The Civil Service Under Clinton

• Author: James R. Thompson
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X0102100201
• Date: 01 June 2001
• Published date: 01 June 2001
• Subject Matter: Articles

ARTICLES
REVIEW OF PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION / Summer 2001
Thompson / CIVIL SERVICE UNDER CLINTON
The Civil Service Under Clinton
The Institutional Consequences
of Disaggregation
JAMES R. THOMPSON
University of Illinois–Chicago
With the failed attempt at comprehensive reform of the civil service system in
1995, the Clinton administration encouraged individual agencies to seek their
own personnel flexibilities. That strategy met with some success with the granting
by Congress of special authorities to units with a total of approximately 200,000
employees. However, the disaggregation of the federal personnel system this
approach portends holds profound and potentially adverse consequences for the
institution of the civil service, for the values of merit and equity that have been
traditionally associated with the civil service, and for the public service ethos that
provides the civil service a constitutive role in our system of governance.
Historiesofthefederalcivilservicetendtohighlightasmallnumberofkey
events: the founding of the civil service in 1883, the creation of multiple
exempt agencies during the New Deal, and the Civil Service Reform Act of
1978. As Ingraham (1995) argued however, the more incremental and less
visible changes that have occurred between these milestone events have had an
equally profound impact on the institution. The thesis of this article is that a
set of fundamental, yet largely unnoticed, changes took place in the character
of the civil service during the 1990s. No major reform legislation was
approved. Rather, change occurred in a piecemeal, incremental manner as
individual groups and agencies were exempted from provisions of Title 5 of
the United States Code and hence became part of the excepted service.1 Sepa-
rately, these exemptions are not momentous. Cumulatively, however, they
portend the effective disaggregation of the civil service as traditionally
constituted.
The phenomenon is not an altogether new one; the size of the excepted
service has increased over time to a point where, by 1996, it included 47%
of all executive branch employees (U.S. General Accounting Office [GAO],
Review of Public Personnel Administration, Vol. 21, No. 2 Summer 2001 87-113
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REVIEW OF PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION / Summer 2001
1997). Traditionally, however, groups have been added to the excepted ser-
vice because of unique aspects of an agency’s mission. For example, the
Central Intelligence Agency justified its exemption based on a reluctance to
disclose information about its employees to a central staff unit. The Vet-
erans Administration, now the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), was
authorized to create a separate personnel system in 1946 as pay limitations
associated with Title 5 became an obstacle to the recruitment of medical
personnel needed in VA hospitals. Members of the Foreign Service became
subject to a separate, merit-based system pursuant to the provisions of the
Foreign Service Act in 1924. Other agencies in which significant numbers
of employees are part of the excepted service include the Postal Service, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Peace Corps, and the Tennessee Valley
Authority (U.S. House of Representatives, 1973).
New under the Clinton administration were both an acceleration in the
numbers of exemption requests granted and an expansion in the types of
justifications provided. Particularly novel was the granting of special treat-
ment to agencies that experienced major data systems modernization fail-
ures. Agencies whose missions have significant scientific and technical ele-
ments were also a focus of activity. With scientific and technical personnel a
significant portion of the workforce in many agencies and with systems
modernization problems widespread, there are reasons to anticipate a con-
tinuation of the disaggregation trend.
The existence of a common set of rules for a large proportion of the
workforce has been a central feature of the federal civil service. Of interest
here is to identify the institutional implications of piecemeal exemptions
from those rules. Do the changes pose a threat to traditional values of merit,
equity, and political neutrality? Can a public service ethos be preserved
where there are few commonalities of interest between employees of differ-
ent agencies? What newly preeminent values are driving the changes?
THE INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE
ON THE CIVIL SERVICE
Changes to the civil service and other administrative institutions have
often been interpreted in a values context. Kaufman (1956) perceived
“cycles of reform” whereby the civil service and other administrative insti-
tutions have evolved in sequential pursuit of three separate values: represen-
tativeness, neutral competence, and executive leadership. Kaufman saw the
underlying motor, or force driving change, as the excesses that appear over



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Thompson / CIVIL SERVICE UNDER CLINTON
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time as the pursuit of any one value is taken to the extreme. Thus, the civil
service was created when neutral competence replaced representativeness as
the dominant administrative value subsequent to the exposure of myriad
abuses under the spoils system. The change from neutral competence to
executive leadership during the New Deal era came as a result of a percep-
tion that government had become excessively fragmented and hence less
accountable to the citizenry as a result of the preeminence given neutral
competence.
Klingner (1998) placed the evolution of the civil service in a different
framework. He also perceives the civil service as being shaped by a succes-
sion of different values. However, rather than an oscillation between differ-
ent values, he sees a gradual accretion of new values resulting in a “dynamic
equilibrium” (p. 57). The resolution of “conflict arising from the simulta-
neous implementation of these competing values” (p. 58) is left to public
managers. Klingner identified an early orientation of public personnel sys-
tems toward responsiveness (1789-1883), followed by a period in which
efficiency and employee rights were preeminent (1883-1933). He noted a
subsequent shift back to responsiveness in conjunction with efficiency and
employee rights (1933-1964) and then toward social equity in conjunction
with responsiveness, efficiency, and employee rights (1964-1992). Subse-
quent to 1992, Klingner identified antigovernment values including per-
sonal accountability, limited and decentralized government, and commu-
nity responsibility for social services as preeminent.
This most recent phase in the history of the civil service is the focus of
this article as well. The conclusion here is that performance has emerged as
the dominant administrative value of the 1990s.2 This is manifest in the
Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, which instituted an
elaborate system requiring agencies to justify their existence in terms of pro-
gram impact. The concern for performance is also apparent in the attention
by political overseers to instances of technological incapacity at some
agencies.
Apparent from the discussion below is that considerations of perfor-
mance have been a primary factor promoting the trend toward
disaggregation of the civil service system. Under President Clinton, indi-
vidual agencies argued that (a) good performance requires administrative
flexibility and (b) in the absence of systemic reform, such flexibilities are
appropriately granted on an agency-by-agency basis. The reinventing gov-
ernment movement, the National Performance Review (NPR), and associ-
ated managerial dogma provided theoretical support for these arguments.



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REVIEW OF PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION / Summer 2001
THE DISAGGREGATION OF THE
FEDERAL CIVIL SERVICE IN THE 1990S
The disaggregation dynamic is driven by a variety of factors including
secular trends relating to the workplace (Howard, 1995), the nature of work
(Grantham, 2000), the values of the workforce (Tulgan, 1995), and infor-
mation technology. Each mitigates against the success of the rigid, central-
ized approach to personnel management that has characterized the federal
civil service.
Recent developments in management theory generally favor the decen-
tralization of administrative authorities as a means of coping with these sec-
ular trends. At a 1995 symposium, the GAO and representatives of 12 pub-
lic and private organizations regarded as leaders in human resource
management identified eight principles that characterize state-of-the-art
human resource systems. The GAO found that leading organizations
• emphasize mission, vision, and organizational culture;
• hold managers responsible for achieving results instead of imposing rigid,
process-oriented rules and standards;
• choose an organizational structure appropriate to the organization rather
than trying to make ‘one size fit all’ ; and
• instead of isolating the ‘personnel function’ organizationally, integrate
human resource management into the mission of the organization (U.S.
GAO, 1996).
These ideas are closely associated with the strategic approach to human
resources management (Perry, 1993). Fundamental ideas underlying that
approach are that (a) personnel “practices and policies differ widely across
organizations and across employee groups within organizations,” (b)...