as senior officials come from the middle
classes (generally, the case in Italy, Netherlands or the Nordic coun-
tries), their professional ethos is compatible with technical values,
whether legal or managerial. This is not the case in countries such as
Germany, France or Spain where senior officials have been trained
since their early years in legal or public administration schools to
become leaders and, if they have the opportunity to do so, to blend
into the political class. In those countries, public management is
regarded with some disdain as a set of tools for technicians. Therefore,
the evolution toward public management is a source of major tension
within the higher civil service because it leads to distinguish those who
will be still moving from one ministry to the other, implementing
management plans and advising the ministers for strategic choices,
from those who will be attached to one agency trying day after day to
maximize their budgets savings and to moderate social conflicts with
sceptical and ill-paid employees. The differentiation of policy roles is

certainly more important within the higher civil service itself than
between elected politicians and senior bureaucrats. This may explain
why in some countries the traditional ‘mandarins’ have not opposed
managerial reforms. This is the case, for instance, in France because the
first NPM reforms taken in the 2000s paradoxically reinforce the social
weight of the grands corps members while reducing the professional
opportunities and prospects of those who are not members of these
corps and have to play the managerial game (Rouban, 2007).
This is not to say that NPM reforms have not changed anything
within the policy role distribution. One obvious effect in most Euro-
pean countries is the concentration of central executive power in the
prime minister’s office or the finance ministry with the centralization
of financial information and the organization of politicized networks
of advisers (Peters, Rhodes and Wright, 2000). Generally, the finance
ministry has taken over NPM reforms management process, depriving
the traditional ‘civil service offices’ from their power, while the various
policy committees in the prime minister’s office have been given the
supervision and coordination of inter-ministerial or inter-agency activ-
ities. The growing power of staff administration has delineated a new
frontier between day-to-day management and ‘super-management’
tasks. Paradoxically, one of the major structural consequences of NPM
reforms is the appearance of a new administrative elite, even if
appointed on the basis of short-term contracts, and the reinforcement
of the previous linkage between agencies top executives and ministerial
heads.
Finally, what can be said about the ‘political’ role of higher civil ser-
vants in the mid-2000s? Have they lost their power or have they
expanded their discretion at the expense of the elected politicians? The
answer to these questions cannot be general and depend upon national
traditions. A comparative assessment of European political–administra-
tive relations in a special issue of the Revue Française d’Administration
Publique (1998) has shown that the balance between ‘top-down’ polit-
icization (coming from politicians) and ‘bottom-up’ politicization
(coming from senior civil servants looking for more decision-making
power and public visibility in a ‘governance’ context) lead to very dif-
ferent national situations. Top-down NPM reforms fostered the instru-
mentalization of the higher civil service, especially in Austria, Britain,
Germany, France, Spain, while Sweden represents a more ambiguous
picture. In a situation of bottom-up NPM reforms higher civil servants
were allowed to get rid of previous political pressures, to escape party
clientelism or to enhance their own entrepreneurship. This could be

observed in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands,
and Portugal. A recent comparative study shows that this has not
changed (Page and Wright, 2007).
Civil servants and public service users

Up to now, we focused on political–administrative relations question
at the top, but any sustainable change in this relation cannot be orga-
nized without the support of the great number of employees as well as
with the consent of users. A radical cultural or professional change, as
NPM reforms may involve, implies at least passive agreement of street-
level bureaucrats who daily face users’ demands but who can also find
organizational as well legitimacy resources within the users’ ranks
because they share the same values or the same social profile.
Restoring trust in politicians by ‘simplifying’ public action was a
major implicit goal of NPM reforms, at least for the reformers. Has this
reform strategy been successful? The answer is clearly no. An empirical
comparative research shows that trust in civil servants continues to
be higher than trust in politicians. In Table 17.1 the percentage of
respondents having a high level of trust in elected politicians and in
civil servants is presented.
Three observations can be made. First, trust levels in politicians vary
considerably from one country to another and may be regarded as
good, on the average, only in Denmark and Finland. Second, there is
no direct correlation between the intensity of NPM reforms and trust
in politicians but only a negative one in countries where NPM reforms
are poor or abortive, such as in Southern Europe. We can also see that
trust in politicians is not particularly high in the UK after 20 years of
managerial innovations and privatizations. This suggests that NPM
reforms cannot change trust levels and cannot be regarded as a magic
Table 17.1: High level of trust in elected politicians and civil servants (%)
AT BE DE DK ES FI FR GB GR NL PT SE
Politicians 9 14 7 36 10 25 7 9 12 16 2 15
Civil servants 55 48 44 63 45 48 55 26 29 41 43 38
Source: European Social Survey (2004).

Legend: AT (Austria); BE (Belgium); DE (Germany); DK (Denmark); ES (Spain); FI (Finland);
FR (France); GB (Great Britain); GR (Greece); NL (Netherlands); PT (Portugal); SE (Sweden).
tool for legitimizing the political class. Finally, there is no correlation

between the level of trust in public officials and the degree of manage-
rialism. Civil servants in the UK, and to a lesser extent in Sweden, are
distrusted, while relatively high levels of trust are met in countries
where managerialism has not been radically implemented, such as in
France, or has been largely ignored, such as in Portugal. Once again, we
are confronted here with national settings and specific sociological
contexts. Public service traditions and ‘street-level bargaining’ between
users and civil servants are sometimes more efficient than any kind of
managerial plan.
Conclusion
Political–administrative relations have been transformed in most

European countries along the lines of a new subordination of civil ser-
vants to financial constraints, budgets cuts and managerial values.
Nevertheless, this subordination has been interpreted differently.
Generally, in one set of countries, governments found in the NPM
‘tool-box’ arguments and rules that provided civil servants with more
professional autonomy and allowed them to ease traditional ties with
political parties. In a second set of countries, managerial reforms have
been used to enhance the legitimacy of political elites and reduce the
influence of the higher civil service. In both cases, the replacement of
the old legalistic professional framework by a managerial one has not
been simple or complete. The first reason is that managerial rules may
be absorbed or domesticated by administrative elites in a complex
strategy aiming at differentiating layers of power within the politi-
cal–administrative sphere and drawing new frontiers between man-
agers and top managers enjoying a ‘political’ status. The second reason
is that legal questions have not disappeared from the administrative or
the political world but have, instead, intensified with a growing
concern for ethics in government in most European countries. The real
basis of the political legitimacy is made of moral arguments and not of
managerial considerations. Governments are not rejected because some
policies are poorly managed but because a majority of citizens do no
longer trust the politicians’ willingness to take care of their well-being.
Therefore, partisan politicization of appointments may reveal an
attempt to privatize power and to put aside neutral professionals. Too
much politics kills politics. As shown with empirical data, the level of
trust in civil servants is almost always higher than the level of trust in
politicians. This may indicate that there are some limits in the process
of dismantling the state: civil servants are still the best supporters of
politicians.
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18
Political (System) Reform:
Can Administrative Reform
Succeed Without?
Jos C.N. Raadschelders and Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc
In the administrative state of the 20th century, career civil servants have
come to occupy a role that far surpasses that of their predecessors and
that has resulted in increased attention for the relation between political
and administrative actors at institutional (i.e., political– administrative
system) and actor levels (i.e., political–administrative relations). In its
design, the project on Civil Service Systems in Comparative Perspective
(CSSCP) included attention for the role and position of politics and of
politicians in relation to administrative reform. Given the primacy of pol-
itics and the practice of administrative authority, we must consider the
extent to which administrative and civil service reforms require attention
for reform of (elements of) the political system.
As far as the Western world is concerned, the intensity and nature of
public sector reform consistently assessed as having intensified since
about 1975 (Peters and Pierre, 2001: 1), with the incremental changes
until the 1970s giving way to turbulence and transformation from the
early 1980s on (Nolan, 2001: xix). Indeed, the rapid, systemic changes of
the 1990s are expected to continue for decades (Baker, 2002: 10). Fewer
authors hold that the past 20–25 years represent an intensification of per-
manent and continuous reform processes that only differ from the past in
its focus on fragmenting, differentiating and decomposing administrative
systems (Toonen and Raadschelders, 1997; Toonen, 2001: 200). Indeed,
in the past 200 years citizens all over the world witnessed unprecedented
changes in the government of their countries.
Since the late 18th century citizens in the Western world witnessed
changes and conscious efforts at reform from within, at first prompted
by new political alliances and later by the desire to re-establish political
control over bureaucracy (Du Gay, 2000: 5; Halligan, 2001: 15; Meek,
2001: 48). In the non-Western world, the administrative state was
279
imported and, after independence, considered as a major avenue

toward progress. Developing countries have been subject to pressures
for reform from the international community. This external influence
initially manifests itself as social and economic aid in return for politi-
cal support and geostrategic advantage (Crawford, 2001: 2). Since the
early 1990s, bilateral donors such as individual countries and multilat-
eral donors such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the
International Monetary Fund, increasingly provide aid upon the condi-
tion that democratization ‘Western-style’ is pursued (Crawford, 2001:
14; Adamolekun, 1999; Farazmand, 1999).
In the Western world, administrative systems are considered more
capable of change than political systems (Toonen, 2001: 183; Toonen,
2006), while the rest of the world appears to have little choice but to
improve political and administrative systems simultaneously. If this is
so, we must ask whether and why political system reform in the
Western world could be an important complement to administrative
reform. Is there reason to believe that reform of political systems in the
Western world is as important as in the non-Western world?
Reform is the conscious attempt to plan and implement change in
(components of) an existing (political–administrative) system. It is thus
different from change which also includes adaptations to changing envi-
ronments that are not consciously pursued. We will now and then
mention examples of change but the bulk of this chapter is focused on
reform, and, more specifically, on the necessary balance between political
and administrative reforms. We start with a brief discussion of the litera-
ture on public sector reform. We then develop a theoretical framework
with which political system reform can be analysed. This is be used to
characterize efforts at and suggestions for reform of the political system
and its elected officeholders. We also briefly explore why political reform
seems to be a non-issue in the Western world and then explore the ques-
tion of political reform conditionality for and/or complementarity to
administrative reform. It is important to realize that politics can be an
independent variable (i.e., political system as environment to bureau-
cracy) but can also be a dependent variable (i.e., political–administrative
relations). In the concluding section we will suggest some avenues for
further research.
Literature on political–administrative reform
The literature on public sector reforms can be categorized into three

groups. First, there are the numerous national or domestic studies that
Political (System) Reform 281
analyse the development of political-administrative relations in the

20th century (see, e.g., for the Netherlands, Hart et al., 2002). That type
of ‘domestic’ study feeds into comparative studies such as those by
Dogan (1971), Aberbach et al. (1981), Raadschelders and Van der Meer
(1998), and Page and Wright (1999; 2007).
Second, the ‘executive branch literature’ produced by government
appointed special commissions that explore how civil service reform
might contribute to increased professionalism and thus improved
service delivery. This is frequently referenced in the domestic and
comparative literature (e.g., in the United States, Moe, 2003).
The third body of literature includes the academic studies of adminis-
trative reform. We suspect that there are many such studies in individual
countries (e.g., in the United States, Light, 1995; 1997) but we only
mention a few of the more recent comparative studies of which some
focus on a variety of reforms (Hesse and Benz, 1990; Lane, 1997; Hesse et
al., 2003; Wollman, 2003) while others concentrate on public manage-
ment reforms (Peters and Savoie, 1994; Bemelmans-Videc et al., 1999;
Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000; Nolan, 2001; Peters and Pierre, 2001).
What connects government commissioned and academically inspired
literature is the emphasis on civil service reform. The degree to which
political reforms are important to the success of administrative reforms
is less considered by scholars of public administration.
A framework for the study of political and administrative

system reform
There are various ways in which (a particular aspect of) public sector
reforms is/are conceptualized, including: a model of output paradoxes of
reform (Hesse et al., 2003: 15), types of reform on core-periphery
and intra- and inter-organizational axes (Halligan, 1997: 19), Weberian,
managerial and accountability reforms (Schneider and Heredia, 2003;
Behn, 2001), four models of new public management (Nolan, 2001:
xxiv–xxvii), two patterns of political involvement in the civil service
(Peters and Pierre, 2001: 4), values of public management reform (Hood,
1991), types of privatization (Hood, 2001: 13–16), speed and scope of pri-
vatization (Wright, 1994), reform intensity (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2003:
22), types of off-loading (Jann and Reichard, 2003: 40–41), and types of
partnering and collaborative arrangements within and outside (with the
private and the so-called third sector) government (Gray et al., 2003). All
have merit, yet are not useful when attempting to develop a framework
that captures all public sector reforms.
Levels of political and administrative system reform

The constitutional, collective, and the operational levels of analysis
distinguished by Kiser and Ostrom (1982) can be used to characterize
the nature of public sector reform at large (see Figure 18.1). Reform at a
constitutional level involves an effort to provide new meaning for and
foundation to a polity both in a legal and in a more sociological sense
(cf. Lane, 1996). Collective level reforms are concerned with redefining
the decision-making arena in which political and administrative action
is taken, and especially addresses degrees of participation of stakehold-
ers (politicians, civil servants, interest group members, individual citi-
zens). Operational level reforms address the behaviour of the players.
In the wake of decolonization and worldwide efforts at demo-
cratization, constitutional level reforms concerning every aspect of the
political–administrative system in the developing world have attracted
much attention (e.g., Moore, 1966; Braibanti, 1969; Skocpol, 1979;
Linz and Stepan, 1996; Baker, 2002; Schneider and Heredia, 2003). In
the stable democracies of the Western world, such system-wide reforms
are considered less simply because they would upset too much the
existing arrangement without assurance that something better will
come in place. However, European integration is a process that has
major influence upon national constitutions and legislation, and has
far-reaching consequences for member states’ sovereignty. Partial con-
stitutional level reforms are not uncommon, as is illustrated by the
effort in the Netherlands to make the office of mayor elected rather
than appointed. It required a change in the constitution but failed to
pass the senate. This effort would have had little consequence for the
civil service system. An example of not formal but most probably
actual constitutional level reforms in the Netherlands, with more
1. Constitutional level Regime reform, complete overhaul of the political –

of reform administrative system
2. Collective level of (a) Political system reform in relatively stable polities

reform (b) Administrative or bureaucratic reforms (both structure
and process)
3. Operational level (a) Political actor reform

of reform (b) Administrative (civil servant) actor reform
Figure 18.1 Levels of political and administrative system reform

significant consequences for the civil service system, is the so-called

dualization programme in municipal and provincial government that
aims at strengthening political control by the representative organs
over the executive and its bureaucracy. Finally, speculative debates on,
for example, the end of the nation-state suggest the possibility of
changes in the political–administrative environment the effects of
which on the constitutional level cannot yet be adequately assessed
(Albrow, 1996; van Kersbergen and van Waarden, 2001). Collective
level reforms have mainly been investigated in terms of (a) changes in
political–administrative relations at the top in the Western world, and
(b) managerial reforms in the Western and non-Western worlds. With
regard to actor reforms, most attention, as far as Western countries are
concerned, has been given to reforming civil servants’ behaviour.
Examples of such reforms include professionalization of the civil
service, integrity and ethics programmes for civil servants (Gregory,
2001; van Blijswijk et al., 2004). While these reforms may not directly
affect political–administrative relations, they do increase pressure upon
the political system to pay attention to issues of professionalism and
integrity among their own (see also below).
Mechanisms of reform
By and large, the two main mechanisms of reform are (a) indigenous
creation of new structures and practices (frequently based on com-
parative knowledge about what not to do and how not to do it) and
(b) imitation of and/or adaptation to ‘best practices’.
An example of the first is the transformation of the political–
administrative system in the aftermath of the Atlantic Revolutions. At
the Constitutional Convention in July 1787, the Founding Fathers of
the United States established a new government in part inspired by
their knowledge about structures and practices in the governments of
England, France, and the Dutch Republic they did not wish to emulate.
Transformations in political–administrative systems in the develop-
ing world and the former communist countries in Europe appear to
be inspired more by imitation and adaptation. This also happened
in Western Europe, where many of the Napoleonic reforms in the
occupied countries were retained after his defeat (Wunder, 1995).
Imitation can be either voluntary or coerced. Many administrative
reforms in the Western world have been pursued on the basis of volun-
tary copying. For instance, in the late 19th century, American scholars
and American and Japanese civil servants frequently travelled to
Europe with the specific mission to see how other governments dealt
with the increased demand for public services in the face of population
growth, urbanization, and industrialization (Miewald, 1984; 1994;
Westney, 1987: 20, 40–41; Saunier, 2003). In recent decades, the new
public management (NPM) prompted comparable voluntary imitation.
It seems that voluntary imitation as a mechanism of reform is less rele-
vant for the instigation of political reforms, although, for instance, the
reforms in Germany and Japan following the Second World War were –
in part – inspired by the American influence (e.g., Germany’s adoption
of judicial review).
Coerced imitation can occur through imposition by a foreign sover-
eign or through strong advice from external actors. Many features of
Western-European political–administrative systems have been imposed
upon territories throughout the world. Colonizing countries simply
imposed state boundaries and subnational jurisdictions irrespective of
indigenous boundaries of (tribal) governance and dividing tribal areas
across different sovereignties (e.g., Davidson, 1992). They introduced a
bureaucratic system more or less similar to that of the mother country
(Braibanti, 1966; Dimier, 2004; Durand, 2006). While upsetting indige-
nous systems of governance, colonial administrations did at least
provide something: namely, a state bureaucracy that proved crucial in
the efforts to develop the country (Linz and Stepan, 1996: 7; Heady,
2001: 299). Similarly, it has been said that the Japanese colonial
administrations in Korea and Taiwan later served as a resource for the
establishment of an effective state organization that helped integrating
both countries into the world economy (Rueschemeier and Evans,
1985: 52).
Efforts at and suggestions for reforming politics and

politicians
In this section we discuss actual and suggested reforms of the political

system at the constitutional, collective and operational levels.
Constitutional level reforms

In the past 50–60 or so years, transformational reforms in Western
countries have usually been introduced in the wake of the Second
World War and generally involved a transformation of totalitarian
regimes to liberal democracy. Thus, the new Japanese Constitution of
1947 and the German Grundgesetz of 1949 established a new political
system (Heady, 2001: 205, 239). Equally transformational was the end
of authoritarian regimes and the road toward democracy in Greece
(1974), Portugal (1974–76), and Spain (1975–78). All three had the
opportunity to focus first on political reforms and were motivated by
the promise of participating in the political and economic network of
the European Union (Linz and Stepan, 1996: 219). But, constitutional
level reforms do not only occur at national level. Next to reform of the
political–administrative system at large, there have been major reforms
in intergovernmental relations (e.g., France, Germany) as well as
reforms at subnational levels of government (e.g., elected mayor).
These, too, must be regarded as changes at the constitutional level.
Outside of the Western world, we find reforms at all three levels,
transformational by nature and involving the entire political–adminis-
trative system. With regard to Eastern Europe, it is reported that adapt-
ing the political culture and the behaviour of political actors to fit a
democratic system is the most difficult challenge (Ágh, 2003: 295). We
suspect that the same was, and in several countries still is, the case in
former colonies. Clearly, the transformations in South American coun-
tries such as Brazil (1974–95), Argentina (1983), Uruguay (1985), Chile
(1990), and a variety of former Soviet countries show how difficult it is
to successfully develop democracy. This is especially so when a clear
distinction between political party and state bureaucracy is missing
(Linz and Stepan, 1996: 250) and when politicians are reluctant to
pursue civil service reforms that will remove their patronage influence
over bureaucracy (Schneider and Heredia, 2003: 15).
Collective level reforms

Since the Second World War, reforms in Western countries have fre-
quently concern administrative structures and/or procedures. At this
level, though, there are examples of transitional or transformational
reforms. Examples include decentralization in France (1982), devolu-
tion of authority to Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the UK
(late 1990s) and to autonomous regions in Spain (1979–80), the feder-
alization of Belgium (1994), privatization in the UK (1984–94), and the
regionalization in Italy (1970s). The formation of the EEC and the EU
represents a force external to individual states that has led to
significant domestic reforms. But again, these reforms concern inter-
governmental and political–administrative relations rather than the
political system as such. Very seldom, if at all, do political office
holders consider constitutional or collective level reforms of the
political system. Improving the performance of government is usually
pursued through reforming (parts of) the administrative system
(Van der Meer, 1995: 199).
In several English-speaking countries, reforms inspired by NPM

gained strong political support in the 1980s. Other countries ‘copied’
elements of it. NPM proceeded upon the assumption that the civil
service had become too influential and that political control over the
core departments had to be strengthened while at the same time
‘agencyfication’ established more distance from the executive core
departments. However, in the initiating polities, NPM had a demoraliz-
ing impact upon the civil service (Peters and Savoie, 1994). Also,
evidence that civil servants themselves are very willing and able to
reform was ignored (Dunleavy, 1991). NPM resulted in a new policy-
operations dichotomy (Du Gay, 2000: 132) with significant con-
sequences for the operational and actor level (see, also, Gray et al.,
2003 and below). Finally, political–administrative interaction is also
influenced by politicization of the top civil service (e.g., consideration
of political affiliation when being scrutinized for top level career
appointment) and by increasing the number of political appointees
between top executive and career civil service (as, e.g., happened in the
United States: see Paul Light 1995).
Operational level reforms

At the operational or actor level, three very specific reforms have been
suggested that are all the more important since the doctrine of ministe-
rial responsibility has come under siege as a consequence, on the one
hand, of the new policy/operations dichotomy (Du Gay, 2000: 130–2)
and of a juridification of ethical standards on the other hand (Carter,
1997: 195–8). With regard to the latter, Dror has pointed out that since
there are codes of ethics for administrative office holders there ought
to be comparable codes for political office holders (2001: 102–3) which
would enhance the degree to which they can be held accountable
beyond the electoral process.
Also concerning political officeholders is the following observation
that suggests a second avenue of reform:
Why is it usually assumed that it is the civil servants who are in

need of reform but not the ministers or other politicians who may
hope to become ministers in due course? This is not to advocate
some modern version of Platonic guardians and neither, certainly, is
it a plea for Members of Parliament to be forced to take MBA’s.
However, it is to suggest that the preparation of politicians for high
office has, in many countries, been a ‘no-go’ area for reformers for
too long. (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000: 147; italics in original)
Could it be that lack of attention for political reforms has indeed rele-
gated politics to a fairly minor role so that bureaucracy has become the
main source of government policy? Also possible is that the legislators’
increased attention for short-term and quick interventions have left
the development of a longer-term vision for society to bureaucracy
(e.g., in the Netherlands: see Van der Meer and Raadschelders, 2007).
Why reform of politics and politicians is seldom pursued in

the Western world
Reform of politics and politicians is, while difficult, a standard element

of transitional and transformational reforms in Central and Eastern
Europe and in former colonies. We already observed that in the
Western world such reforms are seldom pursued, although several have
been suggested by scholars. One explanation could be that reforms are
generally focused on the ‘hardware’ of institutions, and do not concern
the normative orientations and meanings that have historically
evolved. Also, most developed polities of Western Europe enjoy rela-
tively stable and mature political systems (Heady, 2001: 191) where
change of components is possible within a relatively stable insti-
tutional structure. Change of the political–administrative system as a
whole may be regarded as creating unnecessary instability without
certainty of outcome.
Institutional stability is also facilitated by being anchored in treaties
and conventions concerning the democratic Rechtsstaat and a pluralis-
tic democracy and in human rights and fundamental freedoms,
such as, for example, the European Convention on Human Rights
(Council of Europe). These human and civil rights have found their
place in constitutions. Since constitutions express the will of a people
and guarantee continuity in leading political values, changing a consti-
tution requires not only a qualified majority in parliaments, but
usually also entails the introduction of new general value statements,
the consequences of which for the administrative apparatus are not
immediately visible. In the case of the Federal Republic of Germany,
for instance, there are provisions in the Constitution that cannot be
changed, such as the ‘political order/structure’ of the Republic, the
division of power, the principles of democracy, and of the constitu-
tional and social state. Also inviolable are the principles of human
dignity as well as the essence of the constitutional rights of equality
and freedom. Some changes have been made, for instance, concerning
the elaboration of the principle of asylum (1993), equal rights for men
and women and the protection of the handicapped (1994), and

reforms in the intergovernmental relations with potentially substantial
administrative consequences. Finally, the new Article 23 in the
German Constitution states that the Federal Republic of Germany sup-
ports the establishment of a united Europe with democratic, rechtsstaat
and social principles in a federal structure. The same article also specifies
the role of the Bundestag and the Länder in the further development of
European integration. This is an interesting example of supranational
influence upon constitutional level arrangements.
Also within established democracies, implicit or explicit discussion
may indicate that complementary views about democracy exist with
each seeking to influence political structures. This is presently illus-
trated by a discussion on the relative advantages of the liberal or repre-
sentative democracy and those of direct democracy (through referenda
and the like) in several European countries (Held, 1997).
Yet another explanation for the relative stability in political struc-
tures could be that we know so little about the need for political
reform because most evaluations of public management reforms are
internal, administrative and output oriented rather than external,
political and outcome oriented (Christensen et al., 2003: 74). A less
flattering, reason might well be that westerners in general consider
their principles of parliamentary sovereignty, representative democ-
racy, electoral competition, party politics, left–right ideological differ-
entiation, and primacy of politics well established and not in need of
reform (Toonen, 2001: 183). One cannot deny a certain consolidation
of practices. More specifically, one might find that in a variety of polit-
ical systems, suggestions of reforming elements of the political system
are quickly killed by legislators. An example that comes to mind is the
failure of continuous efforts to apply Title VI of the Ethics in
Government Act 1978 of the United States (about the appointment of
special prosecutors to investigate wrongdoing in the executive branch)
to members of Congress (Carter, 1997: 195).
Political system reform: Conditional for and/or

complementary to administrative reform?
Looking for an analytical frame ‘that captures all public sector reforms’
(see Introduction), this section’s purpose is to devise an analytical
and normative framework to facilitate the study of administrative
reform as conditioned and/or complemented by political reform, with
the latter potentially being an independent (i.e., political system) as
well as a dependent variable (political office holders as a component in

political–administrative relations).
Discussing the relation between political and administrative system
reform in terms of balancing implies a criterion crucial to such a
balance. In line with classic philosophies in both political and adminis-
trative science (Weber, 1980; Finer, 1997: 38–43), we propose that
crucial criterion to be legitimacy: the justification of political and
administrative action. Justification of reforms in both realms should
refer to vital values of good governance: democracy, legality (the rule
of law), effectives and efficiency (performance). As Rosenbloom (1983)
observed, these four values are related to different views upon what
public administration is. The managerial view or approach emphasizes
effectiveness and efficiency; the political approach stresses representa-
tiveness, political responsiveness, and accountability; and the legal
approach focuses on procedural norms of due process, individual
substantive rights and equity.
More specifically, administrative and political reforms should be in
line with one another in giving priority to one or more of these values
as justification for reform. This correspondence between values is crucial
given the inherent and undeniable tension between the administrative
and political systems and the potential conflict or competition
between the values involved in the arts of politics and administration.
Thus, efficiency may be at odds with the demands of due process, and
efficiency’s potential clash with the demands of democracy has been
called the classic dilemma in public administration (Self, 1979: 277–88).
Political fashions and moods may determine which of the values of
good governance is granted a dominant role. Thus, NPM reforms are
generally based on utilitarian and private sector-oriented values. Our
premise is that when the spirit of certain bureaucratic (administrative)
reforms is not in line with vital values in the political realm, adminis-
trative reforms will turn out to be ineffective. Likewise, political
reforms will be less effective if not accompanied by administrative
reforms. Put differently, the greater the correspondence between the
values guiding political and administrative reforms, the greater their
legitimacy and potential for successful implementation.
By way of illustration, we may look at the formation of quasi-
autonomous, non-governmental organizations (quangos) that are pub-
licly funded and managed by appointed rather than elected officials
who operate at arm’s-length from government and who are account-
able to the funding agency rather than to the public at large (Jenkins
et al., 2003: 55). Proper understanding of quangos requires that we
briefly characterize NPM philosophies of which they are supposed to

be a typical product. Rohr refers to Khademian, who sees NPM’s salient
characteristics as including efforts to let ‘performance replace process
as the focus for accountability’ and letting ‘performance-driven, short-
term contracting … take precedence over vertical integration in
defining responsibilities’, while ‘devolution and flexibility, not rule
books and centralized executive oversight, should shape the job of a
manager.’ (Rohr, 2002: ix)
This re-appreciation of power relations in new governance styles has
blurred the picture of ‘clear-cut’ hierarchical relations that used to
define accountability. Behn refers to Campbell who, in an analysis of
accountability, identifies two schools of thought: ‘The “hierarchs” seek
to channel accountability so that it flows directly and exclusively up
through superiors, then to ministers and, eventually, to legislators. The
“pluralists” assert that life is not that simple. Guess what? The pluralists
won.’ (Behn, 2001: 59).
The formation of agencies at ‘arm’s-length’ from government for
reasons of efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery does,
however, not correspond to dominant political views for clear ministe-
rial responsibility and accountability. Evidence from the Netherlands
and from Canada indicates that these reforms are criticized and partly
or completely reversed or compensated by additional guarantees for
due process and clear hierarchy (Bemelmans-Videc, 2003: 179–206).
Partly in line with, and partly as a reaction to these and comparable
administrative reforms, governments sought new formulas of adminis-
trative collaboration between dispersed actors inside and outside of
government without clear authority relations. Examples are the
‘Joined-Up Government’ movement in the UK (as an expression of
Blair’s Third Way programme) and collaborative governance develop-
ments in Canada (Gray et al., 2003).
Suggestions for future research
We presented above several examples of actual and suggested reforms,

but they are limited to a small number of countries. The examples
mentioned have almost all been found in studies that concern admin-
istrative reform in Western countries. What appears to be missing in
the public administration literature is an overview of actual and sug-
gested political system reforms and, more importantly, the degree to
which they are important for the success of administrative reforms.
This ought not be outside the scope of public administration research.
Gauging the potential of administrative reforms it is important to

consider these in terms of the political context in which they are
pursued, how they match with political values, and how they balance
conflicting values of good governance. When context is important to
success or failure of public policy (Bovens and ‘t Hart, 1996: 150) we
can assume it is equally important to assessing success or failure of
administrative reform. The literature generally focuses on changes in
the political–administrative summit, while much less is known about
the influence of the political system upon bureaucratic reforms.
Equally important, we know even less about the impact of administra-
tive reforms upon the functioning of the political system. Could it be
that congruence between administrative and political values is larger in
consensual parliamentary systems than in adversarial presidential
systems? If this is the case, we may expect reforms to be more success-
ful in the former.
Of course, consciously pursued administrative reforms are not only
conditioned by the political context but also by incremental changes
internal to the civil service system. For instance, in recent years the
average length of tenure of top civil servants in the Netherlands is less
than that of political office holders. Consequentially, the latter’s
control of bureaucracy has actually increased (‘t Hart et al., 2002: 320).
Thus, proper assessment of the potential of administrative reform is
also served by considering the internal dynamic of the civil service
system. Indeed, political–administrative relations influence success or
failure of reform.
Shifting the attention to the potential impact of political transforma-
tion upon bureaucracy one can hypothesize this to be large. After all,
constitutional level regime changes ought to reverberate throughout
the political–administrative system. And yet, it is known that despite
major upheavals, the state bureaucracies in various cases simply con-
tinued to function (e.g., during the French Revolution, during the Nazi
period, and during the post-communist era). Thus the question
emerges what we really know about the influence of political system
reform upon structure and functioning of state bureaucracies.
Clearly, there is much research left to be done. Politics is as impor-
tant as ever to national political–administrative systems. It must be
responding to problems of today with the techniques of today, for it is
not relegated to the minor role which Merriam suggested 70 years ago:
‘unless politics is prepared for thorough and vigorous reorganization in
the light of the techniques and problems of the present day, it will and
should be relegated to a minor role in the social order of the future’
(Merriam, 1934: 198). However, it is time that public administration

scholars delve more into the influence of politics and the political
system upon the structure and functioning of state bureaucracies, and
civil service systems more specifically. The immediate benefit is in the
potential for enhanced success of administrative reforms. A delayed
effect could be the modernization of political systems if the analysis of
their impact upon administrative reforms shows that political systems
need to evolve with the executive branches of government.
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Conclusion
19
Civil Servants in the Enabling
Framework State of the
21st Century
Introduction
Many observations in this volume concern changes and transforma-

tions in civil service systems (CSS), which have been defined as mediat-
ing institutions for the mobilization of human resources in the service of the
state in a given territory (Bekke, Perry and Toonen, 1996: 2). How they
work and operate has changed considerably in recent years. Whatever
the nature of these changes, the desire for a solid and reliable civil
service, based on the rule of law, has been pivotal to public sector
reforms in various regions of the world, and certainly in Central and
Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. In Western Europe and Anglo-
American countries, the reform efforts were more focused on establish-
ing a flexible CSS by means of new public management (NPM) reforms.
Where systems have not been able to achieve solid results to develop-
ing and maintaining a CSS strategy aimed at reform, especially when
such reforms are not anchored in a Rechtsstaat tradition, deformation
and regression have become more likely outcomes than reform and
progression
It is widely understood that governments and other state institutions
have developed into more fluid, cross-border, and overarching systems
of governance. Public sector units and actors are entrusted with the
authority to take decisions on the binding allocation of values but do
not function in a closed and self-sufficient way. Instead, they operate
and evolve in close interaction with (actors in the) social, political,
cultural and economic systems. By now, that interaction has insti-
tutionalized widely. Civil service systems thus need to be – and indeed
are – conceived as integral parts of larger systems of governance. Does
this change the nature and our understanding of civil service systems?
299
To structure an answer to this question we use the four elements of

the definition civil service system at the beginning of this chapter
(mobilization, human resources, in service of, the state). When
reflecting upon these four elements, we use and refer to observations
made by the authors in this volume. Also, questions with regard to the
individual chapters that were raised in the opening chapter have been
addressed by the various authors and, thus, are not be duplicated
in this chapter. The central issue in this final chapter is to find an
answer to the question of how both governance and NPM approaches
contribute to a perspective that fits contemporary needs.
The mobilization of…
Mobilizing human resources in both existing as well as newly (re)formed

governmental systems in various regions of the world, involves strate-
gies to secure impartiality and an evidence-based policy- and decision-
making process. The objective is, of course, a trustworthy and reliable
civil service, espcially when pursuing major transformations affecting
state and society. Indeed, the classical idea as that CSS have to yield
authority and final decision-making power to political office holders
who are considered the legitimate and authoritative actors, is as
alive as ever. Civil servants may not agree with the policy content and
decision, but they are still expected to accept political guidance.
Weber identified the concern for legitimization and authority as
being at the centre of the institutional transformation and moderniza-
tion processes that confronted many 19th-century societies. This
concern is important again in the search for a trust economy, spilling
over into the quest for an open, knowledge-based, and trust-based
society. However, internationalization of domestic safety issues and
subsequent demands for secrecy have made this ideal harder to attain
in recent years. Meanwhile, the established principle of governance,
once identified by Weber as a crucial dimension of bureaucracy, has
been unchallenged: the rule and governance based on the participation
by and input from professionalized and specialized civil servants, with
all advantages and risks involved (e.g., legitimation, accountability,
exercise of power).
With respect to mobilization, we observe that there is a widespread
development towards more open strategies. This has partly been
imposed from the outside, and partly also initiated from within civil
service systems. Internal and self-controlled career and recruitment
patterns have increasingly been replaced by the ambition to create
In the Enabling Framework State 301
more open selection processes oriented on external labour markets

(i.e., other public, non-profit, and private sector organizations). The
competitive search for talent and expertise in the broadest sense of the
word seems, for instance, to have replaced the old notion of the ‘elitist
closed shop’ in countries such as the United Kingdom and France. In
the UK, for instance, the public sector was historically associated with a
professional, internally trained and educated career civil service. The
‘De-Sir Humphreying’, as Hood once called it (1990), is the first step in
de-institutionalizing process of the British civil service (Bezes and
Lodge). In France, the pantouflage of old has been under siege and civil
servants with a middle-class background appear to be getting into the
senior positions once reserved for the grand corps elite (Rouban).
The ambition to create the civil service as an integrating core insti-
tution in service of the state based on some notion of general or public
interest has not been abandoned in real life politics and recruitment
policies in government. It is clear that a civil service system, as defined
in this project, can materialize in different forms and through different
mobilization strategies. Historically, the institutionalized mobilization
system is associated with the notion of ‘bureaucracy’.
An important aspect of bureaucracy, in our view, is the almost uni-
versally observed habit of framing the civil service as an integrating
core institution through legislation. Obviously, laws and legal pro-
visions do not necessarily describe the actual operation of these
systems. However, the process of legislation as such symbolizes the
effort to remove selection and recruitment criteria and procedures from
possible nepotism, cronyism and political favouritism are as much as
possible. While spoils, personal relations and party politics still play
some role in civil service recruitment (especially at the higher levels) it
is remarkable that it was considered necessary everywhere to establish
and reinforce institutions for mobilizing human resources for the state
through explicit legal frameworks, thereby placing public personnel
policies under the scrutiny of external public control. Even in the prag-
matic tradition of the British civil service, there is currently a debate
on ‘upgrading’ the legal bases for the mobilization, conduct and behav-
iour of ‘human resources’ on the basis of statutes as a legal, parlia-
mentary approved framework (A Draft Civil Service Bill, 2004).
Mobilization strategies are increasingly directed at formalized know-
ledge for entry level positions. Consequentially, education has become
the primary, pre-entry qualification for recruitment and selection of
human resources. However, on-the-job training and practical experi-
ence have almost everywhere become complementary to often compet-
itive searches – sometimes with the help of external exams or for

instance a (European) Concours for which university programmrs pro-
vide part of the preparation. Once appointed, special programmes are
available to further develop specific skills. These programmes can
be and are offered through special university-based programmes and/or
through private (consultancy) firms specialized in training civil
servants.
It is interesting to note that the notion of mobilizing human
resources in service of the state is wider and includes more than we
realized 17 years ago. While external advice and ‘advisory’ interest
groups or organizations have always played a role in this mobilization,
national state reform policies are being supported by and/or ‘out-
sourced’ to international expertise centres such as the OECD, the
World bank, IMF, the UN, and internationally operating consultancy
firms. The latter have become standard support structures for mobilizing
human resources in service of the state in terms of expertise, intel-
ligence, and legitimating or management capacity within well-
established governmental organizations. Interactive modes of policy-
making with citizens, stakeholders and civil society interest groups
have evolved and gradually seem to gain a legitimate position – citizen
panels, citizen charters – in the standard institutional repertoire of
human resource mobilization.
The judiciary has become an important newly mobilized and not
always intended or deliberately sought human resource in the manage-
ment of public affairs even if its main function is to authoritatively
control and review the actions of the state itself. Increasingly, the
judiciary also helps in settling disputes among the state and its citizens,
or among societal interests. This is especially the case in countries
where other conflict mediating capacities have lost in importance due
to increasing individualization. Thus, in many countries juridification
or judicialization of the mobilization processes have occured (Wise and
Christensen; Dijkstra). Apart from the obvious conclusion that rule-
driven and ‘legal’ behavior still is a central feature of and concern for
civil service systems, irrespective of any managerial revolution, it is
interesting to note that ‘case law’ and the contextual mobilization of
expertise and contra expertise in the settlement of a legal dispute
seems to have grown in importance almost everywhere around the
world. This is not only the case in countries with a common law tra-
dition (Rohr) but also in systems with a predominantly Roman law
origin. For instance, the European Court of Justice has become a major
driver of governmental reform. The Court is currently leading the
debate about the question what the meaning of core public services
is in EU-context. Are these public services so distinct that labor laws
are necessary separate from such laws that constrain private sector
employment?
The widening mobilization strategies have in some Western nations
lead to a call for ‘normalization’ of civil service provisions, procedures
and (e.g., Italy, Switzerland, The Netherlands). ‘Normalization’ refers to
efforts of standardizing, i.e. normalizing, labor law conditions for the
public and private sectors alike. In other words, separate labor laws
are to be abolished. These laws mainly concern labor relations and
conditions. In the EU-context, these facilitate the free mobility of
people, goods and services, i.e., the utmost openness in recruitment
policies and mobilization strategies in a cross-national setting. But,
internationalization – even in the context of the EU – has not pro-
gressed to such a degree that the state as a legal, cultural, and political
entity clearly demarcated from other societal institutions has ceased to
exist. Thus, the European Court faces the need to search for the limits
to this ‘normalization’ by identifying the distinctiveness of ‘publicness’
or the ‘public domain’ as a basis for member state bound and con-
trolled recruitment and mobilization policies within core public
institutions.
It is likely, if not inevitable, that this search for the distinctiveness of
the public domain will be the basis for differentiating public labour
relations and public personnel policies from private sector arrange-
ments (Rouban). This not only implies only a distinction between
‘public’ and ‘private’ personnel and in human resource (mobilization)
policies but also involves a distinction between people ‘working for the
state’ (i.e., public employees) and people working ‘in the (public)
service of the state’ (i.e., civil servants). where the latter constitute a
special but not necessarily ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ category. Interestingly, we
can observe this development already at the local level of governance,
historically the breeding place of innovation and institutional adapta-
tion to changing technological, economic, social and political circum-
stances.
The notion of the civil service is often closely associated with the
national level of governance (Kuhlmann and Bogumil). This is not sur-
prising at the end of an era during which the building of a democratic
nation-state had been the core mission of institutions of governance
(which includes civil service systems). Current developments, con-
veniently summarized with the catchwords of internationalization,
informatization, individualization and cross-culturalization have
increased the awareness of the multi-level nature of all systems of

governance. Local personnel policies have traditionally not been con-
ceptualized as civil service systems. It is interesting to note that a first
exploration of developments at the local level, deliberately included in
this volume, immediately stumbles upon a contest about the need and
desirability of separate laws and statutes for – in German – Beamten
(civil servants) and Angestellten (public employees, i.e., those working
on the basis of temporary contracts). In all three countries reviewed,
the distinction between civil servants and public employees raises
intriguing questions. In Germany, the existing legal framework for the
inherited traditional institutional categorizations is under revision.
These categories are being challenged by labour unions (who find it
difficult to represent the interests of a differentiated constituency) and
by private management law (in favour of opening the public service
delivery contracts for a private market). In addition, distinctions
between manual and non-manual labourers seem, indeed, to serve
little function anymore in the modern, knowledge-based society.
However, it is interesting to note that although changed and adapted,
the notion of differentiation between civil servants and public employ-
ees has not been abolished yet.
The French case seems to suggest that it is worthwhile to look at the
issue from a perspective of de- and re-institutionalization. A funda-
mental decentralization process actually resulted in many case in the
situation that responsibility for human resources in service of the state
has been transferred from the prefectorial and deconcentrated service
under the immediate responsibility of national government to the
sphere of (democratic) local governance (Bezes and Lodge; Rouban).
Next to the traditional function of political and local interest repre-
sentation, subnational governments increasingly provide policy delivery
functions at local and regional (departmental) levels of governance.
The re-institutionalization of this part of ‘the human resource mobi-
lization structure in service of the state’ involved the creation of a
specific territorial civil service. This enabled the creation of governance
structures at local and regional levels to act in the institutional capacity
of local agents of state policy. The fact that within the dual ‘two-status
system’ the traditional appointment by way of (civil service) statut is
nowadays being pushed back in favour of employment contracts is
more likely to be explained by the relative growth of public service
delivery functions due to the decentralization process, than to the
decline or obsoleteness of the general local civil service function that
has been institutionalized in order to facilitate this process.
The close interconnectedness of the concept of the civil service with

the conception of the state is clearly illustrated by the British case.
Here, the dual structure of policy-making in a (national) civil service
and public policy delivery by a (local) public service (or by market-like
arrangements) is strongly institutionalized, not in dual status acts, but
in the very structure of the ‘dual state’. Local government in England is
‘notoriously’ conceived of as a utilitarian instrument in the hands of
the (autonomous) local community. The emerging multi-level nature
of international governance and human resource management mobi-
lization structures has placed this concept increasingly under stress.
Local service delivery, its responsiveness, quality and economy, is
becoming increasingly important to the national state. The only way
that local and regional human resources can be mobilized in this dual-
state structure is through an elaborate system of function (rather than
governance) oriented ‘value for money’ performance management
structures. By all accounts, in the English case, this seems to have
evolved in planning and control cycles with tremendous transaction
costs for those operating within this system.
Historical experience in continental systems such as in Germany and
the attempted success of French decentralization policy, suggest that
the way out of this is to re-institutionalize local government as a dual
entity, the human resources of which may be mobilized in the service
of the state as well as of the local community, hence a system of co-
governance. This is not only relevant for functional service delivery,
but, more importantly, also for its integrating and problem solving,
that is, policy-making capacity. These functions in the British case are
typically reserved and assigned to the (national) civil service. Trans-
ferring some of these institutional capacities to the local level does not
only imply reform of local government and the national civil service,
but also would amount to a state reform in itself. This underscores the
complexities and fundamental nature of ‘civil service reform’, not only
in newly emerging, but in well-established democracies as well.
The reason that a multi-level system of governance has become the
dominant conception of the public realm is not only because of a
process of internationalization at the top, but also because of inter-
nationalization and individualization at the street level of the adminis-
trative pyramid. The advent of the multicultural society, the rise of a
technological development favouring individualized, customized and
tailor-made solutions within common and overarching (international)
frameworks and (standardized) platforms, require a totally new kind of
expertise that has to be mobilized.
The increased use of the concept of governance during the past

15 years reflects an almost universal need to think ‘out of the box’ and
points out a need for including non-governmental actors in the opera-
tion of civil service systems. The studies in this book suggest that
strategies for mobilizing human resources in the service of the state are
broadening. They increasingly include or are supposed to include the
citizen, not only as client and consumer of public services, a partner,
co-producer, expert, but also in his institutional capacity as a citizen,
that is, vested with rights from and obligations to the state.
… human resources…
It seems that most developments and changes in civil service systems

have occurred or are about to occur in the domain of the mobilization
strategies of and within civil service systems. It is interesting to note
that the discussion and analysis in most contributions circle around a
rather limited number of strategic human resources, which are well
known from classical bureaucracy theory: human intelligence, evi-
dence-based (scientific) knowledge, certified expertise, and a capacity
to organize. Professionalization and authority in the context of civil
service systems are still expected to be served by the mobilization and
use of impartially applied, tested and trusted knowledge and adequate
and intelligently applied information. At first sight, it seems that an
old Weberian acquaintance such as Dienstwissen – that is, knowledge
gathered and acquired during a career – has become less important as a
source of authority and intelligence. Internal recruitment, promotion
based on seniority, and the value of a stable long-term career as a civil
servant seems to have become less valued and has given way to a pref-
erence for flexibility, innovation, job circulation and an interchange
across public and private sectors (Wise and Lægreid). However, while
often advocated, few successful transfers from the private to the public
sector actually seem to occur. And one may wonder whether the search
for certification and ‘competency management’ actually is not the
21st century version of (the certification of) Dienstwissen, now basically
supposed to have been acquired in (lifelong) trails across relevant
policy networks or institutional ‘chains’ of governance and not in
internal labour markets and intra-organizational careers.
Is it not striking that the traditional civil service resource of reliable
and practical knowledge of the details of the governmental process is
still highly valued, or at least longed for in the transformational pro-
cess toward a Rechtsstaat that characterize non-Western administrative
systems in so many regions of the world (Verheijen and Rabrenovich;

Burns; Adamolekun). Transformational processes in the Western world
(Van der Meer, Steen and Wille; Halligan) have been summarized by the
concept of ‘hollow state’ (Frederickson and Frederickson, 2006). At first
sight, the ‘hollow state’ seems capable of transferring many executive and
public policy delivery functions to outside the domain of the civil service,
that is, towards the broader and partially commercialized public service
domain. At the same time, all kinds of large-scale developments in, for
example, international migration, internal and external security, climate
change, food safety and epidemiology seem to bring along a discussion of
strategic physical resources that need to be under the direct and imme-
diate command of the civil service system. Civil service systems seem
to face a new round of core business discussions, now not so much from
the perspective of economy and efficiency, but from the perspective of
robustness, resilience and sustainability.
A notion that clearly has been changing is that of the desirability of
the faceless bureaucrat as a valued resource. Perhaps we are entering a
new debate on the universal desirability of ‘transparency’ as the ulti-
mate good in the public sector versus the value of secrecy and
confidentiality as important resources for an effective civil service
system. It is clear that the development of the multimedia society and
the world wide web enhanced the visibility and therefore ‘publicness’
of formerly hidden or confidential components of the civil service.
Apart from a degree of anxiety within the ranks of civil servants,
created by the unpredictability of sudden public exposure, this prob-
ably means that some key values, such as confidentiality, from the tra-
ditional administrative state become important and valued resources
once again.
So far, the increasing ‘transparency’ seems to be doing little good to
the public credentials of major portions of the civil service system.
Respectfulness and civility become important resources in the opera-
tion of civil service systems in a plural society, but we have hardly
begun to rethink the consequences of the modern condition of public-
ness for the procedural and personal aspects of the civil service.
Honesty and rectitude are traditional civil servant virtues. Currently,
these virtues seem to be missing in the reports of many external
observers. Apart from a more and more visible and market driven
battle on corruption, honesty and rectitude seem to have become sub-
ordinate to the more immediate pressures to survive and professionally
counteract the political impact of institutionalized, intended and unin-
tended processes of naming and shaming.
Many of the accounts in this volume reflect the unintended aspects

of work of civil service systems, often labelled by the public and the
media as ‘bureaucratic’ and red tape. Under the current conditions of
multi-level governance, individualization, and horizontalization initia-
tives are not so much taken at the top, but at lower levels of the orga-
nization (Page). It can even be advocated as the preferred strategy to
deal with the complexities of modern political and administrative life.
Bottom-up proactivity is a quality of the ‘human resources’ within the
civil service system often called upon (Rohr). Under the current institu-
tional conditions, however, the operational incentives still appear to
favour and reward the conservativeness, feasibility concerns and ‘can
do’ qualities of the higher level civil servant as public manager. In
some countries, civil service reform is mainly focused on the top of the
career service (Stillman). Such a ‘can do’ mentality and focus on the
top only may well inhibit the reflectiveness needed to develop a vision
of and for a 21st century civil service. Under the current conditions
managerial techniques contribute more to hierarchy and control in
civil service systems than to the aspired public entrepreneurship.
… in the service …
Despite the promise of entrepreneurship, managerialism has developed

into an agent of hierarchy and control within civil service systems. The
merits of the new public management approach are believed to be
the product-oriented public service delivery, that is, that part of the
public domain where outputs and outcomes can be clearly specified.
Some successes have been booked in modernizing, reforming and
improving service delivery systems through adopting managerial
strategies in welfare and law-and-order bureaucracies alike.
Procedures to ensure an appropriate, that is, due process, operation
of civil service systems in the service of the state, and not in the service
of private, partisan or selective interests, are still in demand even under
the new conditions of outsourcing procurement, managerial inno-
vation, and multi-level governance. The attention for good governance
in the recent cycles of reform and innovation expresses a sustained
need and interest in the quest for control, for checks and balances, for
rule bound behaviour, and for accountability. Each of these are classi-
cal civil service concerns. Managerial strategies are of little use here, or,
if they are used, produce counter-effective results. Lacking political
leadership, citizen surveys easily turn into tools for generating the mission
statement of civil service systems. ‘Flat organizational structures’,
managerially advocated for reasons of flexibility and speediness, sud-

denly turn into unpredictable centralized intervention and politically
or incident motivated powerplay. In a context of compliance with
political control, flat organizations provide an excellent playing field
for personalized control, often at the expense of the public values such
as impartiality and professionalism (Du Gay, 2000).
Managerial techniques are output oriented and require the definition
of products and ‘deliverables’ in order to be effective and operational.
They are, therefore, suitable tools for the organization and ‘discipline’
of public service delivery. At the core, though, civil service systems are
not conceptualized in terms of managerialism and product orientation
but in terms of an open capacity organization that is able and capable
of a strategic and problem oriented mobilization of human resources in
the service of the state. This notion of civil service systems is hardly
reconcilable with concepts bound by the ‘deliverables’ or ‘organiza-
tional goods’ which are so characteristic for the ‘product organization’
that wishes to measure output if not outcome. When a corresponding
concept of quality control and checks and balances is not developed, it
is probable that the core of civil service systems as a capacity organiza-
tion will become increasingly policiticized on a partisan basis. Indeed,
this is already observed in several chapters in this study (Van der Meer
et al.; Bezes and Lodge). Consequently, it may turn into a battleground
of political versus managerial strategies at the expense of the long-term
policy-making capacity (in terms of intellectual appraisal, Self, 1979:
192) and strategic problem orientation, which was once deemed the
central domain and capacity at the core of the civil service system.
… of the state in a given territory
Apart from internal dynamics as reported above, the observed or

aspired changes in civil service systems are a function of the trans-
formation of the role of the state in society. This role of the state is
obviously different in various regions of the world. In institutional
form, state systems are perhaps even more varied than civil service
systems. The general trend reported throughout this volume is the
movement away from the welfare production and encompassing
service state to something, we might label the enabling framework state
(in variation with what Page and Wright (2007: 1), call the enabling
state). There is a striking continuity in the social appreciation of rule-
bound behaviour by the state and its underlying institutions based on
recognizable rules. The judicialisation process has raised the concept of
a Rechtsstaat from the status of an old and traditional late 18th-century

or early 19th-century concept to one with a contemporary appeal and
modern ambition we see embodied by this concept of an enabling
framework state. In addition, the movement towards the citizen as the
institutional carrier of welfare state rights in the restructuring of the
welfare states and the pursuit of procurement strategies in public
service delivery has indeed lead to a ‘hollowing out’ of executive state
structures and institutions. At the same time, it has strengthened the
need for an accountable and integrating civil service system with the
capacity to link and combine various product oriented managerial
systems within a framework oriented towards some general or over-
arching interest.
The longtime ambition of ‘synoptic action’ and central control has
been replaced by a desire to aid societal systems and individuals in
such a manner that they can achieve their own goals and ambitions.
This does not require a state that does more with less, but one that
operates at different levels of governmental action, secures the rules of
the game and intervenes at strategically important junctures for the
continued development of the societal system. This is true for the
internal operation of agencies as well as for the (to some: worrisome)
implications of ‘multi-level governance’ for the coordination and
democratic control. The evolving intergovernmental and network rela-
tions require adjusted institutional arrangements in which questions of
answerability, accountability, the prevention of detournement de pouvoir
and procedures for a proper discharge of duties may appropriately and
effectively resolved (Dijkstra). The problem at hand is not the evolu-
tion of intergovernmental relations at a subnational level, but the need
to develop corresponding institutional arrangements, which enable the
interacting partners to manage and resolve mutual interests at a
minimum of transaction costs. The institutional arrangement that
complements existing intergovernmental relations is, as the reader will
guess by now, an adequately structured and institutionalized civil
service system. But, how exactly does that 21st century civil service
system relate to the state?
In the traditional portrayal of Weber’s conception of bureaucracy,
civil servants are subordinate to politics, execute public policy as devel-
oped by political officeholders dutifully and without questioning, serve
citizens at large sine ira et studio, and are appointed mostly on the basis
of merit (this last element, though, is much older and has been part of
Confucian systems for at least 2000 years; cf. Widner, 2006: 17). If ever
such a civil servant was an empirical reality, in the past 50 years or so it
has become clear that civil servants have embraced a much more active
role in public policy making and service delivery and thus have become
the indispensable pillar to the state and, yes, to democracy. It is true
that Weber expressed concern for the degree to which bureaucracy
could threaten democracy (cf., the ‘… unaufhyaltsamen Vormarsches der
Bürokratisierung …’, Weber, 1980: 836). His pessimistic outlook on the
future role and position of bureaucracy, and thus of civil servants, did not
take into account the degree to which the civil service as institutional
arrangement and as personnel system has been able to restrain civil ser-
vants’ actions to serving the population at large and its elected represen-
tatives. In more popular terms, civil servants are not generally considered
as a viable force capable of a coup d’état. Does this mean that the
Weberian perspective can be discarded? Several authors in this volume
(e.g., Van der Meer et al.; van de Berg and Toonen; Peters and Pierre)
suggest that the Weberian perspective ought to be revisited. Indeed, a
neo-Weberian perspective that combines an empirical and a normative
component would help a conceptualization of civil servants in service of
the state that fits the needs of the 21st century.
With regard to the empirical component of this neo-Weberian con-
ception it is important to define bureaucracy both as a type of organi-
zation (perhaps even: institutional arrangement) and as a particular
personnel system (e.g., merit based, etc.). With regard to the organiza-
tional element of bureaucracy, it is clear that public organizations are
to varying degrees both rule-bound (cf. Weber’s ideal type of bureau-
cracy) and incentive-based (cf., NPM-style entrepreneurial bureaucracy).
This is especially the case where NPM reforms have been implemented
(Halligan). Indeed, NPM emerged in societal cultures that embraced
a neo-liberal free market entrepreneurialism where citizens are
‘… no longer members of a political community but part of a chain of
principal-agent contracts …’ and where civil servants are no longer
‘statesmen in disguise’ but ‘servants of power’ (Rhodes, 2005: 143, 149).
This helps to recognize current trends in some countries (i.e., the
Anglo-American countries) and why other countries have not devel-
oped quite that far (e.g., Western Europe, Southeast Asia) or are not
even considering NPM-style reforms for having to focus on building a
stable institutional structure (e.g., Central and Eastern Europe, Africa).
Thus, a neo-Weberian public sector and civil service, one that com-
bines rule-bound and incentive-based features, is far from being a
universal trend, yet attractive to any system.
From a normative perspective, we should consider the gap between
the perceived and the desired role and position of the civil service.
Weber may have been pessimistic about the degree of bureaucratiza-

tion, but he also recognized how each country would likely make its
bureaucracy fit national culture and traditions. Indeed, Weber’s detailed
analysis and recommendations in that respect have only recently
acknowledged (Widner, 2006) without awareness of Weber’s thought
about this, However, a neo-Weberian perspective must go beyond and
before Weber. If civil servants never really were neutral from and
dependent upon politics but, instead, acted all along as ‘statesmen
in disguise’ (and there is increasing empirical support for that,
cf. Carpenter (2001), then how can their active (not necessarily activist)
best be captured?
Weber’s theorizing is less helpful in that respect than that of Georg
Wilheklm Friedrich Hegel. In his Philosophy of Right (Hegel, 1991), the
civil service is regarded as the new guardian of democracy, as the indis-
pensable backbone to the advance and preservation of democracy. In
that perspective bureaucracy is institutionalized practical wisdom in
combination with practical experience and skills (see Shaw, 1992; see
on Weber’s roots in Hegel also Gale and Hummel, 2003; Jackson, 1986;
Spicer, 2004). This indicates a fundamental normative difference
between these two giants of German academe: Hegel expressed trust
in the civil service, while Weber expressed profound concern about
bureaucracy’s impact upon society. Naturally, a simple change of per-
spective will neither alter the people’s nor the politician’s views of
bureaucrats, but a Hegelian/neo-Weberian perspective will help recog-
nize that many civil service reforms are motivated by incomplete and
narrow perspectives and that they are not thought through with regard
to their impact upon other components of the public realm. If we are
to consider reforming the civil service system’s role and position in the
21st century we need a more sophisticated Hegelian/neo-Weberian
approach.that acknowledges, first, that one size does not fit all, second,
that reforms build upon existing institutional capacities, third, where
reforms are supported beyond political rhetoric (Widner, 2006: 6, 8,
12), and, fourth, where reforms do not stop at tinkering with only one
component of the entire multi-level governance system (Raadschelders
and Bemelmans-Videc).
The 21st century civil servant is not a passionless, faceless imple-
mentor of political will, but one who substantively contributes to
public policy and service delivery on the basis of a deeply understood
service to the citizenry, that is, general will, that is safeguarded by
an equally deep understanding of the importance of balancing due
process and equality before the law with efficient and effective
professionalism. In other words, the civil servant is the crucial actor of,
for, and in the 21st century enabling framework state.
By way of conclusion and confusion: open puzzles
In achieving the mission of the enabling framework state through civil

servants as facilitators and definers of policy, at least two issues stand
out as unresolved puzzles based on the research presented in this
project.
The first issue concerns the development of integrative strategies in
the mobilization of human resources in the service of the state.
Current approaches typically lead to strategies of structural centraliza-
tion often neglecting vital interrelationships at the periphery, as shown
with the establishment of a Department of Homeland Security to facil-
itate and improve disaster management. Instead, a new type of civil
service competency is needed to complement and overcome the inher-
ent problems to a functional and product orientation in the mobiliza-
tion of human resources in the service of the state. The policy-making
function within civil service systems has to be strengthened to counter
the strong and operational product orientation in the managerial domain
of governance institutions. The main challenge is that the problem
resolving and therefore policy-making capacity is lacking under the
current conditions of multi-level governance. Policy-making capacity,
in terms of synoptical reviews or in terms of systems of policy advo-
cacy is well cared for through the politicization in and managerializa-
tion of the civil service system. However, policy-making capacity in
terms of the appraisal function of civil service systems is valued too
little by those at the top of the bureaucratic, political, and consultancy
hierarchies.
The second issue is that an enabling framework state preferably
leaves the production and actual delivery of goods and services to pro-
curement systems and self-governing social and subnational insti-
tutions. But, it will inevitably face the question of how to deal with
becoming an ‘invisible state’. After all, public opinion research shows
that it is likely that an invisible state will lose legitimacy and thus
support. A regression to populist and clientalist strategies in mobilizing
human resources in the service of the state is appealing to and actually
attempted by other institutions, such as political parties, often at the
expense of providing generic and integrative functions in the public
domain. Because of this, the 21st century state needs civil servants
more than ever.
The enabling framework state mediates, facilitates, and initiates.

Primary actors for these three major type of actions are, whether we
like it or not, civil servants. Collectively they provide the integrative
function needed in a system of multi-level governance. No other insti-
tutional actor in the public realm can combine expertise, continuity in
office, professionalism and restraint (of the use of power and authority)
on the one hand, with impartiality, fairness, steadfastness, and
appraisal on the other hand. The contemporary civil service system
seems destined to be the primary mediating, facilitating, and – some-
times – initiating institution that serves this integrative function for
state’s society.
References
A Draft Civil Service Bill, 2004, A Consultation Document (London: Minister for
the Cabinet Office, 2004).
Bekke, H.A.G.M., James L. Perry and Theo A.J. Toonen (eds), Civil Service Systems
in a Comparative Perspective (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).
Carpenter, Daniel P., The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy. Reputations, Networks,
and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862–1928 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Du Gay, Paul, In Praise of Bureaucracy. Weber. Organization. Ethics (London:
Sage, 2000).
Frederickson, David G. and H. George Frederickson, Measuring the Performance
of the Hollow State (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006).
Gale, Scott A. and Ralph P. Hummel, ‘A Debt Unpaid – Reinterpreting
Max Weber on Bureaucracy’, Administrative Theory & Praxis, 25 (2003),
409–18.
Hegel, G.W.F., Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge: Cambridge
Hood, C., ‘De-Sir Humphreying the Westminster Model of Bureaucracy’,
Governance, 3 (1990), 205–14.
Jackson, M.W., Bureaucracy in Hegel’s Political Theory, Administration & Society,
18 (1986), 139–57.
Page, Edward C. and Vincent Wright (eds), The Changing Role of Senior Service
in Europe (Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Rhodes, R.A.W., Australia: The Westminster Model as Tradition. In Haig Patapan,
John Wanna and Patrick Weller (eds), Westminster Legacies. Democracy and
Responsible Government in Asia and the Pacific (Sydney: University of New
South Wales Press, 2005), pp. 129–52.
Self, Peter, Administrative Theories and Politics: An Enquiry into the Structure and
Process of Modern Government (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979).
Shaw, Carl K.Y., ‘Hegel’s Theory of Modern Bureaucracy’, American Political
Science Review, 86 (1992), 381–9.
Spicer, Michael W., ‘Note on Origins: Hegel, Weber, and Frederician Prussia’,
Administrative Theory & Praxis, 26 (2004), 97–102.
Weber, Max, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der Verstehenden Soziologie

(Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1980).
Widner, Ralph R., Civil Service Reforms and International Assistance: A Draft
Framework to Help Distill Lessons Learned. National Academy of Public Admin-
istration, Washington, Draft paper presented at NAPA meeting, 25 January
2007, Washington, DC.
Index
accountability 10, 88–90, 172, 221, citizens’ charter 94

242, 290, 310 civil servants
administrative legacies 123 neutral 173
administrative state 121, 188, 279 political 116
adversarial legalism 188 civil service law 19, 35, 123, 142,
Africa 91 147, 251, 255
agencyfication 37, 56, 109 Civil Service Refrom Act 1978 249,
Argentina 2, 285 253
Armenia 21–2 civil service system 30
Ash Council 256 Anglo-American 30, 173
Atlantic Revolutions 283 career 173
Australia 51–62, 127, 173 in Comparative Perspective Project
Austria 44, 176, 274 (CSSCP) 1–2, 34, 227, 279
autonomy 35, 124 continental 30, 173, 217
ministerial 24 lateral entry 176
colonialism 282, 284
bargaining 115, 143, 235 common assessment framework (CAF)
baseline assessment 27 27
Bavaria 35 common law 189
Belgium 35, 40, 43–5, 175–6, 270, 285 Commonwealth 51–2
benchmarking 26–8 of Independent States (CIS) 17
Benin 83, 94, 96 Confucian society 65
Blair, Prime Minister Tony 43, 268, Constitutional Convention 283
290 contracting-out 37, 146
Botswana 87, 90, 96 corporatism 115
Brazil 285 corruption 67, 96
budget reform 88 Council of Europe 287
Bulgaria 19 Country Financial Accountability
bureaucracy Assessment (CFAA) 95
representative 34, 39–41 Country Procurement Assessment
bureaucratization 34 Report (CPAR) 95–6
Burkina Fasso 91
decentralization 24, 37–8, 69, 104,
Campbell, Alan K. 254 129, 146
Canada 51–62, 173, 175–6, 201, 290 democracy
Carter, President Jimmy 254 Westminster 50–1
centralization 123 democratization 73, 84, 280, 282
political 123 Denmark 38, 43, 45, 266, 268, 274
administrative 124 Dienstwissen
checks and balances 20 diffusion 53
Chile 285 discrimination
China 67–71, 78 positive 40
Chirac, President Jacques 265 downsizing 37, 59
316
Index 317
École Nationale d’Administration (ENA) Iceland 45

125, 267 idealtype 104
economic liberalization 84 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 106
e-government 110 institutional veto 66
enabling framework state 309, 313 intellectual appraisal 309
enabling state 3 interest groups 115
Estonia 21 international financial institutions
estoppel 210 (IFI) 86, 88, 92
ethics codes 286 international labor market 169
Ethiopia 90, 96 internationalization 106, 116
European administrative space 28 Ireland 41, 44–5, 175
European Court of Justice (ECJ) 112, Northern 40, 45, 285
194 Italy 45, 176, 271, 274
European Institute of Public
Administration (EIPA) 27 Jacobin tradition 141
European integration 108, 282 Japan 67, 71–2, 78, 127, 173, 176,
European Union (EU) 27, 103, 106, 194, 283–4
115–16 Johnson, President Lyndon B. 254
export promoter initiative joined up government 290
judicialization 9, 112, 185, 222,
Fast Stream Development Programme 228, 302, 311
177 judicial review 189, 284
federalism 53
feminization 44 Kazakhstan 21, 29
Finland 38, 45, 176 Kennedy, Justice Paul 210
fixed term contracts 131 Kenya 83, 87, 96
framework legislation 115 Kim, President Dae Jung 72
France 35, 40, 43, 45, 125, 127, 131, Kyrgyzstan 21–2, 29
140, 173, 176, 187, 194, 201,
249, 265, 269, 271, 274, 283, Latin America 2, 127
285 Latvia 25
legal-rational rule 106
generalists 159, 165 Lituania 19
Germany 41, 44–5, 125, 128–29,
140, 143, 173, 175, 269, 284, 287 Malawi 95–6
Ghana 83, 89, 93, 96 mandarins 267
globalization 66 Marshall, Justice Thurgood 204
governance 4, 20, 110, 231 Mauritius 90
multi-level 4–5, 103 mediatization 110, 116
Government Performance and Results merit 23–4
Act (GPRA) 56, 61 pay 39
grand corps 274 Mexico 176
Greece 41, 44, 266, 274 ministerial cabinet 128
ministerial responsibility 110
Hegel(ian) 144, 312
Holmes, Justice Oliver Wendell 204 Namibia 87, 90, 94, 96
hollow state 307, 310 Napoleonic reforms 283
Hoover, J. Edgar Netherlands 35, 38, 41, 43–5,
Hungary 19 175–6, 268, 291
318 Index
network theory 4 rationality 42

New Zealand 51–62 Rechtsstaat 5, 35, 48, 123, 144, 173,
North Atlantic Treaty Organization 217, 224, 228, 299, 306
(NATO) 157 reform
New Steering Model (NSM) 147 personnel management 18
Next Steps 43, 132 HRM 38
New Public Management (NPM) 18, Rehnquist, Chief Justice C.J.
36, 58, 60, 85, 93, 109, 111, 124 representativeness
127, 147, 171, 207, 217 223, 232, mirror image 40
267–8, 311 Russia 17, 23, 25, 29
Nigeria 83, 87, 89, 96 Rwanda 95
Nixon, President Richard B. 254
Northcote–Trevelyan Report, 54, Scandinavia 175, 233
249 Senior Executive (Civil) Service 56,
Norway 43, 175–6 125, 130, 152, 248
career system 38.
O’Connor, Justice Sandra Day 209 seniority 23
offloading 109 Sierra Leone 89, 94, 96
Organization for Economic Singapore 67, 75–6, 78,
Cooperation and Development 126
(OECD) 27, 36, 111, 141, 149 Slovakia 22–3
South Africa 90, 93–94, 96
pantouflage 267, 301 South Korea 67, 72–3, 78, 176,
Park, President Cheun Hee 72 284
path-dependency 121, 123, 129 Spain 41, 43–4, 127, 173, 176, 266,
patronage 54, 70, 171 269, 271, 274, 285
Pendleton Act 54, 251 specialists 161
performance measurement 224 stare decisis 187–8
permanent representatives 107 state
Pétain, Marshall 202 consociational 4
Platonic guardians 286 developmental 71
Poland 19 federal 53
policy–operations dichotomy 286 socialist 69
policy space 156 strong 122–3
political–administrative relations unitary 53
11, 30, 124, 263–77, 281, 283, weak 122–3
289 welfare 4, 130
politicization 19, 21, 41–6, 114–15, welfare family 122, 173
129, 268–9 State Owned Enterprises (SOE) 74
political advisors 59, 116, 127, 161 stovepipes 26
political appointees 54, 59, 161, street-level bureaucracy 152
225, 286 Sub-Saharan Africe (SSA) 82–99
Portugal 176, 266, 285 Sweden 38, 41, 44–5, 162, 166, 173,
primacy of politics 288 266, 268, 274
principal-agent theory 154 Switzerland 173, 176
privatization 58, 70, 75
professionalism 113, 306 Taiwan 67, 73–7, 78, 284
Prussia 35, 249 Tajikistan 21–2
punctuated equilibrium 126 Tanzania 91, 93, 96
Index 319
terrorism 60 United States 51–62, 125, 173, 175–6,

Thatcher, Prime Minister Margareth 185, 201, 233, 235, 247, 262
53, 55, 265, 269 Uruguay 285
Tocqueville, Alexis de 153, 203
Transparency International 70 Vietnam 67–71, 78
Trudeau, Prime Minister Pierre Eliot
201 Wage system 24–5
trust 45, 275 Weber(ian), Max 10, 41m, 103–4,
113–15, 117, 123, 159, 165, 234,
Uganda 83, 92, 96 239, 264, 288, 300, 311
Ukraine 17, 19,23, 25 neo 11
ultra vires 139 Westminster system 173, 272
United Kingdom 37, 40–1, 43, 45, whistleblowers 39
51–62, 125, 127–8, 132–3, World Bank 29, 111
140, 156, 162, 166, 173, 175, World Trade Organization (WTO)
201, 265–6, 271, 274, 283, 29, 111
285
United Nations (UN) 106 Zambia 90, 92, 96

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The Civil Service in the

The Institutional Arrangements for Water Management in the 19th and

Also by Theo A.J. Toonen

Polder Politics in the Netherlands; Viscous State or Model Polity?

Also by Frits M. Van der Meer

Theo A.J. Toonen

Frits M. Van der Meer

1 Civil Service Systems and the Challenges of the 21st Century 1

3 Western European Civil Service Systems: A Comparative

4 Anglo-American Systems: Easy Diffusion 50

5 Explaining Civil Service Reform in Asia 65

6 Africa: Rehabilitating Civil Service Institutions –

8 Historical Legacies and Dynamics of Institutional

9 Public Service Systems at Subnational and Local Levels of

10 Middle Level Bureaucrats: Policy, Discretion and Control 152

11 Reforming Human Resource Management in Civil Service

13 The Constitutional Responsibility of the Civil Service 201

14 Civil Service Systems and Responsibility, Accountability and

15 Governance and Civil Service Systems: From Easy Answers to

17 Political–Administrative Relations 263

18 Political (System) Reform: Can Administrative Reform

Ladipo Adamolekun is professor of public administration, indepen-

Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc is a professor of public administration

Philippe Bezes is a researcher at the Centre d’Études et de Recherches

Jörg Bogumil is a professor of comparative urban and regional politics

John Burns is a professor of public administration at the Department of

Robert K. Christensen is an assistant professor in the Department of

Gerrit Dijkstra is assistant professor at the Department of Public

John Halligan is professor of public administration at the School of

Sabine Kuhlmann is an assistant professor in politics and government

Per Lægreid is a professor at the Department of Administration and

Martin Lodge is a Lecturer in political science and public policy at the

Edward C. Page is Sidney and Beatrice Webb professor of public policy

B. Guy Peters is Maurice Falk professor of American Government at the

Jon Pierre is a professor of political science at the Department of

Jos C.N. Raadschelders is a professor of public administration, manag-

Aleksandra Rabrenovic is a consultant for the World Bank, Belgrade,

John A. Rohr is a professor of public administration at the Centre for

Luc Rouban is Director of the Centre National de la Récherche

Trui Steen is an assistant professor at the Department of Public

Richard J. Stillman II is a professor of public administration at the

Theo A.J. Toonen is professor of public administration at the

Caspar F. van den Berg is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Public

Frits M. Van der Meer is an associate professor at the Department of

Tony Verheijen is a public sector management specialist at the World

Anchritt Wille is an assistant professor at the Department of Public

Charles Wise is professor and director of the John Glenn School of

Lois R. Wise is a professor of public administration at the School for

Jos Raadschelders would like to thank the Department of Public

empirically grounded and theoretical information was scarcely avail-

Pressures and challenges confronting civil service systems

Change, continuity, and diversity characterize the development of the

start of wide-ranging and profound changes in (mainly) the environ-

governance was hardly used in public administration and political

directly strikes at the very existence of civil service systems, given

Neither is inconceivable. For instance, efforts to establish the Rechts-

Construction and the plan of the book

light of their speciﬁc systems and models (Chapter 3). It is intriguing to

contradictory trends: politicization of the core bureaucracy as well as a

can CSS balance ﬂexibility and accountability with rerpesentativeness

versity Leiden: Department of Public Administration, University of Leiden,

The comparative study of civil service system development in Central

reform debate in public administration: Do most states appear to go