Civil Service Reform Under George W. Bush: Ideology, Politics, and Public Personnel Administration

• Published date: 01 December 2010
• Date: 01 December 2010
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X10381488
• Subject Matter: Articles

Review of Public Personnel Administration

30(4) 404 –422

© 2010 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X10381488

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ROP38148

8ROP30410.1177/0734371X10381488Kellough et al.Review of Public Personnel Administration

© 2010 SAGE Publications

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1The University of Georgia, Athens

2Georgia State University, Atlanta

Corresponding Author:

J. Edward Kellough, Department of Public Administration and Policy, School of Public and International

Affairs, The University of Georgia, 204 Baldwin Hall, Athens, Georgia 30602

Email: kellough@uga.edu

Civil Service Reform

Under George W. Bush:

Ideology, Politics, and

Public Personnel

Administration

J. Edward Kellough1, Lloyd G. Nigro2,

and Gene A. Brewer1

Abstract

This article focuses on the George W. Bush administration’s failed effort to impose

radical personnel reforms on the Department of Homeland Security and the

Department of Defense in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. We

use an analytical framework suggesting three overlapping primary reasons for reform:

(a) technical concerns, (b) ideological beliefs, and (c) a desire by the executive to

enhance political control. The results of our analysis show that, whereas motivations

for the Bush reforms were mixed, changes advocated by the administration were

largely politically and ideologically motivated. As a result, they met stiff resistance

from stakeholders, particularly federal employee unions and their supporters in

Congress, and the reforms were ultimately scuttled. One lesson from this experience

is that reformers should avoid radical changes to personnel systems based largely on

ideological and political preferences. Reforms that are more incremental in nature

and grounded more firmly on technical matters related to the implementation of core

personnel functions will, in our view, be more likely to succeed. Yet a conundrum

exists: if presidential scholars are correct, even these types of reforms may be held

hostage by proposals that reflect the views of partisans unwilling to compromise in

what appears to be an enduring era of polarized politics in Washington.

Kellough et al. 405

Keywords

civil service reform, public personnel administration, National Security Personnel

System, Department of Homeland Security personnel system, personnel system

deregulation

Civil service merit systems traditionally are founded on three core principles, including

employee selection on the basis of open and competitive examinations, political neu-

trality of the public workforce, and relative security of tenure for public employees

(Van Riper, 1958). The purpose served by these fundamental ideas is to establish and

preserve a public workforce grounded on what is broadly known as politically neutral

competence—that is, a system based on competency, equity, and professionalism that

simultaneously limits the intrusion of partisan politics into the public bureaucracy.

Typically, a central personnel agency, such as the former U.S. Civil Service Commis-

sion, is established to ensure the integrity of the system and fairness in its administra-

tion. For the past 30 years, however, we have witnessed dramatic changes in the

manner in which civil service systems are organized and operated. Decentralization

and management flexibility have become the standard, and most recently, significant

challenges to many of the foundations of merit emerged across the states and in the

federal service under President George W. Bush as he pursued his “big government

conservative” agenda.1

Whether or not they are pursuing the agendas of what the editors of this sympo-

sium, citing Skowronek (2008), call “orthodox innovators” (such as President George

W. Bush), the attention of reformers frequently is focused on civil service systems

and public personnel management because personnel systems provide a critical link

between political leaders and the vast public bureaucracy (Kellough & Nigro, 2006).

Personnel administration provides the structure through which we recruit, select, train,

and deploy the legions of public servants who do the work of government. It is, in

essence, the major means by which we control the offices of the government and the

powers of those offices (Nigro, 2006). It follows, then, that if one can direct personnel

policy, one can substantially influence the character of the public workforce and the

quality of work performed. Concomitantly, the failure to control personnel policy can

be interpreted as a failure to govern effectively. It is, therefore, easy to see why so

many different groups of stakeholders—including overhead political officials, special

interests, citizens, labor organizations, and public employees themselves—are inter-

ested in public personnel policy.

As others in this symposium have discussed, the Bush administration clearly

understood this principle and its centrality to realizing the conservative agenda they

hoped would extend Republican dominance in U.S. politics for a generation. Ultimately,

however, Bush’s agenda met much the same negative fate as those of other orthodox

innovators in U.S. presidential history. We argue in this article that a major lesson

drawn from this experience is that reformers should avoid radical changes to personnel

systems based largely on ideological and political preferences. Reforms that are more

incremental in nature and grounded more firmly on technical matters related to the