tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/civil-service-17273/articlesCivil service – The Conversation2024-03-26T12:40:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2250612024-03-26T12:40:09Z2024-03-26T12:40:09ZPoliticians may rail against the ‘deep state,’ but research shows federal workers are effective and committed, not subversive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584101/original/file-20240325-22-7ip3p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2995%2C2043&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A worker at the National Hurricane Center tracks weather over the Gulf of Mexico.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/philippe-papin-hurricane-specialist-at-the-national-news-photo/1494908383">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s common for political candidates to disparage “the government” even as they run for an office in which they would be part of, yes, running the government. </p>
<p>Often, what they’re referring to is what <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=I_z924QAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">we</a>, as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=RW9itwwAAAAJ">scholars</a> of the inner workings of democracy, call “the administrative state.” At times, these critics use a label of collective distrust and disapproval for government workers that sounds more sinister: “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/23276665.2023.2249142">the deep state</a>.”</p>
<p>Most people, however, don’t know what government workers do, why they do it or how the government selects them in the first place.</p>
<p>Our years of research about the people who work in the federal government finds that they care deeply about their work, aiding the public and pursuing the stability and integrity of government.</p>
<p>Most of them are devoted civil servants. Across hundreds of interviews and surveys of people who have made their careers in government, what stands out most to us is their commitment to civic duty without regard to partisan politics. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584107/original/file-20240325-23-c14rfc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A drawing of a statue with a caricature of Andrew Jackson riding on a pig." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584107/original/file-20240325-23-c14rfc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584107/original/file-20240325-23-c14rfc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584107/original/file-20240325-23-c14rfc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584107/original/file-20240325-23-c14rfc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584107/original/file-20240325-23-c14rfc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584107/original/file-20240325-23-c14rfc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584107/original/file-20240325-23-c14rfc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">President Andrew Jackson was a proponent of the ‘spoils system’ in which new presidents could hire friends and supporters into government jobs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:In_memorium--our_civil_service_as_it_was.JPG">Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<h2>From spoils to merit</h2>
<p>From the country’s founding through 1883, the U.S. federal government relied on what was called a “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/009539979802900606">spoils system</a>” to hire staff. The system got its name from the expression “to the victor goes the spoils.” A newly elected president would distribute government jobs to people who helped him win election.</p>
<p>This system had two primary defects: First, vast numbers of federal jobholders could be displaced every four or eight years; second, many of the new arrivals had no qualifications or experience for the jobs to which they were appointed. </p>
<p>Problems resulting from these defects were smaller than modern Americans might expect, because at that time the federal government was much smaller than it is today and had less to do with Americans’ everyday lives. This method had its defenders, including President Andrew Jackson, who <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/7597210">believed that government tasks were relatively simple</a> and anyone could do them.</p>
<p>But even so, the spoils system meant government was not as effective as it could have been – and as the people justifiably expected it to be.</p>
<p>In 1881, President James Garfield was assassinated by a <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/114423/destiny-of-the-republic-by-candice-millard/">man who believed he deserved a government job</a> because of his support for Garfield but didn’t get one. The assassination led to bipartisan passage in Congress of the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/pendleton-act">Pendleton Act of 1883</a>. </p>
<p>The law brought sweeping change. It introduced for the first time principles of merit in government hiring: Appointment and advancement were tied to workers’ competence, not their political loyalties or connections. To protect civil servants from political interference, they were given job security: Grounds for firing now revolve around poor performance or misconduct, rather than being a supporter of whichever political party lost the last election.</p>
<p>Nearly <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001">3 million career civil servants</a> continue to have these protections today. New presidents still get to hire <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/ppo/">roughly 4,000 political appointees</a> with fewer protections.</p>
<p>As a result of these changes and related reforms in the <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/history/civil-service-reform-act-1978">Civil Service Reform Act of 1978</a>, the U.S. government is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12945">far more effective today</a> than it was prior to the Pendleton Act. </p>
<p>In fact, U.S. civil service institutions, built on merit-based appointments, merit-based advancement and security of employment, have become the <a href="https://doi.org/10.33545/26646021.2020.v2.i1b.40">standard for democratic governments</a> around the globe. U.S. federal workers are generally <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/23276665.2023.2249142">high-performing, impartial and minimally corrupt</a> compared with other countries’ civil servants.</p>
<h2>Increasing government responsibilities</h2>
<p>Since 1776, the U.S. population has increased <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/07/july-fourth-celebrating-243-years-of-independence.html">from about 2.5 million people to over 330 million today</a>. With its growing size and with technological advances, the federal government now provides a great many services, including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/opinion/trump-deep-state.html">protecting its citizens</a> from complex environmental, health and international threats.</p>
<p>Environmental Protection Agency employees help maintain clean air and water and clean up toxic waste dumps to protect human health. Department of Energy scientists and managers oversee the treatment and disposal of <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Fifth-Risk/">radioactive nuclear waste</a> from our weapons program and power plants. National Park Service staff manage over <a href="https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/uploads/fy2021-bib-bh081.pdf">85 million acres of public land across all 50 states</a>. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s forecasters’ advance detection of potential weather emergencies enable early warnings and evacuations from high-risk areas, <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Fifth-Risk/">which has saved countless lives</a>.</p>
<p>Federal Emergency Management Agency employees aid survivors of natural disasters. That agency also subsidizes flood insurance, making home insurance available in flood-prone areas. The U.S. government additionally provides <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/federal-government-pays-farmers-doesnt-mean-farmers-are-fans">billions of dollars in subsidies</a> per year to support farmers and maintain food security. </p>
<p>These programs are all administered by government employees: environmental scientists, lawyers, analysts, diplomats, security officers, postal workers, engineers, foresters, doctors and many other specialized career civil servants. Andrew Jackson’s idea of government work no longer applies: You do not want just anyone managing hazardous waste, sending a space shuttle into orbit or managing public lands constituting <a href="https://www.gao.gov/managing-federal-lands-and-waters">one-third of the country’s territory</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584104/original/file-20240325-26-idylq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People wearing white helmets and white jackets slice open meat carcasses." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584104/original/file-20240325-26-idylq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584104/original/file-20240325-26-idylq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584104/original/file-20240325-26-idylq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584104/original/file-20240325-26-idylq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584104/original/file-20240325-26-idylq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584104/original/file-20240325-26-idylq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584104/original/file-20240325-26-idylq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">U.S. Department of Agriculture food safety inspectors examine meat at a processing plant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/AgSecretaryFoodSafety/51f2053e7b3841c5b9343ebff015c7c3/photo">AP Photo/Nati Harnik</a></span>
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<h2>A dedicated workforce</h2>
<p>Research, including our own, shows that these workers are not self-serving elites but rather dedicated and committed public servants.</p>
<p>That’s <a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/the-new-case-for-bureaucracy/book238024">generally true</a> even of Internal Revenue Service staffers, postal service clerks and other bureaucratic functionaries who may not earn much public respect. Federal employees <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/phantoms-of-a-beleaguered-republic-9780197656945?cc=us&lang=en&">mirror demographics in the United States</a> and are hired, trained and legally obligated to uphold the Constitution and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/725313">serve the public interest</a>.</p>
<p>One of us, Jaime Kucinskas, with sociologist and law professor <a href="https://law.seattleu.edu/faculty/directory/profiles/zylan-yvonne.html">Yvonne Zylan</a>, tracked the experiences of dozens of federal employees across the EPA, Department of Health and Human Services, State Department, Department of Interior, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and various other agencies during the Trump administration. That research found these workers were dedicated to serving the public and the Constitution, upholding the missions of their agencies and democracy, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/725313">working to support leadership and the elected president</a>. </p>
<p>Even though 80% of the centrist and Democratic Party-leaning government workers they spoke with did not believe in the ideas behind the Trump presidency, they were careful to follow legal official orders from the administration.</p>
<p>They noted the importance of speaking up while leaders deliberated what to do. After political appointees and supervisors made their decisions, however, even the civil servants who most valued speaking truth to power acknowledged, “Then it’s time to execute,” as one State Department employee told Kucinskas. “As career professionals we have an obligation to carry out lawful instructions, even if we don’t fully agree with it.”</p>
<p>Another international affairs expert told Kucinskas, “People have voted and this is where we’re at. And we’re not going to change things. We don’t do that here.” He said if political appointees “want to do what you consider bad decisions … we do our best to give more information. … And if they still decide to do (it), then we say okay, that’s what we’re going to do.”</p>
<p>He was firm in this loyal and deferential position to the elected president and his administration in 2018 and again in a 2020 follow-up interview. “If you want to be an advocate, you can leave and work in a different sector,” he concluded. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584106/original/file-20240325-20-pr6w27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People wearing reflective safety vests stand in a clearing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584106/original/file-20240325-20-pr6w27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584106/original/file-20240325-20-pr6w27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584106/original/file-20240325-20-pr6w27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584106/original/file-20240325-20-pr6w27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584106/original/file-20240325-20-pr6w27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584106/original/file-20240325-20-pr6w27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584106/original/file-20240325-20-pr6w27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Environmental Protection Agency workers tour the site of an abandoned mercury mine in California slated for cleanup.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/environmental-protection-agency-remedial-project-manager-news-photo/2041454729">Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Some decided to do just that: More than a quarter of the upper-level government workers Kucinskas spoke with left their positions during the Trump administration. Although exits typically rise during presidential transitions, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/31/2/451/5983893">they typically remain under 10%</a>, making this degree of high-level exits unusually high.</p>
<p>Even as many Americans express frustration with the president, Congress and the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/the-people-of-government-career-employees-political-appointees-and-candidates-for-office/">federal government as a whole</a>, however, we believe it is important not to take for granted what federal government workers are doing well. U.S. citizens benefit from effective federal services, thanks in part because the government hires and rewards civil servants because of their merit rather than loyalty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Years of research about the people who work in the federal government finds that most of them are devoted civil servants who are committed to civic duty without regard to partisan politics.Jaime Kucinskas, Associate Professor of Sociology, Hamilton CollegeJames L. Perry, Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs Emeritus, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2242212024-02-26T17:19:24Z2024-02-26T17:19:24ZHow do opposition MPs prepare for government? The six key skills that should be on every Labour politician’s mind<p>Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet has now started <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/access-talks-civil-service">“access talks”</a> with the civil service as they prepare for the possibility of government. Being in government is different from being in opposition and Labour has been in opposition in Westminster for a very long time. </p>
<p>New ministers will have to perform their new role from the moment of their appointment, and few in Starmer’s team have any ministerial experience. There’s no manual for the job, though these days some training is available.</p>
<p>Since 2015, former ministers have been telling the Institute for Government (IfG) what makes for an effective minister. I’ve tried below, based on research for my new book, Ministerial Leadership, to distil some of that advice to highlight five skills Labour MPs hopeful of a role in a future government will need to hone. </p>
<h2>1. How to ask stupid questions</h2>
<p>First, ministers have to remember they are politicians and that their value lies in their political judgement. What seems obvious to a politician may be a revelation to a civil servant, who may not have direct experience of how policies play out on the ground.</p>
<p>But ministers aren’t the technical experts, so that also means new ministers mustn’t be afraid to ask the <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-11/david-laws-ministers-reflect.pdf">stupid questions</a>. Unless they understand something fully, they won’t be able to explain it to their colleagues, let alone the public. </p>
<h2>2. How to move from solo operator to team player</h2>
<p>Incoming government ministers must remember they’re part of a team, both of ministers in their department and a member of a governmental team overall. Everything they do in government depends on teamwork, Labour MP <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/ministers-reflect-teamwork">Margaret Beckett</a> told the IfG. Cabinet structures – committees, the sign-off of policies, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cabinet-manual">Cabinet Manual</a> – reinforce that, as does the doctrine of collective responsibility spelt out in the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ministerial-code">ministerial code</a>. </p>
<p>This is about more than formalities. It’s also a question of how ministers project themselves as part of a governmental team, advancing the government’s overall narrative. </p>
<p>That means that MPs who become ministers need to ask themselves regularly how what they are doing in their department contributes to the government’s programme, performance and perception. Teamwork isn’t always the most obvious attribute in an ambitious political world, but it’s key in government.</p>
<h2>3. How to make use of (and respect) civil servants</h2>
<p>The civil service is not the enemy of government ministers. Most civil servants want to help ministers get things done in an appropriate way. They have skills, systems and networks. </p>
<p>These can be made to work for a minister’s benefit if the minister can be clear about what they want. Old hands still praise the quality of the civil service – some still call it a Rolls-Royce. But as Conservative peer Michael Heseltine <a href="https://www.civilserviceworld.com/in-depth/article/lord-hennessy-meets-lord-heseltine">says</a>, the minister needs to drive it.</p>
<p>The civil service isn’t perfect. There’s now a consensus on the challenges it faces, including the loss of institutional memory, accentuated by frequent churn as officials move jobs, and a failure to think deeply about future challenges.</p>
<h2>4. How to schedule thinking time</h2>
<p>Protecting space in your diary has been part of ministerial folklore since Gerald Kaufman wrote <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/How_to_be_a_Minister.html?id=pUZ_QgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">How to be a Minister</a> in 1980. Ministers have hectic schedules but everyone needs thinking time to focus on their priorities, sometimes away from the routine of briefings and meetings. </p>
<p>Former Labour minister <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-05/Hilary%20Benn.pdf">Hilary Benn</a> now says: “iIf I had my time again, setting aside time to think [is what I’d do]. Because if you’re in the moment, going from engagement to engagement, box to box, you don’t always get the time to think and you need to do that.”</p>
<p>So ministers need to know whether they are on track. What isn’t working out? What should they or the department stop doing to allow other things to flourish? These are the types of questions a minister must ask themselves to ensure their diary is packed in the right way.</p>
<h2>5. How to find the way back to parliament</h2>
<p>When they become ministers, politicians don’t stop being MPs. They have to continue representing their constituents. The department is not their only job.</p>
<p>In fact, the institutional embrace can be suffocating so, as former Labour minister Jack Straw puts it, time spent in the House of Commons is <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/ministers-reflect/jack-straw">never time wasted</a>. Parliament gives a minister intelligence on how policies are being received and potential problems that need tackling.</p>
<h2>6. How to deliver</h2>
<p>Having a policy isn’t enough for a minister. They need to know how it is going to be delivered and what the critical stages of that delivery are – as well as how to keep track of them. If legislation is needed, policies can take years to implement. </p>
<p>Ministers need to have a view of the critical path to delivering the policy: its legitimation through a bill in parliament, the drafting of administrative rules for implementation, the actual rollout of the policy in practice. There are many steps along the way which need to be tracked.</p>
<p>My research suggests that ministers have become a lot more conscious of the need to follow a policy through to its delivery and implementation on the ground on the last 25 years. They know that the practicalities of a failed policy on the ground can haunt them and the government for years after.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, successive prime ministers have become more obsessive about delivery since Tony Blair established his <a href="https://history.blog.gov.uk/2022/08/26/the-art-of-delivery-the-prime-ministers-delivery-unit-2001-2005/">prime minister’s delivery unit</a> in 2001, so ministers know that the centre is watching. They have developed their own practical steps to check policy implementation. Former Conservative cabinet minister <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-01/Eric%20Pickles.pdf">Eric Pickles</a>, for example, implemented a tracker system in his department to “ruthlessly” monitor progress on the 40 most important items on his to-do list.</p>
<h2>So you’re a government minister now?</h2>
<p>Being a minister demands performance every minute of the day in an environment that is more scrutinised – through social media – than ever. Many feel like an imposter on first arriving. Sometimes the pressures can overwhelm. But it’s all temporary. </p>
<p>The ministerial life is relatively short so it’s not unreasonable for a minister to think about what they will do after they’ve left government. They will be aware that political parties can be particularly brutal to those who no longer have the status they once did. </p>
<p>Those who survive best afterwards are often the ones who maintain external friendships. Knowing how to keep a hinterland is perhaps the most important skill of all. There is a life after politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leighton Andrews does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is no manual for a job at the top of government but a few golden rules are largely agreed upon by those who have experienced ministerial life.Leighton Andrews, Professor of Public Service Leadership, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2042062023-04-21T13:08:35Z2023-04-21T13:08:35ZDominic Raab is right that the government has set a ‘dangerous precedent’ – but not for the reasons he thinks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522155/original/file-20230420-16-nsu998.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=45%2C9%2C5978%2C4317&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>Dominic Raab has resigned as deputy prime minister and secretary of state for justice following an investigation of accusations that he bullied civil servants. </p>
<p>However, his resignation letter contained no apology and barely any admission of guilt. He instead said that he felt “duty bound” to accept the findings of the investigation against him but that he believes they were “flawed and set a dangerous precedent for the conduct of good government”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1649334236216713219"}"></div></p>
<p>And yet while the report cleared Raab of intentionally targeting staff, it found that he had acted “abrasively” towards civil servants and in a way that was intimidating. Overall, the report paints a picture of a demanding secretary of state who routinely interrogated staff about their work without much thought for how they would be affected. It stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The combination of unconstructive critical feedback and regular
interruption is likely to be experienced as intimidating, in the sense of
being unreasonably difficult to deal with, and plainly was so experienced by some individuals. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Adam Tolley, the lawyer who put the report together, noted that Raab has “been able to regulate this level of abrasiveness” since the allegations were made public and ought to have done so sooner. </p>
<h2>Delay and denial</h2>
<p>The civil servants who came forward about Raab have not been afforded the same treatment as employees in any private company in the UK have the right to expect. </p>
<p>The investigation into Raab’s conduct was launched in November 2022 – more than five months ago. It has therefore taken far longer to get to the bottom of this situation than would be <a href="https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/impacts/addressing-workplace-bullying-and-harassment-building-systems-com">the norm in any other workplace</a>.</p>
<p>In the meantime, staff have had to continue to work with Raab. It was decided fairly early on that he would not be suspended from his position while Tolley looked into the complaints against him. </p>
<p>It is not standard practice to allow someone facing multiple credible accusations of bullying to continue to work with more junior colleagues while the claims are being considered. Civil servants have been left with the message that their negative experiences at work come second to Raab’s political career.</p>
<h2>Politics over principle</h2>
<p>Discussion around Raab’s fate has been consistently tied to his loyalty to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and whether the Conservative party can survive another scandal. The decision on how to sanction Raab ultimately came down to the prime minister, who appears to have spent months making political calculations on the matter, implying that he was looking for a reason not to take action. </p>
<p>Raab has displayed immense loyalty to Sunak, continuing to back him for the leadership of the Conservative Party in the summer of 2022 even when it became patently clear that his rival Liz Truss was on course to win the contest. But these factors should never have played a part in decisions around Raab’s professional conduct towards civil servants. </p>
<p>The UK government has a duty of care to the health and wellbeing of its employees, who should be able to expect a fair process that is entirely separate from the political pressures being faced by the party of government or the personal patronage of the accused. </p>
<p>Sunak’s personal conflicts of interest have manifestly played a part in how the decisions around Raab were made, from the length of time it took to investigate to the delay in publishing Tolley’s findings, even after Raab’s resignation letter was made public. This would not be acceptable in a private sector organisation.</p>
<h2>Collateral damage</h2>
<p>The result of these delays and the way the allegations have been handled will have lasting consequences for government staff, who cannot have been left feeling confident that their experiences have be taken seriously or dealt with effectively, even if the end result was, eventually, Raab’s departure. This is not conducive to a healthy and efficient work environment.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238318210_Bullying_is_detrimental_to_health_but_all_bullying_behaviours_are_not_necessarily_equally_damaging">large-scale study of more than 5,000 people</a> across the UK, my colleagues and I found that bullying in the workplace left victims not only feeling unhappy and insecure while at work but with a higher chance of increased drug and excessive alcohol usage and relationship difficulties in their personal lives. </p>
<p>And if their own experiences are not enough for these matters to be taken seriously, their victimisation has a negative impact for their employers too. Bullied staff take more sick days than the average worker and are less productive. </p>
<p>We also found that it is not only direct victims that suffer in a workplace where bullying takes place. Witnesses to the bullying and people who have been previously victimised but are not the subject of current bullying also take more sick leave than average. A ripple effect is evident when people at the top abuse their power.</p>
<p>Given the nature of Raab’s departure, current and future victims of ministerial bullying can hardly be reassured that their suffering will be taken seriously if they ever feel brave enough to speak out against their bosses.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cary Cooper does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Report found deputy PM to have been abrasive and intimidating to civil servants who have waited months for action to be taken.Cary Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2014262023-03-09T17:10:40Z2023-03-09T17:10:40ZSue Gray quitting to work for Keir Starmer does cause problems for the civil service – it’s also a sign she thinks he’s heading for government<p>The last few years of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/uk-politics-874">drama at Westminster</a> have set the bar pretty high for shock and surprise, but the sudden departure from government of Sue Gray, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/people/sue-gray">second permanent secretary to the Cabinet Office</a>, and her proposed appointment as chief of staff to the leader of the Labour Party really was quite the plot twist.</p>
<p>It would have been a striking piece of news at any time for such a senior civil servant to swap sides and accept a job with the opposition. But this was not just any senior civil servant. Sue Gray became something close to a household name last year for her investigation into the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/partygate-115248">partygate scandal</a>, and must therefore rank as the most high-profile Whitehall official of recent times. </p>
<p>If that were not enough, the news broke just hours before the House of Commons privileges committee published its interim report into allegations that former prime minister Boris Johnson <a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-to-face-mps-over-partygate-but-what-is-misleading-parliament-and-why-is-it-so-serious-201215">misled parliament</a> (which he denies) over that very same scandal.</p>
<p>With all these elements combining, it is perhaps no surprise that the proposed appointment has sparked a political row. But the extent of the outrage expressed by some Conservative MPs has been somewhat overblown. While there are undoubtedly a number of difficult questions raised by this sudden career change, it is far from being the unprecedented situation or <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk//Commons/2023-03-06/debates/122E8FF7-59BC-4FDA-ACBB-9A5E3893331C/CivilServiceImpartiality#contribution-3590BFC6-048A-47DD-8D1F-3199D1E2F383">constitutional crisis</a> that some suggested in a House of Commons debate on March 6.</p>
<p>Some have noted that in 1995 Tony Blair appointed Jonathan Powell, a senior British diplomat, to be his chief of staff in opposition. Powell had been at the Foreign Office since 1979, serving in a number of overseas postings and ending up at the British Embassy in Washington in the early 1990s. </p>
<p>His resignation from the diplomatic service to join Blair’s team is certainly the most direct parallel to Gray. There have, however, been several other notable instances of civil servants leaving to take on political roles, including with the Conservative party when it has been in opposition.</p>
<p>Douglas (now Lord) Hurd was a career diplomat in the Foreign Office when in 1966 he was poached by the then leader of the opposition, Edward Heath. Hurd joined Heath’s office as first a foreign affairs adviser before becoming his de facto chief of staff. </p>
<p>In 1998, William Hague recruited Tina (now Baroness) Stowell as deputy chief of staff to help bring order to the organisation of his office as leader of the opposition. Part of the reason she was chosen, she has said, was that she had experience of working in 10 Downing Street as a civil servant.</p>
<p>None of those figures had anything like the high profile when they were appointed as Sue Gray does today, nor the same degree or seniority and centrality to the Whitehall machine. This does make a difference, and the government’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/advisory-committee-on-business-appointments">advisory committee on business appointments</a> will have to consider carefully what steps to recommend to address the potential conflicts of interests between her years of privileged access to government secrets and the demands of her intended new role.</p>
<p>Navigating such specific conflicts will be tricky, but it is the wider issues that have led some Conservative MPs to cry foul, and even the more moderate voices to question the wisdom of the move. Their argument is that for such a very senior civil servant to “cross the floor” into politics undermines the impartiality of the civil service as a whole and the trust that ministers need to have in their officials. </p>
<p>These concerns are not without foundation. The appointment does present difficulties for the civil service, which needs to maintain the confidence of existing and future ministers that their core values of impartiality remain intact. More specifically, they will need to work harder to retain the trust of ministers who might now fear that their secrets could in future be shared with their political opponents.</p>
<h2>Heading back into government before long?</h2>
<p>The controversy will no doubt rumble on for some time, but it is worth looking past the initial reaction to consider the motivations of both Keir Starmer and Gray herself. For the leader of the opposition, it is a clear signal that he is setting his sights squarely on taking power after the next general election. </p>
<p>He could have sought to recruit a seasoned political campaigner to the post, but has chosen not to do so. Instead, the Labour party’s statement confirming their offer referred to Gray joining their <a href="https://labourlist.org/2023/03/starmer-looks-to-gray-for-the-experience-needed-to-get-ready-for-government/">“preparations for government”</a>. Her experience will certainly be invaluable in that regard.</p>
<p>Less clear perhaps are Gray’s motives. While some have rushed to paint her as having been a closet Labour activist all along, there are other plausible explanations for her willingness to take on such a job. </p>
<p>The first is simply that she is attracted to the challenge. She is, after all, an accomplished professional with experience of public administration at the highest level, and the ability to deliver results on behalf of political leaders. </p>
<p>And His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, just as much as His Majesty’s Government, is a public institution with an important constitutional role to play. Providing the public with a credible and effective alternative government is a challenge which should appeal to gifted public servants, regardless of their political views.</p>
<p>Ultimately, however, Gray’s willingness to take on such a position suggests that she too considers the Labour party to be heading for power. She may have stepped out of Whitehall for now, but she must surely anticipate being back at the heart of government before too long.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201426/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nigel Fletcher is affiliated with the Centre for Opposition Studies, a not-for-profit research group. </span></em></p>The senior civil servant who investigated the partygate scandal is leaving to join the opposition. It’s a very surprising move.Nigel Fletcher, Teaching Fellow in Politics and Contemporary History, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1993342023-02-08T17:36:07Z2023-02-08T17:36:07ZDominic Raab claims are more akin to ‘abusive supervision’ than bullying<p>Prime Minister Rishi Sunak continues to refuse to suspend the deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, from office while accusations that he has behaved inappropriately towards staff are investigated. The government has confirmed that lawyer Adam Tolley is leading an investigation into two complaints made about Raab’s conduct while at the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice. </p>
<p>However, there are reports of many more accusations being made against him. The BBC reports there are <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64555911">eight formal complaints</a> currently standing against Raab, while the Guardian has reported that one complaint concerned <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/05/dominic-raab-more-civil-servants-in-bullying-complaint-than-previously-thought">27 members of his staff</a>. </p>
<p>Raab has denied the accusations, and there is no formal mechanism for a deputy prime minister to be suspended. But allowing him to stay on in power, while receiving tacit support from high-ranking Tory politicians, nevertheless risks sending the signal that such behaviour is tolerated.</p>
<p>Sunak has indicated that Raab would be sacked if the investigation finds that he did behave inappropriately but insists he won’t move against him before then, stating on February 7: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The independent adviser is conducting his investigation, I can’t prejudge the outcome of that investigation, it’s right that it concludes. But as people have seen from how I’ve acted in the past, when I’m presented with conclusive independent findings that someone in my government has not acted with the integrity or standards that I would expect of them, I won’t hesitate to take swift and decisive action. That’s what I’ve done in the past. But with regard to this situation, it’s right that we let the independent process continue.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It would be possible for Sunak to sack Raab and then reappoint him were he cleared by the investigation. It has been suggested that Sunak does not do so partly to reward his loyalty. If that is the case, it would suggest that those in power are prioritising their pre-existing social connections over the wellbeing of their staff. Those who have made complaints may also feel their experiences are being invalidated.</p>
<p>Jake Berry, the former chairman of the Conservative Party has said that action should be taken against Raab immediately, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64514088">telling the BBC</a>: “It would be very bizarre if you had someone in any other workplace who wasn’t suspended pending that investigation.”</p>
<p>The situation unfolding around Raab is routinely described as “bullying” but he literature around workplace mistreatment points to something else. Workplace bullying can describe what happens between colleagues of relatively equal position, but <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-2370.2012.00339.x?casa_token=pA9tr0QDvVcAAAAA%3A4ezJ30VzHw5283arFBvIqSH1YLDPmDTnv9CN5ns-IrMvzcbjveFtkM5bUcYTTC4g8jMr1nfgok5341E">negative behaviours wear victims down</a> so that they feel “powerles” compared to their bullies. Given that Raab is a senior minister and the deputy prime minister, if the accusations are true we are potentially dealing with something different here.</p>
<h2>Abusive supervision</h2>
<p>Raab holds significant formal and informal power over his staff. His formal power stems from his very high position in the organisational hierarchy. He is the minister and the people accusing him are, as far as we know, civil servants (it is not clear whether any of the complaints come from people other than civil servants). </p>
<p>Raab’s informal power comes from the social power he has over staff. He has the ability to influence their careers and experience in the workplace. A government minister is at the centre of a government department. Power is very much centralised towards them – that includes people’s career trajectory. </p>
<p>Even without direct power to hire and fire, as someone whose voice matters in Whitehall, Raab can informally influence people’s career paths – for example, telling someone not to hire a certain person. </p>
<p>With all this in mind, what Raab is being accused of is akin to abusive supervision. This term describes interactions in which followers perceive their supervisors to engage in hostile verbal and non-verbal behaviours, such as hurtful remarks, public humiliation or scapegoating. </p>
<p>While abusive supervision can be classed as a type of workplace bullying, one can argue that abusive supervision can be even more detrimental because supervisors often have formal power to influence an employee’s life at work.</p>
<p>Abusive supervision can also affect more than one target, so you may have whole teams of employees who feel victimised. Academic <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0149206307300812?journalCode=joma">research</a> establishes that abusive supervision can lead to worse employee performance, worse mental health, and can even affect employees’ family lives. </p>
<p>A recent study suggests that abusive supervision undermines <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09585192.2022.2070715">“public service motivation”</a>, which is an employee’s motivation to work in public institutions and “for the greater good”. This is surely a detrimental sign for civil servants. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-bullying-in-politics-is-a-matter-of-democracy-194686">Why bullying in politics is a matter of democracy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This kind of behaviour can be very detrimental to the people on the receiving end of it, and it can also harm organisations. If these behaviours become prevalent, abusive supervision is normalised and can even end up being promoted within an organisation’s culture. That is, people do not find such behaviours “out of the ordinary” or come to expect them as part of the job. </p>
<p>Employees may feel they have to emulate, or model, abusive behaviours to get ahead, as they have observed other senior figures behaving that way. </p>
<p>Whatever the investigation into Raab concludes, failing to send a signal that these issues are being taken seriously from the outset sends precisely the wrong signal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199334/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kara Ng does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>RIshi Sunak has said he won’t suspend the deputy prime minister while dozens of accusations about his conduct are investigated.Kara Ng, Presidential Fellow in Organisational Psychology, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1946862022-11-24T18:34:57Z2022-11-24T18:34:57ZWhy bullying in politics is a matter of democracy<p>Dominic Raab, the UK’s deputy prime minister, has become the latest figure in the government to be <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63728990">accused of bullying</a>. Bullying, harassment, and sexual misconduct are always serious matters. They can harm a victim’s personal and professional development and wellbeing, and create cultures of fear and intimidation. In political contexts, however, they have effects beyond personal health and institutional welfare. </p>
<p>The impact of bullying in political institutions has the potential to undermine liberal democracy itself. It can distort political representation, decision-making and the implementation of policies that affect the lives of the public. </p>
<p>When ministers bully civil servants there are clear consequences for the quality of governance. Ministers rely on civil servants to get the work of government done – a breakdown in this trust can have significant implications for society. As a civil servant <a href="https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/dominic-raab-moj-staff-bullying-zero-tolerance-felt-like-gaslighting-belittling-intimidating">stated in response</a> to the bullying allegations levelled at Raab:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s shit for civil servants, but the overall culture is even shitter for the country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Raab has <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/dominic-raab-requests-investigation-into-himself-over-two-complaints-against-him-12748689">denied</a> these allegations.</p>
<p>The complaint that civil servants are vulnerable to bullying by ministers is a common one. Sir Gavin Williamson, former Cabinet Office minister, resigned at the beginning of November 2022 after denying <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/gavin-williamson-bullying-resign-rishi-sunak-b2221185.html">allegations that he bullied civil servants and colleagues</a>. The irony and potential hypocrisy involved in Williamson’s recent lead in the government’s anti-bullying campaign was not lost on the media, and his appointment <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-rishi-sunak-obviously-regret-making-williamson-minister-2022-11-09/">resulted in reputational costs</a> for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.</p>
<p>In 2020 Priti Patel, the former home secretary, was also <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/priti-patel-bullying-settlement-claim-b1880833.html">accused of bullying civil servants</a>. Patel accepted the findings of a Cabinet Office <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55007122">inquiry</a> into her behaviour and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/priti-patel-bullying-report-home-secretary-b1759337.html">apologised</a>. The Home Office paid £370,000 to settle a tribunal over her conduct, ultimately costing the tax payer.</p>
<p>However, there are broader social harms inflicted by bullying. Intimidation inhibits the ability of civil servants to speak truth to power and act impartially, affecting how well government policy is both formulated and implemented. </p>
<h2>Bullying in parliament</h2>
<p>In March 2022, an <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/mps-lords--offices/standards-and-financial-interests/independent-expert-panel/hc-1189---the-conduct-of-mr-john-bercow.pdf">independent expert panel</a> found John Bercow, former speaker of the House of Commons, to be a “serial bully and a liar” in relation to his behaviour towards House of Commons staff. MP Christina Rees lost the Labour whip in October 2022 for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/13/labour-mp-christina-rees-stripped-of-party-whip-after-bullying-allegations">alleged bullying of constituency staff</a>. </p>
<p>And Boris Johnson’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62070422">resignation as prime minister</a> in July 2022 followed his handling of the Chris Pincher affair, when the deputy chief whip was accused of groping men. It emerged that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/04/chris-pincher-a-timeline-of-allegations-and-investigations">Johnson had known about similar allegations</a> but nevertheless appointed Pincher to a senior position of power and influence. Pincher subsequently quit as chief whip and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62023278">apologised</a> for his actions.</p>
<p>The power invested in the whips and its potential for abuse is well-known. In January 2022, William Wragg MP <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blackmail-whips-police-william-wragg-b1998341.html">alleged that blackmail</a> was being used by Conservative whips against his colleagues. And former Conservative MP <a href="https://news.sky.com/video/stewart-uk-is-an-elective-dictatorship-12521202">Rory Stewart</a> called the whole party system an “elective dictatorship”, with whips engaging in “blackmail and intimidation” to force party loyalty. </p>
<p>These tactics, while usually concealed within party machines, were highlighted in October 2022 during a “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63322533">chaotic fracking vote</a>”, in which Conservative Party whips allegedly “bullied and manhandled” MPs into backing former prime minister Liz Truss. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Multiple <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/conduct-in-parliament/dame-laura-cox-independent-inquiry-report.pdf">investigations</a> over the years have <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/Conduct-in-Parliament/GWQC-Inquiry-Report-11-July-2019_.pdf">confirmed</a> that these are not isolated incidents but <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/lords-committees/house-of-lords-commission/2017-19/ellenbogen-report.pdf">part of a wider culture</a>. The impact this culture has on the freedom of debate, the representation of views, the quality of decision-making and the shape of public policy is impossible to quantify. </p>
<p>However, it’s clear that bullying can inhibit the ability of MPs and other parliamentary staff to represent their constituents and do their jobs effectively. Such behaviour is therefore a corrosive and even corrupting force in the political life of Westminster. </p>
<p>While anyone can be a victim of bullying, it is clear that <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/9008/documents/159011/default/">it affects some groups more severely than others</a>. In a political context, this can lead to a lack of representation of those more likely to be exposed to bullying, by undermining their willingness or ability to participate. </p>
<p>Allegations about sexual harassment in Westminster <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/04/unions-call-for-parliamentary-reform-after-seemingly-endless-misconduct-charges">are common</a> and overwhelmingly affect women. There are <a href="https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/new-mps-given-list-of-bullies-and-sex-pests-to-avoid/">long-standing rumours</a> about lists of bullies and sex-pests being circulated to new female MPs to help them avoid their advances. A culture that enables this kind of bullying can stymie the efforts and undermine the political aspirations of those subjected to it. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/conduct-in-parliament/behaviour-code/icgs-annual-report-july-2020-to-june-2021.pdf">Despite earnest (if overdue) efforts</a>, significant changes on paper, and some progress, institutional cultures interact with broader society and are notoriously difficult to change. Changing tolerance levels in parliament goes hand in hand with challenging tolerance for bullying and other forms of discrimination in society.</p>
<p>Evidence suggests that bullying has touched almost every kind of relationship in and around Westminster. This should alarm not only those concerned about the wellbeing of individuals but also those interested in the wellbeing of society, democracy, and our shared political future. </p>
<p>To counter bullying will take time, humility, and a clear signal from the top that these behaviours are not only unacceptable and personally harmful but also corrode liberal democratic institutions and values.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194686/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Dobson Phillips receives funding from the ESRC. She is affiliated with the Green Party. </span></em></p>When civil servants and MPs can’t speak up against ministers, they can’t do their jobs properly.Rebecca Dobson Phillips, Lecturer, Centre for the Study of Corruption, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1825812022-07-27T12:00:17Z2022-07-27T12:00:17ZAn antidemocratic philosophy called ‘neoreaction’ is creeping into GOP politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470364/original/file-20220622-44261-k6jyri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=529%2C324%2C6649%2C4476&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">J.D. Vance, who won Ohio's GOP Senate primary, calls neoreactionist Curtis Yarvin a friend.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vance-a-republican-candidate-for-u-s-senate-in-ohio-speaks-news-photo/1240188584?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election were brazenly antidemocratic. Yet Trump and his supporters nonetheless justified their actions under the dubious pretense <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-speech-election-north-carolina-b1860537.html">of preserving American democracy</a> – as a matter of getting the vote right, of reversing voter fraud. </p>
<p>There’s a good reason they took this approach. Authoritarianism <a href="https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/follow-the-leader">has long been rejected across the political spectrum</a>. Democrats and Republicans routinely lob insults like “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/paul-lepage-donald-trump-obama-dictator/index.html">dictator</a>” or “<a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/olbermann-i-probably-owe-an-apology-to-george-w-bush/">fascist</a>” to describe politicians of the other party who are in power.</p>
<p>But in recent months, a strand of conservative thought whose adherents are forthright in their disdain for democracy has started to creep into GOP politics. It’s called “neoreaction,” and its leading figure, a software engineer and blogger named <a href="https://medium.com/@charles_91491/analysis-on-the-dark-enlightenment-and-of-curtis-yarvin-mencius-moldbug-160c6151366a">Curtis Yarvin</a>, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">has ties</a> to at least two GOP U.S. Senate candidates, along with Peter Thiel, a major GOP donor. </p>
<p>In my years <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/George-Michael-8">researching the far right</a>, I see this as one of the more significant developments in right-wing politics. Someone who calls himself a monarchist isn’t being relegated to the fringes of the internet. He’s being interviewed by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and has U.S. Senate candidates repeating his talking points.</p>
<h2>A political philosophy is born</h2>
<p>In 2007, Yarvin launched his blog, “Unqualified Reservations.” Writing under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, he produced a prodigious corpus of political philosophy. </p>
<p>In his writings, Yarvin cites his political influences. They include the 19th-century political philosopher <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2022.2026906">Thomas Carlyle</a>, who disdained democracy and thought it could too easily veer into mob rule; American 20th-century political theorist <a href="https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/02/james-burnhams-managerial-elite/">James Burnham</a>, who became convinced that elites would come to control the country’s politics while couching their interests in democratic rhetoric; and economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who, in his 2001 book “<a href="https://mises.org/library/democracy-god-failed-1">Democracy: The God That Failed</a>,” wrote of how all organizations – irrespective of size – are best managed by a single executive. </p>
<p>Yarvin is perhaps best known for his concept of “<a href="https://graymirror.substack.com/p/a-brief-explanation-of-the-cathedral?s=r">the cathedral</a>” – his term for the U.S. ruling regime. <a href="https://graymirror.substack.com/p/a-brief-explanation-of-the-cathedral?s=r">Yarvis argues that</a> virtually all opinion-makers, most notably those in academia and journalism, are essentially “reading the same book.” <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-cathedral-or-the-bizarre">In an essay for Tablet Magazine</a>, Yarvin wrote that what’s often characterized as the “marketplace of ideas” is actually a “monoculture” that props up an oligarchy.</p>
<p>The cathedral is self-reinforcing: Individual journalists and professors are rewarded when they follow the ruling ethos. Those who do otherwise risk being punished or at the very least face diminished career prospects.</p>
<p>Another important neoreactionary figure is <a href="https://tripleampersand.org/nick-land-accelerationism/">Nick Land</a>, whose main contribution to the philosophy is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/accelerationism-how-a-fringe-philosophy-predicted-the-future-we-live-in">the concept of accelerationism</a>. In essence, accelerationism is based on <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0423/042334.html">Vladimir Lenin’s notion</a> that “worse is better.” The Russian revolutionary maintained that the more chaotic conditions became, the greater the likelihood that his Bolshevik party could accomplish its goals.</p>
<p>Analogously, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-white-supremacists-protesting-the-deaths-of-black-people-140046">right-wing accelerationists</a> believe that they can hasten the demise of liberal democratic governments by stoking political tension.</p>
<h2>Smashing the cathedral</h2>
<p>Both Yarvin and Land believe that gradual, incremental reforms to democracy will not save Western society; instead, a “hard reset” or “reboot” is necessary. To that end, Yarvin has coined the acronym “RAGE” – Retire All Government Employees – as a crucial step toward that goal. The acronym is reminiscent of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-wh-strategist-vows-a-daily-fight-for-deconstruction-of-the-administrative-state/2017/02/23/03f6b8da-f9ea-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html">vow to deconstruct the administrative state</a>.</p>
<p>Yarvin advocates for an entirely new system of government – what he calls “<a href="https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Neocameralism">neocameralism</a>.” He advocates for a centrally managed economy led by a monarch – perhaps modeled after a corporate CEO – who wouldn’t need to adhere to plodding liberal-democratic procedures. Yarvin <a href="https://quillette.com/2022/06/11/curtis-yarvin-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/">has written approvingly</a> of the late Chinese leader <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/9780815737254_ch1.pdf">Deng Xiaoping</a> for his pragmatic and market-oriented authoritarianism. </p>
<p>While not explicitly fascist, Yarvin’s worldview does, at times, appear to have a fascistic bent. As the historian Roger Griffin <a href="https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/ideologies/resources/griffin-the-palingenetic-core/">once argued</a>, the essence of fascism was a nationwide process of death and rebirth. Yarvin’s rhetoric of “reboots” and “hard resets” evokes the imagery of national renewal.</p>
<p>Moreover, though he maintains that he is not a white nationalist, he <a href="https://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/why-it-matters-that-an-obscure-programming-conference-is-hosting-mencius-moldbug.html">has echoed</a> racist views like the belief that white people, on average, have higher IQs than Black people.</p>
<h2>Follow the money</h2>
<p>Though neoreaction has long eschewed involvement in electoral politics, it seems to be be gradually penetrating mainstream right-wing spaces. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/04/case-against-democracy-ten-red-pills/">Yarvin is said</a> to have helped popularize the “<a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/red-pill-prince-curtis-yarvin">red pill</a>” meme in alt-right subcultures. Pulled from the 1999 film “The Matrix,” to take the red pill is to no longer live under the spell of delusion. In the context of politics, it means breaking free from the spell of liberal orthodoxy.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1262281532678582281"}"></div></p>
<p>In September 2021, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_8aT3pQo_I">Yarvin made an appearance on</a> “Tucker Carlson Today,” during which he explained the concept of the cathedral. When Yarvin called himself a monarchist, Carlson didn’t bat an eye. </p>
<p>Then, in May 2022, Vanity Fair <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">reported on the relationship</a> among Yarvin, GOP megadonor and venture capitalist Peter Thiel and U.S. Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Blake Masters. </p>
<p>Thiel, who <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-libertarian-logic-of-peter-thiel/">is often described as a libertarian</a>, holds views <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/20/peter-thiel-book-facebook-trump-jd-vance-blake-masters-josh-hawley-513121">that can appear to be contradictory or mysterious</a>. Reporter Max Chafkin, who wrote a biography of Thiel, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/20/peter-thiel-book-facebook-trump-jd-vance-blake-masters-josh-hawley-513121">told Politico in September 2021</a> that the investor has an authoritarian streak – “a longing” for a “more powerful chief executive.” </p>
<p>Thiel, like Yarvin, has expressed frustration with American democracy. As far back as 2004, <a href="https://uvcygnus.com/peter-thiel-the-straussian-moment/">Thiel lamented</a> that “America’s constitutional machinery” prevents “any single ambitious person from reconstructing the old Republic.” In 2013, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur <a href="http://distributedweb.care/posts/who-owns-the-stars/">invested</a> in Yarvin’s firm, the Tlon Corp., best known for developing a decentralized personal server platform. And <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism">according to Yarvin</a>, he and Thiel watched the returns of the 2016 U.S. presidential election together.</p>
<p>During the 2022 election cycle, Thiel <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/543242-billionaire-peter-thiel-gives-10-million-to-super-pac-backing-potential-jd/">has donated more than $10 million</a> to super PACs supporting Vance and Masters, who also serves as the president of the Thiel Foundation.</p>
<p>Vance, who won his primary in June, is perhaps best known for his memoir, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-chattering-classes-got-the-hillbilly-elegy-book-wrong-and-theyre-getting-the-movie-wrong-too-150937">Hillbilly Elegy</a>.” Though Vance <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/23/jd-vance-ohio-senate-trump-comments-516865">once denounced Trump</a>, he has since embraced the former president <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">and now calls</a> for a “De-Ba'athification program” for the civil service – a reference <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/3/12/iraqs-de-baathification-still-haunts-the-country">to the purging of Saddam Hussein’s loyalists</a> after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. He cites Yarvin <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">as a friend and mentor</a>.</p>
<p>Yarvin, meanwhile, has given $5,800, the maximum amount allowed for individual contributions, <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2022/06/blake-masters-arizona-senate-livejournal/">to Blake Masters’ Senate campaign</a>. Masters, for his part, has echoed one of Yarvin’s maxims – “RAGE,” or “Retire All Government Employees” – <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">on the stump</a>.</p>
<p>To be fair, neither Masters nor Vance has called for the dismantling of U.S. democracy. Yet they espouse a brand of apocalyptic rhetoric that depicts a governing system on its last legs. “Psychopaths,” Masters earnestly explains <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1atFzbwVqSs">in one web ad</a>, “are running the country.”</p>
<p>The current order, Vance proclaimed <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/jd-vance-ohio-trump-carlson-comments-fentanyl-hillbilly-elegy/">in a podcast interview</a>, will meet its “inevitable collapse.” </p>
<p>“There’s this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who has written about some of these things,” Vance added.</p>
<h2>Democracy in crisis</h2>
<p>Why might neoreactionary ideas be gaining currency among right-wing candidates and donors? </p>
<p>Trump’s electoral success <a href="https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/are-trump-republicans-fascists/">illustrated the acute dissatisfaction</a> the American far right has had with the establishment wing of the Republican Party. </p>
<p>But more broadly, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/public-trust-in-government-1958-2022/">public trust in government</a> has eroded to the point where only 2 in 10 Americans say they trust the federal government to do the right thing. <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx">A Gallup Poll</a> published on July 5, 2022, found that only 7% of Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress – the legislative body’s lowest recorded rating in 43 years of polling. A Monmouth University poll released that same day reported that <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3546548-88-percent-say-us-is-on-wrong-track-survey/">88% of Americans</a> believe the U.S. is on the wrong track. And in a July 2022 New York Times/Siena College poll, <a href="https://dnyuz.com/2022/07/13/as-faith-flags-in-u-s-government-many-voters-want-to-upend-the-system/">58% of those polled</a> said the government needs major reforms or a “complete overhaul.”</p>
<p>With confidence in government at historic lows, a window opens for other ideologies to seed the political imagination. Neoreaction <a href="https://www.axios.com/2021/06/25/americas-continued-move-toward-socialism">is but one of them</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Michael does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The explicitly anti-democratic movement seems to have the ear of a major GOP donor – along with at least two GOP front-runners for the US Senate.George Michael, Professor of Criminal Justice, Westfield State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1834742022-05-24T15:15:07Z2022-05-24T15:15:07ZWhy Britain really can’t afford to cut civil servants right now<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465018/original/file-20220524-13-yi19ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C22%2C2982%2C1974&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A letter <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61432498">leaked to the BBC</a> has revealed that the UK government aims to cut up to 91,000 civil service jobs over the next three years to save money. The letter, sent to civil servants by Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, sets out the aim of reducing staffing levels back to where they were in 2016. Pay and recruitment freezes are also on the table. </p>
<p>This is a bad idea because of a relatively little-noticed development in UK politics which has occurred over the past quarter of a century – the deterioration in the quality and effectiveness of the British government. We know that this has happened thanks to data collected by the World Bank, which regularly publishes something called the <a href="https://databank.worldbank.org/source/worldwide-governance-indicators">worldwide governance indicators</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Quality of Governance in Britain – 1996 to 2020</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464821/original/file-20220523-24-o5uohw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chart showing that Britain has slid in the worldwide governance indicators rankings since the 1990s." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464821/original/file-20220523-24-o5uohw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464821/original/file-20220523-24-o5uohw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464821/original/file-20220523-24-o5uohw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464821/original/file-20220523-24-o5uohw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464821/original/file-20220523-24-o5uohw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464821/original/file-20220523-24-o5uohw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464821/original/file-20220523-24-o5uohw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A decline in standards.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The chart shows the rankings of Britain in comparison with other countries on three indicators: “government effectiveness”, “regulatory quality” and the “rule of law”. There are other measures in the dataset linked to political participation and freedom of speech, but these are the closest to measuring government performance.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1682130">data</a>, which has been gathered since 1996, summarises the views of a large number of experts, businesses and citizens about the quality of governance in their countries.</p>
<p>The government effectiveness category looks at what they think about the quality of the public service in their nation. That includes whether they see civil servants as independent or subject to too much political pressure. Regulatory quality is defined as the extent to which they think the government sets sound policies and regulations that enable the private sector to thrive.</p>
<p>The rule of law category looks at confidence in, and adherence to, “the rules of society” – including property rights, the police and the courts and perceptions of crime and violence.</p>
<p>Year-to-year changes in the indicators are not that large so the data needs to be examined over a long period of time. When looked at over a quarter of a century they reveal a lot about the governance of contemporary Britain. The indicators have all deteriorated over time. Britain has lost ground in comparison with the rest of the world. </p>
<p>Cutting jobs on the proposed scale would only make sense if one could argue that more means worse when it comes to employing civil servants. It is worth remembering that the civil service contains many low-paid workers who have direct contact with the public. They deliver benefits, provide security, work on planning applications and a host of other activities which make public services actually work. A reduction in staff on this scale is bound to damage the delivery of these vital public services, and accelerate the trends seen in the figure.</p>
<p>In 1996 Britain scored 97 out of a possible 100 in the government effectiveness scale but by 2020 it scored 89. In these data a high score means an effective government, with Switzerland at the top with a score of 99 in 2020, so Britain fell in comparison with other countries. It also fell in the scores for the quality of regulation from 99 in 1996 to 92 in 2020. When it came to the rule of law, Britain dropped from 95 to 90. Clearly, Britain is a lot better off in relation to governance than many other countries but the trends are nonetheless downwards.</p>
<h2>Trouble ahead</h2>
<p>This issue has been overlooked because it is a slow development in the background of contemporary politics, but it could reach a tipping point in which a combination of redundancies, hiring freezes and low pay creates a crisis for civil service recruitment and retention. </p>
<p>There are many factors which contribute to explaining Britain’s slide in the rankings, including the growing number of democracies in the early part of the 21st century (which has since been reversed). Poverty has also been reduced globally in this period and improvements in governance have been made in other countries, often assisted by international organisations. But the quality of the civil service which delivers policies is key in Britain’s current position.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2021">Office for National Statistics</a>, wage increases in the private sector were higher in 2021 than in the public sector as the economy started to recover from the pandemic. So the civil service appears to be facing bigger wage cuts in real terms at a time of growing inflation than the private sector. This is an additional disincentive to work in the public sector. In these circumstances the ability of governments to deliver on their promises is likely to be severely restricted. We are unlikely to get the best people serving the public in these circumstances.</p>
<p>The civil service is there to deliver government policies. But anyone who looks at the World Bank data is bound to question if the plans to make drastic cuts and reduce real wages in the service are a harbinger of blunders ahead. In their book The Blunders of our Governments, political scientists <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blunders-Our-Governments-Anthony-King/dp/1780742665">Tony King and Ivor Crewe</a> describe how when the civil service is understaffed and underfunded, mistakes are made that ruin lives and bring down governments – from school funding to pensions to tax.</p>
<p>A mass cut to the civil service can result in wasted resources and poor delivery. If this turns out to be the case at a time when people are in need and finances are already stretched, then it is not a winning campaign strategy in a future general election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183474/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Whiteley receives funding from the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council</span></em></p>The plan to cut 91,000 civil service jobs could make service delivery impossible after decades of decline.Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1656192021-08-11T14:57:59Z2021-08-11T14:57:59ZBook review: Nigeria has democracy but not development. How to fix it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415067/original/file-20210807-24-1pkdksf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigeria recently started commercial operation of a China-assisted railway linking the southwestern cities of Lagos and Ibadan. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Emma Houston/Xinhua via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After struggling for 39 years to develop a fertile ground for democratic governance, Nigeria had its turning point in May 1999 when it became the <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/nigeria/1979-12-01/democracy-nigeria">world’s fourth largest democracy</a>. This came after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/04/weekinreview/oct-28-nov-3-massacre-in-nigeria.html">16 years</a> of brutal military rule.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/nigeria-has-a-history-of-dodgy-elections-will-it-be-different-this-time-111093">Despite complaints of fraud</a> by political opposition in each election held since 1999, local and international <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/may/29/nigeria-elections-free-fair-democracy-kofi-annan">election observers</a> have regarded each of Nigeria’s general elections as relatively free and fair.</p>
<p>On the economic front, Nigeria is now the largest economy in Africa and <a href="https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/nigeria-maintains-her-lead-as-the-largest-economy-in-africa-26th-largest-economy/t62z11j">26th globally</a>. It now attracts more foreign investments than in the military era.</p>
<p>Taken together, the Nigerian democratic experiment seems to have come a long away.</p>
<p>But has democracy led to development in Nigeria? The award-winning international political economist Omano Edigheji, in his new book, <a href="https://rhbooks.com.ng/product/nigeria-democracy-without-development-how-to-fix-it/">Nigeria Democracy Without Development: How To Fix It</a>, argues powerfully that Nigerian democratic experiment is marred by monumental flaws. This is notwithstanding the modest progress it has achieved. </p>
<p>The book offers interesting detail and finely reasoned conjecture about the paradoxical relationship between democracy and development in Nigeria. </p>
<p>In this review, I organise the main ideas of the book into three parts:</p>
<ul>
<li>the paradox of democracy without development in Nigeria; </li>
<li>explanations of democracy without development in Nigeria; and </li>
<li>pathways to democracy with development in Nigeria.</li>
</ul>
<h2>The paradox of liberal democracy</h2>
<p>The book demonstrates that Nigeria continues to face massive developmental and institutional challenges. This is despite the implementation of western liberal democracy and the good governance reforms driven by donors. The challenges include human capital deficits and extreme poverty. This is due to under-investment in health, education and infrastructure. For example, <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/sites/all/themes/hdr_theme/country-notes/NGA.pdf">Nigeria’s human development index</a> value for 2020 was 0.539, placing the country in the low human development category.</p>
<p>Of all African countries, Nigeria faces the most significant challenges for reducing poverty and inequality due to rapid population growth. More than <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/lsms/brief/nigeria-releases-new-report-on-poverty-and-inequality-in-country">40% of Nigerians</a> (83 million people) live below the poverty line of $1.90 a day.</p>
<p>Another 25% (53 million) are vulnerable. Yet, the combined wealth of Nigeria’s five richest men is $29.9 billion. According to a <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/nigeria-extreme-inequality-numbers">recent report</a> by Oxfam International, the combined wealth of the Nigeria’s five richest men could end national poverty. The implication here is that democracy has led to massive increases in poverty and economic inequality in Nigeria.</p>
<p>The book flags another major challenge: high unemployment, which has continued to increase since 1999. At <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-15/nigeria-unemployment-rate-rises-to-second-highest-on-global-list">33%</a>, Nigeria’s unemployment rate is among the highest in the world. Youth unemployment is higher than for older workers. This means the risks of violent conflict and civil unrest are especially high.</p>
<p>And despite anti-corruption campaigns, Nigeria is still perceived to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Nigeria <a href="https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020/index/nga">ranked 149 out of 180 countries in 2020</a>, the second lowest in West Africa after Guinea-Bissau.</p>
<p>Then there is the security issue. Bandits, separatists and Islamist insurgents increasingly threaten government’s grip on power. Mass kidnappings, killings, maiming and other forms of insecurity are on the rise nationwide. This is true even in more stable parts of the country.</p>
<p>By and large, the book empirically demonstrates that the democratic experiment of the last 20 years has had negative results on Nigerians. Nigeria’s corrupt political elites (with a few exceptions) have largely been the beneficiaries of the democratic experiment. Not the masses.</p>
<h2>Explanations of democracy without development</h2>
<p>Edigheji focuses on structural and agent-based factors of the state as the likely explanatory factors behind Nigeria’s democracy without development. More specifically, Edigheji zooms in on two principal explanations that account for democracy without development: poor leadership and weak institutions. In this, he goes beyond the conventional argument that the prospects of democracy and development in a post-colonial country are invariably linked to its level of economic development, political culture and social make-up.</p>
<p>First, he blames Nigeria’s democracy without development on two factors. These are a lack of an ideology of development nationalism and the preponderance of politics without principles. The ideology of development nationalism is not only about national identity, consciousness or a feeling of belonging to a particular nation. Instead, it is premised on the need to catch up and to overcome underdevelopment, dependence on foreign countries and poverty.</p>
<p>The ideology of development nationalism, Edigheji argues, can only be promoted by developmentalist or patriotic elites. That’s because they do not engage in the politics of self-enrichment that undermines the collective national interest. Instead, they make necessary sacrifices to achieve their collective goals.</p>
<p>Developmentalist elites have a shared vision for national development. This includes massive investment in the provision of public goods. These include education, healthcare and infrastructure, or national policies, such as international trade and monetary policy.</p>
<p>Nigeria’s political elites since 1999 have not been developmentalist. They have been rent-seeking and predatory.</p>
<p>The second contributing factor to democracy without development has been the capture of the state. This has been achieved through a non-merit-based recruitment and promotion of civil servants, the core of which is the civil service.</p>
<p>The efficient and effective management of the civil service is central to sustainable and equitable economic development. This is underscored by the experiences of the Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) and the Tiger Cub economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam).</p>
<p>In the 1960s and 1970s, Nigeria had one of the best and most meritocratic civil services in Africa. It was made up of mostly career civil servants. They progressed based on qualifications, performance and seniority.</p>
<p>Today, however, Nigeria has one of the worst civil services in Africa. Recruitment and promotion have become politicised and ethnicised, particularly since 1999. The result has been that the best and brightest Nigerians are no longer in the civil service.</p>
<p>Non-merit-based recruitment and promotion have brought about inefficiency in the public service, low-levels of economic development and higher corruption.</p>
<h2>Pathways to democracy with development</h2>
<p>For Nigeria to overcome its developmental and institutional deficits, Edigheji argues for a democratic developmental state. The term developmental state was coined during much of the 1980s and 1990s to describe countries which had experienced rapid economic growth through state-led interventions. These include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam.</p>
<p>Edigheji sets out some of the key elements of a democratic developmental state:</p>
<p>First, Nigerian politics needs to be driven by developmentalist elites whose politics is anchored on the people and political parties based on ideology. </p>
<p>Second, the political elites need to transform the structure of the economy. They can do this by promoting human capital development, infrastructural development, and industrialisation. They must also combat the challenges of insecurity, corruption and climate change.</p>
<p>But achieving these depend on inclusive political and economic institutions.</p>
<h2>Unanswered question</h2>
<p>Notwithstanding the enormous contributions of the book, some questions remain to be fully answered. These include the suitability of the developmental state model as a panacea for Nigeria’s challenges. </p>
<p>The first question centres on understanding the processes that produced developmental states. How did developmental states achieve their successes in economic development? What worked, what didn’t, and why? </p>
<p>The second centres on the possibilities and the lessons Nigeria can draw from developmental states elsewhere. Would a developmental state model work in Nigeria? If yes, how? </p>
<p>Overall, the book makes a compelling argument for why democracy has failed to produce inclusive development in Nigeria. It offers perceptive insights into what the country needs to do to overcome its developmental and institutional deficits. It’s a very illuminating book and enjoyable to read. It is a valuable book for students, scholars, policymakers, politicians and development practitioners who want to comprehend the political dynamics of Nigeria. It is also an important contribution to the literature on the challenges of democracy and development in the global South.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ayokunu Adedokun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In his new book, Nigeria Democracy Without Development: How To Fix It, international political economist Omano Edigheji explains why democracy has not led to development in Nigeria.Ayokunu Adedokun, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and International Development, Leiden UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1657772021-08-06T14:50:27Z2021-08-06T14:50:27ZBeyond the cabinet reshuffle – what will it take to renew South Africa’s public sector?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415010/original/file-20210806-13508-1yvd1gw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has reshuffled his cabinet amid growing accusations of of graft, and an outbreak of violence unprecedented in 25 years.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Rodger Bosch/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/full-text-ramaphosas-cabinet-reshuffle-whos-in-whos-out-20210805">has linked his cabinet reshuffle</a> to a larger purpose. As he put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are unwavering in our determination to build a capable state, one which is ably led and which effectively serves the needs of the people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Realising this vision will <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-way-forward-abandon-old-ideas-embrace-bold-experimentation-165539">take a transformation in the way</a> in which South Africans conceive of how to achieve public purposes – one that prioritises people and problem-solving over a preoccupation with plans and systems.</p>
<p>South Africans of many ideological hues have in their minds an image of the public sector as a well-oiled, top-down machine – always effective in delivering on clear goals set by planners and political leaders. “Get the plans right.” “Co-ordinate effectively.” “Fix the systems.” </p>
<p>These become the mantras of reform. But continuing pursuit of these dicta will not get the country where it needs to go.</p>
<p>For one thing, the image of a well-oiled machine presumes an omniscience which no organisation anywhere, public or private, actually has. For another, systems reform is a painstaking process; its gains are measured in years, with gains in the quality of service provision coming only after the upstream improvements are in place. Time is running out.</p>
<p>Most fundamentally, the preoccupation with plans and systems ignores a reality that increasingly has become recognised the world over – that, in shaping feasible ways forward, context matters. Even in places where bureaucratic “insulation” seems to prevail, public administrative systems are embedded in politics. </p>
<p>In some settings, background political, economic and social conditions support top-down bureaucratic machines. Such conditions are very far from South Africa’s current realities.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-way-forward-abandon-old-ideas-embrace-bold-experimentation-165539">South Africa's way forward: abandon old ideas, embrace bold experimentation</a>
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<p>But South Africa’s current public sector challenges are anything but unique. Indeed, counter-intuitive as it might sound to many South Africans, its public sector works somewhat better than those of most other middle-income countries, and those of almost all low-income countries. Yet many countries, even in the midst of messiness, have managed to achieve gains.</p>
<p>How? </p>
<p>By focusing on problems and on people.</p>
<h2>Problems and people</h2>
<p>A focus on concrete problems provides a way to cut through endless preoccupation with empty initiatives – endless plans for reform, endless upstream processes of consultation. Processes that are performative rather than practical, too general to lead anywhere. Instead, <a href="https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/building-state-capability-evidence-analysis-action">gains in public capacity can come via a different path</a> – through learning-by-doing, focusing in an action-oriented way on very specific challenges, and on evoking energy to address them by the responsible departments (or individual state-owned enterprises).</p>
<p>Action to address concrete problems needs to come, of course, from South Africa’s public officials. How to evoke their sense of agency?</p>
<p>Engaging with South Africa’s public officials, one quickly discovers that even the best of them are deeply disillusioned by their experiences. Yet many continue to have a deep reservoir of commitment to service. Evoking commitment is a classic challenge confronting managers everywhere. As <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801442926/state-building/#bookTabs=1">Francis Fukuyama puts it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All good managers (private and public) know that it is ultimately the informal norms and group identities that will most strongly motivate the workers in an organisation to do their best … They thus spend much more time on cultivating the right ‘organisational culture’ than on fixing the formal lines of authority.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Looking beyond the public sector, what of South Africa’s citizens more broadly?</p>
<p>A focus on people also involves transforming the relationship between the public sector and civil society (including the private sector). For reasons both good and bad, public officials generally engage with civil society cautiously. The good reason is that such relationships can all too easily fester corruptly in the shadows. The bad reason is a more generalised wariness – fuelled by a combination of arrogance, fear and inertia – to step outside the comfort zone of tightly managed bureaucratic processes.</p>
<p>The benefits of a transformed relationship can be large. It can be the basis for new, cross-cutting alliances between public sector reformers and reformers within civil society, across national, provincial and local levels. Investment in such alliances can help developmentally oriented stakeholders to overcome resistance to change, including by pushing back against predation.</p>
<p>To renew a relationship, all parties need to change their behaviour. What new behaviours does civil society need to learn?</p>
<h2>Civil society and transparency</h2>
<p>Shaped by its history, South Africa’s civil society organisations generally focus on holding government to account. This is a constricted vision of the role of civil society in a democracy. Indeed, it sometimes can have the unintended consequence of fuelling cynicism and despair, thereby deepening dysfunction. The <a href="https://www.thegpsa.org/about/collaborative-social-accountability">Global Partnership for Social Accountability</a> highlights how less confrontational approaches can add value:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have learned that focusing only on scrutinising and verifying government actions can have limited value in our problem solving. When they engage to focus on the problem at hand, civil society, citizens and public sector actors are better able to deliver solutions collaboratively – especially when they prioritise learning. When social accountability mechanisms are isolated from public sector processes they are not as effective as collaborative governance. Collective action requires efforts that build bridges.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Transparency remains key. Transparency in how civil society engages with officials in the public sector can reduce the risk that more collaborative governance becomes a vehicle for corrupt collusion. Transparency vis-à-vis outcomes can signal to citizens that public resources are not being wasted but are helping to improve results. The combination of participation and transparency can help enhance social solidarity and legitimacy of the public domain.</p>
<p>As Ramaphosa put it in his cabinet reshuffle speech:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The task of rebuilding our economy and our society requires urgency and focus. It requires cooperation among all sectors of society and the active involvement of all South Africans.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or, as per Hugh Masekela’s classic song (quoted by Ramaphosa in his <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/president-cyril-ramaphosa-2018-state-nation-address-16-feb-2018-0000">first state of the nation address to parliament as president</a> in early 2018, “Thuma Mina”. Send me.</p>
<p><em>This article builds on a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-way-forward-abandon-old-ideas-embrace-bold-experimentation-165539">piece that appeared</a> in The Conversation’s ‘foundation’ series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Levy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa’s public sector works somewhat better than those of most other middle-income countries. Yet, unlike them, it has not managed to achieve gains in the midst of messiness.Brian Levy, Professor of the Practice of International Development, Johns Hopkins UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1614482021-06-01T15:10:14Z2021-06-01T15:10:14ZKenya’s civil service is ageing, but adjustments aren’t being made<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402847/original/file-20210526-17-pxn9sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The demographic profiles of countries like Kenya, where a <a href="https://www.unfpa.org/demographic-dividend">high percentage</a> of people are young, would suggest that it’s swiftly renewing its workforce with fresh talent. </p>
<p>But this doesn’t seem to be the case.</p>
<p>We conducted a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-01-2015-0002">study</a> in a public sector organisation three years ago. We found that the bureau had an ageing workforce. More than half of its staff were 50 years old and above. The majority of employees were aged between 51 and 60. This suggests that, in general, Kenya’s civil service is skewed to older people. </p>
<p>The problem hasn’t been helped by the fact that <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/business/money-careers/article/2001394826/no-extension-of-retirement-age-from-next-year-says-psc">Kenya changed the retirement age</a> from 55 to 60 years in 2009. </p>
<p>Our analysis focused on the <a href="http://www.knbs.or.ke/">Kenya National Bureau of Statistics</a>. The study presents a microcosm of the wider Kenyan public sector environment. </p>
<p>Our study broke new ground because it explored diversity in the workplace from the perspective of age rather than gender and ethnicity as has been the case with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/01425451311320477">prior studies</a>.</p>
<p>The main focus of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-01-2015-0002">our study</a> was to look at the recruitment and retention strategies at the bureau. </p>
<p>We concluded from our findings that the bureau faced a serious demographic challenge in the makeup of its workforce and that the problem could be addressed by developing a strategic workforce plan for employees. This included having a clear understanding of recruitment, progression and retention processes that are all inclusive – taking into consideration demographics such as age, gender and to some extent ethnicity. </p>
<p>But this would need to be developed collectively by key parties within the organisation.</p>
<p>More broadly, our research shows that there’s an urgent need for Kenya’s public service to address the problem.</p>
<h2>What we found</h2>
<p>The main purpose of the study was to investigate organisational sub-groups at the bureau and to tease out the multiple team perspectives as experienced in their everyday lives within the organisation. </p>
<p>We asked a sample of employees the following questions: how had the bureau managed the ageing workforce within its ranks? To what extent could it develop a plan to deal with the challenges posed by an ageing workforce within the organisation? And finally what were the current (recruitment) strategies for developing sustainable employee relations within the inter-generational workforce at the bureau? </p>
<p>At the time of the survey more than half of the bureau’s staff was over 50 years of age. Those aged 40 and below accounted for just over 15% of the workforce while 34% were between the ages of 41 and 50. </p>
<p>This demographic profile was far from optimal. We found that it was affecting the day-to-day activities in the organisation, in particular how people communicated with each other and shared information. For example, older people didn’t regularly use the internet and email, but younger members of the workforce did. The implication of this is that important work updates and news on social media could be easily missed.</p>
<p>The age profile also suggested that the bureau urgently needed to put in place recruitment and retention strategies. We found that most of the older workers at the bureau were retiring. This meant a loss of talent and skills because experience and skills hadn’t been passed along to younger workers. </p>
<p>We found that the bureau had not put in place opportunities for younger members of its workforce to learn from work shadowing, mentorship or apprenticeship as well as leadership development. This is important for continuity.</p>
<h2>Some answers</h2>
<p>Undoubtedly, workplaces face challenges, even with the best laid out plans.</p>
<p>One of the biggest is the question of ensuring that there is a talent pool to replace the current workforce as they approach retirement. This is also known as accession of the younger generation into the workplace. This is particularly pressing in the context of an ageing workforce.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Understanding+Y-p-9780730313816">Research</a> has pointed out that management should be aware of the characteristics of the different generations (notably <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/">Generation Y</a>, also known as the millennials, which refers to a group of people born from the early 1980s through to the turn of the millennium) even though it may also bring about inter-generational conflict in the workplace. </p>
<p>The answer lies in making sure that each generation’s unique values and office expectations are managed. This can be through job rotation, team-bonding, equality and diversity training sessions and the opportunity and space for sharing experiences.</p>
<p>Organisations should also have clearly defined roles and responsibilities to all staff without discrimination to ensure that all employees work in harmony.</p>
<p>For its part, the bureau needed to design a future workforce composition through detailed succession planning and talent management.</p>
<p>There seemed to be some degree of optimism about this among the respondents in our research. Many believed that the bureau would indeed make headway in recruiting in ways that ensured the percentage of young people – as well as women – would increase. They also believed that this would lead to a greater tolerance for minorities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Professor Nnamdi Madichie is affiliated with the Unizik Business School, Awka, Nigeria, Coal City University, Enugu, Nigeria and the Bloomsbury Institute London. His is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.</span></em></p>Kenya faces the dilemma of an ageing workforce. The problem can be addressed by developing a strategic workforce plan for employees.Nnamdi O. Madichie, Professor of Marketing & Entrepreneurship, Nnamdi Azikiwe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1594092021-05-24T13:30:52Z2021-05-24T13:30:52ZIs it time to move Ottawa out of Ottawa?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401730/original/file-20210519-19-1aw76yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4662%2C3105&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that many jobs can be performed remotely. It's time to consider moving federal goverment positions into other regions of the country.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in much of the federal public service shifting to remote work. Ottawa invested in telecommunications and <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/government/publicservice/covid-19/working-remotely.html">found new ways for employees to work effectively from far-flung locations</a>.</p>
<p>The transition was sufficiently successful that <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/feds-looking-at-permanent-remote-work-office-needs-after-covid-19-1.4994266">the federal government is considering continuing some remote work</a>, possibly reducing its office rental spaces.</p>
<p>This raises the question — if work doesn’t need to be done in Ottawa-area offices, does it need to be done in Ottawa at all?</p>
<h2>The centralization of federal jobs</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/innovation/human-resources-statistics/population-federal-public-service.html">Canada has more than 300,000 federal employees</a>, with over 230,000 in core public administration (CPA) and just under 70,000 employed in separate agencies like the Canada Revenue Agency. </p>
<p>The proportion of agency jobs concentrated in the National Capital Region, which includes Ottawa-Gatineau and surrounding areas, has declined since 2016. The opposite is seen with CPA jobs. <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-621-m/11-621-m2008066-eng.htm">The concentration of CPA employees was only 33 per cent in 1995</a>, but was up to 46 per cent in 2020. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399587/original/file-20210509-15-um35j3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="graph shows the number of federal public service jobs in the capital region" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399587/original/file-20210509-15-um35j3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399587/original/file-20210509-15-um35j3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399587/original/file-20210509-15-um35j3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399587/original/file-20210509-15-um35j3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399587/original/file-20210509-15-um35j3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399587/original/file-20210509-15-um35j3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399587/original/file-20210509-15-um35j3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The number of federal public service jobs in the Ottawa region, according to the Government of Canada Open Data Portal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2020</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/innovation/human-resources-statistics/demographic-snapshot-federal-public-service-2016.html">Most CPA workers</a> are <a href="https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/knowledge-workers/">skilled knowledge workers</a>. These are good jobs. It is time for more federal jobs, including CPA jobs, to decentralize.</p>
<h2>The case for decentralization</h2>
<p>Research suggests decentralizing public service jobs <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/c46m">reduces costs</a>, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/opinions/government-departments-should-be-spread-out-price">strengthens national security by spreading government functions across the country and reduces cynicism toward government</a>. </p>
<p>Decentralization also distributes the economic benefits of the public sector across the country. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119019300221?via%3Dihub">According to one 2019 British study</a>, “the arrival of 10 civil service jobs in an area spurs the creation of about 11 jobs in the private sector,” including professional service jobs like law and consulting.</p>
<p>Most importantly, it gives federal governments more ability to directly engage with communities. Regional voices within government increase as career opportunities are more accessible to qualified people nationally. Advocacy and community groups across the country enjoy a more level playing field to engage in the policy process. </p>
<p>This increased geographic diversity of voices working within and connecting with government can result in improved strategic policy advice. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Canada Revenue Agency headquarters sign." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401738/original/file-20210519-19-1ib6wik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401738/original/file-20210519-19-1ib6wik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401738/original/file-20210519-19-1ib6wik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401738/original/file-20210519-19-1ib6wik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401738/original/file-20210519-19-1ib6wik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401738/original/file-20210519-19-1ib6wik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401738/original/file-20210519-19-1ib6wik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More federal jobs could be moved out of Ottawa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Creating a national strategy</h2>
<p>Now is the perfect time to make a serious effort to decentralize Canada’s federal jobs.</p>
<p>The COVID-19 remote work experience demonstrates the remarkable potential of technology to overcome distance. We have learned how efficiently we can use technology to reduce unnecessary travel and connect easily across the country. We must use the disruption of the pandemic to rethink what jobs and services need to be in Ottawa at all.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-could-have-a-lasting-positive-impact-on-workplace-culture-143297">COVID-19 could have a lasting, positive impact on workplace culture</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>We can expect growing calls for this in Canada’s economic recovery, particularly from Alberta. Just before the COVID-19 shutdown, <a href="https://buffalodeclaration.com/the-buffalo-declaration">four MPs identified the centralization of federal headquarters as an example of systemic unfairness towards Alberta</a>. A few months later, Alberta’s Fair Deal Panel recommended western premiers request “<a href="https://open.alberta.ca/publications/fair-deal-panel-report-to-government">a distribution map of federal civil servants across Canada and a list of federal government agencies and decision-making bodies that can be recommended for relocation to Western Canada</a>.” </p>
<p>Recent surveys find decentralizing jobs may be publicly popular. The 2021 <a href="https://www.commongroundpolitics.ca/viewpoint-alberta">Viewpoint Alberta</a> survey, which included over 800 respondents in Alberta and Saskatchewan, found strong support for increasing federal jobs in each province.</p>
<p>Similarly, the 2021 <a href="https://cwf.ca/research/publications/report-confederation-of-tomorrow-2021-survey-of-canadians-the-role-of-governments-and-the-division-of-powers-federalism-in-the-context-of-a-pandemic/">Confederation of Tomorrow</a> survey of more than 5,800 Canadians found almost three-quarters (73.5 per cent) support “moving more government offices from Ottawa to other cities in the country so that more Canadians would have access to jobs in the federal public service.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A graph shows support for moving federal public service jobs out of the Ottawa area." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399588/original/file-20210509-19-3iezge.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399588/original/file-20210509-19-3iezge.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399588/original/file-20210509-19-3iezge.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399588/original/file-20210509-19-3iezge.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399588/original/file-20210509-19-3iezge.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399588/original/file-20210509-19-3iezge.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399588/original/file-20210509-19-3iezge.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Support for moving federal public service jobs out of the Ottawa area.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Confederation of Tomorrow 2021 Survey</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The time for action is now. In fact, Canada faces an immediate decision regarding the location of the new Canada Water Agency. <a href="https://www.saultstar.com/news/sault-launches-pitch-for-new-canada-water-agency">While the decision process has yet to be announced</a>, Regina and Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., are already vying for the agency headquarters. Other cities may also be planning to do so.</p>
<p>Canada already has experience in decentralizing federal jobs, including moving the National Energy Board headquarters from Ottawa to Calgary and creating regional Canada Revenue Agency tax centres. These serve as precedents for a bold new strategy.</p>
<h2>Moving forward on a national strategy</h2>
<p>To be sure, decentralization faces political challenges. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09654310701213939">As the benefits of job decentralization are long-term and the challenges are immediate</a>, politicians more focused on the next election might be disinclined to take up the task.</p>
<p>Vested interests are loud. Strategies are needed to address <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/moving-out-civil-service-location.pdf">relocation costs</a>, including staff turnover and the associated loss of experience, though remote work options can reduce these.</p>
<p>A national strategy is required. The <a href="https://civilservice.blog.gov.uk/2018/08/30/the-places-for-growth-programme-driving-growth-across-the-uk/">United Kingdom’s Places for Growth program</a> will move thousands of London jobs, <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/civil-service-moves">including policy advisory roles</a>, to <a href="https://www.civilserviceworld.com/in-depth/article/estates-and-smart-working-what-its-like-to-work-inside-hmrcs-first-regional-centre">13 regional hubs</a> over the next decade and could provide ideas or a blueprint. </p>
<p>Canada might also consider efforts to <a href="https://www.economist.com/international/2019/04/04/why-governments-move-civil-servants-out-of-national-capitals">shift civil service work out of national capitals in Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Denmark and Malaysia</a>. </p>
<p>The COVID-19 remote work experience suggests that distance is not insurmountable for federal government work. No one is suggesting that public servants work from home forever, but the public’s business does not always have to be done in Ottawa. Let’s use this as an opportunity to rethink how we distribute federal work across Canada.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159409/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Loleen Berdahl receives funding from SSHRC.</span></em></p>If work doesn’t need to be done in Ottawa-area offices, does it need to be done in Ottawa at all?Loleen Berdahl, Executive Director, Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, and Professor, Department of Political Studies, University of SaskatchewanLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1589122021-04-21T10:33:02Z2021-04-21T10:33:02ZWhy nursing in Denmark pays less than professions dominated by men<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396005/original/file-20210420-21-7layrv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=264%2C0%2C733%2C615&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rehab-elderly-people-536383975">GagliardiPhotography/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The gender pay gap and what to do about it in Denmark recently came to a head in the nursing profession. During the pandemic, focus on the work of nurses has come to the fore in a number of countries, including in the UK where a recent proposal for <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56294009">a 1% pay increase</a> was heavily criticised. </p>
<p>In national public sector negotiations in Denmark, nurses voted against a recent pay offer of up to 5% which was set to preserve <a href="https://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Definitions/Real_wages.html">real wages</a> for public workers over the next three years. But <a href="https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/persons/astrid-elkjaer-soerensen(b9a2868f-221f-4990-9fa0-d306724ab7f1)/publications/det-offentlige-loenhierarki(1a976843-623a-40ee-abbd-ef19c4ccc4e5).html">research shows</a> that it’s not just a question of a pay rise: the wage level itself is set unfairly low for those in the profession. And the root of the problem dates back to a law that came into force some 50 years ago. </p>
<p>Denmark has a reputation globally for equality, but <a href="https://politiken.dk/udland/art8172855/Britisk-ambassad%C3%B8r-forventede-total-ligestilling-i-Danmark.-Hun-tog-fejl?shareToken=ajEgmeAAdDoA">it still has problems</a> with unequal pay. Danish nurses still receive <a href="https://dsr.dk/politik-og-nyheder/nyhed/dsr-uligeloen-er-strukturel-sexisme-skabt-af-politikerne-derfor-er-det-dem">10%-20% less</a> in pay than male-dominated professions requiring a similar level of education. There are <a href="https://nordics.info/show/artikel/gender-segregation-of-nordic-labour/">many contributing factors</a> to unequal pay, but a <a href="https://menneskeret.dk/sites/menneskeret.dk/files/media/document/Rapport_Tjenestemand_06.pdf">recent report</a> from the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) found that legislation enacted in 1969 led to nurses and other female-dominated professions placed at a lower pay level. </p>
<p>Not only was the recent pay offer rejected, <a href="https://www.borgerforslag.dk/se-og-stoet-forslag/?Id=FT-07299">a citizens’ petition</a> to reform the law in respect of many traditionally female professions received the requisite 50,000 signatures, within a record-breaking eight days, to make it to parliament.</p>
<h2>Structural sexism</h2>
<p>Central to the current fight for equal pay in Denmark is the call for the Danish parliament to revisit the <a href="https://dsr.dk/politik-og-nyheder/det-mener-dsr/tjenestemandsreformen-af-1969">Public Servant Reform Act of 1969</a>. The act was intended to modernise the employment system for state employees and allow the state greater control over wage increases. The act is regarded as one of the main reasons that female-dominated professions in the public sector still have lower salaries than male counterparts in positions with a corresponding level of education and responsibility. </p>
<p>In 1965, a commission was tasked with collecting data on and assessing all job functions as officials wanted to construct a wage scale and terms and conditions based on solely objective criteria. However, collecting such a large and diverse amount of data turned out to be more challenging than anticipated. </p>
<p>The commission also could not decide which criteria it should use when classifying the different professional groups and exactly how these should be weighted in relation to each other. In a letter forwarded to all government ministries, the commission mentioned workload, education and responsibility as criteria for work assessments, but it never actually succeeded in developing a proper system. </p>
<p>The commission was also tasked with not significantly increasing spending on public salaries. It therefore had to maintain the existing status quo, limiting the number of professional groups that could be moved to a higher wage bracket. The status quo at that time dated back to the first Civil Servant Act of 1919, and the commission had little room to manoeuvre: increasing wages for one professional group would lead to demands from others. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396008/original/file-20210420-23-1tog4d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Protesters gather in a square with red banners" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396008/original/file-20210420-23-1tog4d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396008/original/file-20210420-23-1tog4d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396008/original/file-20210420-23-1tog4d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396008/original/file-20210420-23-1tog4d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396008/original/file-20210420-23-1tog4d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396008/original/file-20210420-23-1tog4d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396008/original/file-20210420-23-1tog4d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters for equal pay gather in a square with red banners.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Foran Christiansborg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though its aim was to modernise, in the end, the commission’s <a href="https://nordics.info/show/artikel/unequal-pay-in-denmark-an-outdated-laws-far-reaching-consequences/">final proposal</a> – which became law – perpetuated a system that dated much further back in time. Against this backdrop, the female-dominated professions were generally placed at a lower level in relation to their education and level of responsibility at the time. </p>
<p>The act set out that the rest of the public sector should synchronise its wages with the new system, and this wage gap eventually spread to every other type of public worker. This also effectively ensured the state a relatively high degree of control over wages in the public sector.</p>
<h2>Public pay scales today</h2>
<p>In December 2020, the <a href="https://menneskeret.dk/sites/menneskeret.dk/files/media/document/Rapport_Tjenestemand_06.pdf">report from the DIHR</a> examined the relationship between wage scales for public workers in 1969 and 2019 and found an overall correlation, demonstrating similar wage differentials today as there were then. </p>
<p>This in itself would not be a problem if the wage differences between the professions initially seemed well-founded and remain so. To investigate whether the wage scales in 1969 and 2019 were unfavourable for female-dominated professions, levels of education were analysed. The report found that female-dominated professions in 1969 were, in general, placed lower that what could be expected based on the corresponding length of education, while male-dominated professions were placed higher.</p>
<p>The same trend could be observed in 2019 but, perhaps surprisingly, there was even less correlation between educational level and position on the wage scale.</p>
<h2>Political action</h2>
<p>While wage disparity from the 1969 act and equal pay generally has been on the agenda for many years in Denmark, the report has triggered renewed public and political interest in recent weeks. What should be done to solve a wage gap stemming from a law passed over 50 years ago? </p>
<p>COVID has in Denmark, like elsewhere, highlighted care work as an essential part of society’s infrastructure, creating <a href="https://www.borgerforslag.dk/se-og-stoet-forslag/?Id=FT-07299">support and momentum</a> for equal pay activists. The citizens’ petition calls for the 1969 act to be repealed and for equality of pay between all public professional groups to be introduced.</p>
<p>Longstanding concerns over piggy-backing claims (if the wages of one profession are increased, another group will demand the same) must be overcome – and there is only one pot from which all public sector pay comes, fixed by the government. </p>
<p>Politicians have to date tried to avoid responsibility by suggesting that the common method of resolving industrial disputes in Denmark should be used, that is, collective bargaining between the trade unions and the employer federations (so-called “social partners”). However, the message of nurses and the other caring professions is loud and clear: it is up to the politicians to do something about an outdated law that has unwittingly echoed down the ages.</p>
<p><em>This article is co-published with <a href="https://nordics.info/">Nordics.info</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Astrid Elkjær Sørensen receives funding from Ligelønsalliancen (A umbrella organization for Danish Trade Unions)</span></em></p>A law from 1969 is still having an impact on nursing pay in Denmark today.Astrid Elkjær Sørensen, Postdoctoral Researcher in History, Aarhus UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1547562021-02-08T08:18:58Z2021-02-08T08:18:58ZSimeon Nyachae: the larger-than-life civil servant who made his mark on Kenya<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382869/original/file-20210207-15-z743ze.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Simeon Nyachae (right) welcomes President Uhuru Kenyatta to his alma mater, Kisii School in western Kenya, during the institution's 80th anniversary in 2014.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/120898464@N04/14995103431/in/photolist-8dfzcw-oR4PQ4/lightbox/">State House Kenya/Courtesy</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Simeon Nyachae, who <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2021-02-02-nyachae-wealthy-politician-who-controlled-gusii-politics/">passed away</a> in early February at the age of 88, was among the men who shaped Kenya and made it one of Africa’s leading economies. For Kenya’s first 40 years of independence he was highly visible in government and helped to craft an economy oriented to the private sector that also was favourable to both large and small-scale agriculture.</p>
<p>Nyachae held senior leadership positions under all three of Kenya’s first presidents – Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki – from 1963 to 2007. </p>
<p>Nyachae was among the favourite sons of <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/biography-of-chief-musa-nyandusi/oclc/32825246&referer=brief_results">Musa Nyandusi</a>, who was the senior chief in Kisii District in western Kenya and supervisor of its other chiefs. This was the highest government post an African could hold in the colonial government. As independence approached Nyandusi was able to influence an appointment for Nyachae as district assistant (or officer) – which had been the entry grade for British colonial officers – in Kisii. He then moved to Machakos district bordering the capital Nairobi. </p>
<p>After independence President Kenyatta made Nyachae district commissioner for Nyandarua. He was then promoted to provincial commissioner for the Rift Valley, the largest of the country’s eight provinces. Subsequently, he was moved to Central Province, the president’s home province outside Nairobi. </p>
<p>As Kenyatta was a strong centraliser and ruled through the civil service, these positions were equivalent to a governor or prefect. He was effectively in charge of the local activities of other government officials. The places where Nyachae served gave him considerable authority over the transformation of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1792632?seq=1">“White Highlands”</a> estates from European hands into African-held small and large farms. This meant that his position was highly political. </p>
<p>Under President arap Moi, Nyachae rose in 1979 to the office of chief secretary and cabinet secretary, from which he retired in 1987. </p>
<p>Moi was much less of a centraliser than Kenyatta had been. He was interested in seeing a better distribution of resources among Kenya’s ethnic (or tribal) regions. To this end, Nyachae formed an alliance with Harris Mule, then the permanent secretary in the ministry of planning, and together they shepherded the “<a href="https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/9018">District Focus for Rural Development</a>” into policy in the mid-1980s. </p>
<p>This involved devolving significant financial authority and responsibility to district county councils. In turn this presaged the <a href="https://www.klrc.go.ke/index.php/constitution-of-kenya/138-chapter-eleven-devolved-government">decentralised structure</a> provided by the current Kenyan constitution promulgated in 2010. </p>
<p>The purpose of both changes was to give Kenya’s multiple “tribes” greater control over the local distribution of government resources. In this way Kenya sought to mitigate the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/from-divided-pasts-to-cohesive-futures/kenyas-four-ages-of-ethnicity/47BB799B6C95D3E2659C1EE1B8B148BE">intensity of “tribal” competition</a> for national political office which had been building up over the years. Indeed, it boiled over into considerable violence after the 2007 elections. </p>
<p>After retirement from the civil service, in 1992, Nyachae was elected a member of parliament from his home in Kisii and was re-elected in 1997. As an MP, Nyachae served in Moi’s cabinet, first as agriculture minister from 1992, and then as water minister. After the 1997 election, he served in finance before moving to industry. </p>
<p>He broke with Moi and <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/ken2002results.htm">contested</a> the presidency in 2002, but lost to Mwai Kibaki. Nonetheless, President Kibaki appointed Nyachae as minister of energy in a government of national unity. In 2005 Nyachae chose to retire from public life for health reasons.</p>
<h2>Wealth and interests</h2>
<p>With financial support from his father, Nyachae had begun a very small bakery even before he joined the civil service. At Kenya’s independence, most African leaders of the independence generation were given opportunities by Kenyatta to take over previously European parts of the economy. </p>
<p>They had <a href="https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8p3008fh;query=;brand=ucpress">privileged access</a> to farms in the ‘White Highlands’, loans, government permits, contracts, and the like and became instantly wealthy. Nyachae was no exception. His bakery expanded, he acquired at least two large farms, and other businesses he established did well.</p>
<p>As was true for other members of the new African elite, the agricultural commodities they produced were largely the same as those of small farmers. By pursuing public policies that profited their farms, they were helping a large number of poorer Kenyan farmers as well. This Kenyan coincidence of large and small-holder agricultural interests was very unusual in Africa and a part of the key to its economic success. </p>
<p>Nyachae shared those interests and thus joined in promoting business, agricultural and rural development policies with long-term, broad benefits that reached widely in the economy. Furthermore, unlike many others he was a <a href="https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8p3008fh;query=;brand=ucpress">‘nationalist’</a>, in that he was concerned with the welfare of all parts of the country and much less focused on immediate personal gain or in advancing sectional (that is, ‘tribal’) advantage.</p>
<p>Nyachae’s wealth also gave him the economic independence to risk government displeasure when he wanted to quietly oppose political measures he found unwise. He believed strongly in supporting the interests of the presidents he served, but when others with political influence tried to gain unseemly advantage at government expense, Nyachae was willing to interfere. Several times he <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110527054529/http://mvuleafricapublishers.com/walking-through-the-corridor-of-services-hard-cover/">blocked conspiracies</a> to remove dedicated civil servants who were in the way.</p>
<p>He <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110527054529/http://mvuleafricapublishers.com/walking-through-the-corridor-of-services-hard-cover/">believed</a> the efforts he made to stop corruption were behind Moi’s decisions to transfer him to minor cabinet portfolios from being minister of agriculture and later of finance. </p>
<p>Ultimately, particularly around the <a href="http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/CommissionReports/Report-of-the-Judicial-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Goldenberg-Affair.pdf">Goldenberg corruption scandal</a> in which senior government officials were implicated, he lost influence with President Moi and broke with him in 1999. </p>
<h2>Round the clock manager</h2>
<p>Nyachae always served at the intersection of politics and administration. Nevertheless, he was more of a firm manager than a politician. In addition to being a ‘nationalist’ he was known for his exceptional drive, long hours, self-discipline and the speed with which he wrote memos. </p>
<p>More important, his success as a manager came from the support he provided gifted civil service professionals in gaining links to presidential support and in his willingness to take risks in opposing misguided endeavours of lesser politicians.</p>
<p>Nyachae is survived by numerous children and their offspring, but he insisted when I last spoke to him that it was contrary to Gusii tradition to enumerate them. He had four wives and was very proud of the effort he put into keeping their children united under his leadership. In this he was successful, as witnessed by the many occasions until the very end in which they were there to support him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154756/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David K. Leonard received funding from the US National Science Foundation and the US Fulbright programme in the mid-1980s. to research a 1990 book on Nyachae and others.</span></em></p>Nyachae always served at the intersection of politics and administration. Nevertheless, he was more of a firm manager than a politician.David K. Leonard, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of California, BerkeleyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1455182021-01-28T18:15:37Z2021-01-28T18:15:37ZTrump wasn’t the first president to try to politicize the civil service – which remains at risk of returning to Jackson’s ‘spoils system’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381160/original/file-20210128-19-bzgg9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=129%2C120%2C5622%2C3707&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trump put a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office when he was president. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-speaks-during-an-event-with-members-news-photo/880468366">Oliver Contreras-Pool/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The federal government’s core civilian workforce has long been <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001540761">known for its professionalism</a>. About <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43590.pdf">2.1 million nonpartisan career officials</a> provide essential public services in such diverse areas as agriculture, national parks, defense, homeland security, environmental protection and veterans’ affairs. </p>
<p>To get the vast majority of these “competitive service” jobs – which are protected from easy firing – federal employees must <a href="https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/classifying-general-schedule-positions/">demonstrate achievement in job-specific knowledge, skills and abilities superior to other applicants</a> and, in some cases, pass an exam. In other words, the civil service is designed to be “<a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/10/why-merit-matters/169657/">merit-based</a>.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t always so. </p>
<p>From Andrew Jackson until Theodore Roosevelt, much of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/11.1.172">federal workforce was subject to change after every presidential election</a> – and often did. Known as the spoils system, this pattern of political patronage, in which officeholders award allies with jobs in return for support, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1893171">began to end</a> in the late 19th century as citizens and politicians like Roosevelt grew fed up with its <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1845445">corruption, incompetence and inefficiency</a> – and its role in the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-federal-civil-service-and-the-death-of-president-james-a-garfield.htm">assassination of a president</a>.</p>
<p>Less than two weeks before Election Day, former President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/10/stunning-executive-order-would-politicize-civil-service/169479/">signed an executive order that threatened</a> to return the U.S. to a spoils system in which a large share of the federal government’s workforce could be fired for little or no reason – including a perceived lack of loyalty to the president.</p>
<p>While President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/22/executive-order-protecting-the-federal-workforce/">quickly reversed the order</a> soon after taking office, the incident shows just how vulnerable the civil service is.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An old picture shows a crowd of people in front of the White House in 1829." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C39%2C941%2C633&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People seeking government jobs crashed the White House on the day of Andrew Jackson’s inauguration.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://picryl.com/media/presidents-levee-or-all-creation-going-to-the-white-house-robert-cruikshank-1">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Birth of the spoils system</h2>
<p>The government of the early republic <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/the-early-federal-workforce-by-p-kastor.pdf?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Executive%20Education&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email">was small</a>, but the issue of whether civil servants should be chosen on the basis of patronage or skills was hotly debated. </p>
<p>Although George Washington and the five presidents who followed him <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/11.1.172">certainly employed patronage</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_j_YiYda81AC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false">they emphasized merit</a> when making appointments. </p>
<p>Washington wrote that relying on one’s personal relationship to the applicant <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/634173">would constitute</a> “an absolute bar to preferment” and wanted those “as in my judgment shall be the best qualified to discharge the functions of the departments to which they shall be appointed.” <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/11.1.172">He would not even appoint</a> his own soldiers to government positions if they lacked the necessary qualifications.</p>
<p>That changed in 1829 when Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, entered the White House.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An illustration of Andrew Jackson riding a horse on a statue with the words, 'To the victors belong the spoils,' while several men seeking jobs bow down to him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Political cartoon by Thomas Nast depicts office seekers seeking jobs from Andrew Jackson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/political-cartoon-by-thomas-nast-with-the-caption-cant-you-news-photo/96743647">Fotosearch/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jackson came to office <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/andrew-jackson-0">as a reformer</a> with a promise to end the dominance of elites and what he considered their corrupt policies. He believed that popular access to government jobs – and their frequent turnover through a four-year “<a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/andrew-jackson-0">rotation in office</a>” – could serve ideals of democratic participation, regardless of one’s qualifications for a position.</p>
<p>As a result, at his inaugural reception on March 4, a <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/112695/american-lion-by-jon-meacham/">huge crowd of office seekers crashed</a> the reception. Jackson was “besieged by applicants” and “battalions of hopefuls,” <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/17600/andrew-jackson-by-hw-brands/">all seeking government jobs</a>.</p>
<p>Instead of preventing corruption from taking root, Jackson’s <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Jacksonians/2V9_twEACAAJ?hl=en">rotation policy became an opportunity for patronage</a> – or rewarding supporters with the spoils of victory. He <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/andrew-jackson-0">defended the practice</a> by declaring: “If my personal friends are qualified and patriotic, why should I not be permitted to bestow a few offices on them?” </p>
<p>Besides possessing a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1845445">lack of appropriate skills and commitment</a>, office seekers <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1845445">were expected to pay “assessments”</a> – a percentage of their salary ranging from 2% to 7% – to the party that appointed them.</p>
<p>Although Jackson <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/andrew-jackson-0">replaced only about 10%</a> of the federal workforce and 41% of presidential appointments, the practice increasingly <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Civil_Service_and_the_Patronage/URJPPqndZGYC?hl=en">became the norm</a> as subsequent presidents fired as well as refused to reappoint ever-larger shares of the government. </p>
<p><iframe id="kIe1G" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/kIe1G/5/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The peak of the spoils system came under James Buchanan, who served from 1857 to 1861. He <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_the_Federal_Civil_Service_178.html?id=dwbvhZnJT9sC">replaced</a> <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001540761">virtually every federal worker at the end of their “rotation.”</a> William L. Marcy, who was secretary of state under Buchanan’s predecessor and was the first to refer to patronage as “spoils,” <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/jacksonians-a-study-in-administrative-history-1829-1861/oclc/498178">wrote in 1857</a> that civil servants from his administration were being “hunted down like wild beasts.”</p>
<p>Even Abraham Lincoln, who followed Buchanan, made extensive use of the system,
<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Civil_Service_and_the_Patronage/URJPPqndZGYC?hl=en">replacing at least 1,457 of the 1,639 officials</a> then subject to presidential appointment. The number would have been higher but for the secession of Southern states, which put some federal officials out of his reach.</p>
<h2>A ‘vast public evil’ comes to an end</h2>
<p>The tide began to turn in the late 1860s following <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_the_Federal_Civil_Service_178.html?id=dwbvhZnJT9sC">public revelations</a> that positions had been created requiring little or no work and other abuses, including <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/jacksonians-a-study-in-administrative-history-1829-1861/oclc/498178">illiterate appointees</a>, and a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_the_Federal_Civil_Service_178.html?id=dwbvhZnJT9sC">congressional report about the success</a> of civil service systems in Great Britain, China, France and Prussia. </p>
<p>In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant asked Congress to take action, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_the_Federal_Civil_Service_178.html?id=dwbvhZnJT9sC">complaining,</a> “The present system does not secure the best men, and often not even fit men, for public place.” Congress responded with legislation that authorized the president to use executive orders to prescribe regulations for the civil service. That power exists today, most recently exercised in Trump’s own order. </p>
<p>Grant established a Civil Service Commission that led to some reforms, but just two years later a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_the_Federal_Civil_Service_178.html?id=dwbvhZnJT9sC">hostile Congress cut off new funding</a>, and Grant terminated the experiment in March 1875. The number of jobs potentially open to patronage continued to soar, <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1975/compendia/hist_stats_colonial-1970.html">doubling from 51,020 in 1871 to 100,020 in 1881</a>.</p>
<p>But across the U.S., <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00024784/00001/3x">citizens were becoming disgusted</a> by a government stuffed with the people known as “spoilsmen,” leading to a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2508.t01-1-00003">growing reform movement</a>. The assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-federal-civil-service-and-the-death-of-president-james-a-garfield.htm">by a deranged office seeker</a> who felt Garfield had denied him the Paris diplomatic post he wanted pushed the movement over the edge.</p>
<p>Garfield’s murder <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1893171">was widely blamed</a> on the spoils system. George William Curtis, editor of Harper’s Weekly and an advocate for reform, published cartoons <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_j_YiYda81AC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false">lambasting the system</a> and called it “a vast public evil.” </p>
<p>In early 1883, immediately after an election that led to sweeping gains for politicians in favor of reform, <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001540761">Congress passed the Pendleton Act</a>. It created the civil service system of merit-based selection and promotion. The act banned “assessments,” implemented competitive exams and open competitions for jobs, and prevented civil servants from being fired for political reasons. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Donald Trump stands in front of a painting of former President Teddy Roosevelt in the White House." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teddy Roosevelt helped end the spoils system.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Trump/67fe2946462340c7a4a99409d94f295d/photo?hpSectionId=879083fa405d449fa332cbf742e7d609&st=hpsection&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=69&Query=teddy%20AND%20roosevelt&currentItemNo=7">AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Roosevelt was appointed to the new commission that oversaw the system by President Benjamin Harrison in 1889 and quickly <a href="https://www.opm.gov/about-us/our-mission-role-history/theodore-roosevelt/">became its driving force</a> – even as Harrison himself abused the spoils system, <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/series/american-presidency-series/978-0-7006-0320-6.html">replacing 43,823 out of 58,623 postmasters</a>, for example.</p>
<p>At first, the system <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00024784/00001/5x">covered just 10.5% of the federal workforce</a>, but it was gradually expanded to cover most workers. Under Roosevelt, who became president in 1901 after William McKinley was assassinated, the number of covered employees <a href="https://www.opm.gov/about-us/our-mission-role-history/theodore-roosevelt/">finally exceeded those not covered</a> in 1904 and soon reached <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00024784/00001/5x">almost two-thirds of all federal jobs</a>. At its peak in the 1950s, the competitive civil service <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00024784/00001/5x">covered almost 90% of federal employees</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>New York, where Roosevelt was an assemblyman, and Massachusetts were the first states to implement their own civil service systems. Although all states now have such systems in place at local, state or both levels, it was not until <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055411000256">after 1940 that most states adopted a competitive civil service</a>. </p>
<h2>Teddy’s unfinished work</h2>
<p>Trump’s <a href="https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3896676/posts">Oct. 21 executive order</a> would have undone over a century of reforms by stripping potentially hundreds of thousands of civil servants of the protections that keep them from being summarily fired for political reasons. Insufficient loyalty to the president would be enough to lose one’s job. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/22/executive-order-protecting-the-federal-workforce">Biden revoked the changes</a> two days after taking office, but the episode is a reminder just how fragile the system supporting a merit-based government workforce remains. </p>
<p>While Trump’s effort to meddle in the civil service was particularly brazen, administrations of both parties still have a habit of doing so. For example, a common practice of outgoing administrations – including Trump’s – is to convert political appointees into permanent and protected civil servants in a process known as “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/06/some-trump-officials-are-burrowing-into-government-jobs-what-does-that-mean-exactly/">burrowing</a>.” Whether an effort to plant people who can <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-trump-burrowing-federal/2021/01/24/a495ae76-5c02-11eb-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html">carry on a previous administration’s policies</a> or simply meant as a patronage reward, such appointees can be very hard for the incoming one to remove. </p>
<p>Both Trump’s executive order and the bipartisan practice of burrowing show the civil service needs stronger protections and that Teddy Roosevelt’s work is still unfinished. If, on a whim, a president can undo over a century of reforms, then the civil service remains insufficiently insulated from politics and patronage. </p>
<p>It may be time Congress passed a new law that permanently shields one of America’s proudest achievements from becoming another dysfunctional part of the U.S. government. </p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-revived-andrew-jacksons-spoils-system-which-would-undo-americas-138-year-old-professional-civil-service-150039">article originally published</a> on Jan. 21, 2021.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145518/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barry M. Mitnick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For decades, presidents beginning with Andrew Jackson routinely replaced large swaths of the government workforce, often requiring them to pay fees to political parties in exchange for their jobs.Barry M. Mitnick, Professor of Business Administration and of Public and International Affairs, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1500392021-01-21T13:14:22Z2021-01-21T13:14:22ZTrump revived Andrew Jackson’s spoils system, which would undo America’s 138-year-old professional civil service<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379567/original/file-20210119-15-1ix1ga6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=85%2C183%2C2900%2C1790&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A picture of Andrew Jackson hung in the Oval Office during Trump's tenure.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Trump/9e764f20ddfc448faca0727a96481f80/photo?hpSectionId=879083fa405d449fa332cbf742e7d609&st=hpsection&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=6008&Query=%22Donald%20Trump%22%20AND%20%22Oval%20Office%22&currentItemNo=28">AP Photo/Patrick Semansky</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The federal government’s core civilian workforce has long been <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001540761">known for its professionalism</a>. About <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43590.pdf">2.1 million nonpartisan career officials</a> provide essential public services in such diverse areas as agriculture, national parks, defense, homeland security, environmental protection and veterans affairs. </p>
<p>To get the vast majority of these “competitive service” jobs – which are protected from easy firing – federal employees must <a href="https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/classifying-general-schedule-positions/">demonstrate achievement in job-specific knowledge, skills and abilities superior to other applicants</a> and, in some cases, pass an exam. In other words, the civil service is designed to be “<a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/10/why-merit-matters/169657/">merit-based</a>.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t always so. </p>
<p>From Andrew Jackson until Theodore Roosevelt, much of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/11.1.172">federal workforce was subject to change after every presidential election</a> – and often did. Known as the spoils system, this pattern of political patronage, in which officeholders award allies with jobs in return for support, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1893171">began to end</a> in the late 19th century as citizens and politicians like Roosevelt grew fed up with its <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1845445">corruption, incompetence and inefficiency</a> – and its role in the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-federal-civil-service-and-the-death-of-president-james-a-garfield.htm">assassination of a president</a>.</p>
<p>Less than two weeks before Election Day, Donald Trump <a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/10/stunning-executive-order-would-politicize-civil-service/169479/">signed an executive order that threatens</a> to return the U.S. to a spoils system in which a large share of the federal government’s workforce could be fired for little or no reason – including a perceived lack of loyalty to the president.</p>
<p>While President Joe Biden appears <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-trump-federal-employees/2020/11/10/5a1c9f42-2388-11eb-8599-406466ad1b8e_story.html">likely to reverse the order</a>, its effects may not be so easily undone. And he may have his own reasons for keeping it temporarily in place. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An old picture shows a crowd of people in front of the White House in 1829." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C39%2C941%2C633&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375959/original/file-20201218-17-14hpknu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People seeking government jobs crashed the White House on the day of Andrew Jackson’s inauguration.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://picryl.com/media/presidents-levee-or-all-creation-going-to-the-white-house-robert-cruikshank-1">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Birth of the spoils system</h2>
<p>The government of the early republic <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/the-early-federal-workforce-by-p-kastor.pdf?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Executive%20Education&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email">was small</a>, but the issue of whether civil servants should be chosen on the basis of patronage or skills was hotly debated. </p>
<p>Although George Washington and the five presidents who followed him <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/11.1.172">certainly employed patronage</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_j_YiYda81AC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false">they emphasized merit</a> when making appointments. </p>
<p>Washington wrote that relying on one’s personal relationship to the applicant <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/634173">would constitute</a> “an absolute bar to preferment” and wanted those “as in my judgment shall be the best qualified to discharge the functions of the departments to which they shall be appointed.” <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/11.1.172">He would not even appoint</a> his own soldiers to government positions if they lacked the necessary qualifications.</p>
<p>That changed in 1829 when Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, entered the White House.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An illustration of Andrew Jackson riding a horse on a statue with the words, 'To the victors belong the spoils,' while several men seeking jobs bow down to him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379832/original/file-20210120-21-1cnf97x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Political cartoon by Thomas Nast depicts office seekers seeking jobs from Andrew Jackson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/political-cartoon-by-thomas-nast-with-the-caption-cant-you-news-photo/96743647">Fotosearch/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jackson came to office <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/andrew-jackson-0">as a reformer</a> with a promise to end the dominance of elites and what he considered their corrupt policies. He believed that popular access to government jobs – and their frequent turnover through a four-year “<a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/andrew-jackson-0">rotation in office</a>” – could serve ideals of democratic participation, regardless of one’s qualifications for a position.</p>
<p>As a result, at his inaugural reception on March 4, a <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/112695/american-lion-by-jon-meacham/">huge crowd of office seekers crashed</a> the reception. Jackson was “besieged by applicants” and “battalions of hopefuls,” <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/17600/andrew-jackson-by-hw-brands/">all seeking government jobs</a>.</p>
<p>Instead of preventing corruption from taking root, Jackson’s <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Jacksonians/2V9_twEACAAJ?hl=en">rotation policy became an opportunity for patronage</a> – or rewarding supporters with the spoils of victory. He <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/andrew-jackson-0">defended the practice</a> by declaring: “If my personal friends are qualified and patriotic, why should I not be permitted to bestow a few offices on them?” </p>
<p>Besides possessing a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1845445">lack of appropriate skills and commitment</a>, office seekers <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1845445">were expected to pay “assessments”</a> – a percentage of their salary ranging from 2% to 7% – to the party that appointed them.</p>
<p>Although Jackson <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/andrew-jackson-0">replaced only about 10%</a> of the federal workforce and 41% of presidential appointments, the practice increasingly <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Civil_Service_and_the_Patronage/URJPPqndZGYC?hl=en">became the norm</a> as subsequent presidents fired as well as refused to reappoint ever-larger shares of the government. </p>
<p><iframe id="kIe1G" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/kIe1G/5/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The peak of the spoils system came under James Buchanan, who served from 1857 to 1861. He <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_the_Federal_Civil_Service_178.html?id=dwbvhZnJT9sC">replaced</a> <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001540761">virtually every federal worker at the end of their “rotation.”</a> William L. Marcy, who was secretary of state under Buchanan’s predecessor and was the first to refer to patronage as “spoils,” <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/jacksonians-a-study-in-administrative-history-1829-1861/oclc/498178">wrote in 1857</a> that civil servants from his administration were being “hunted down like wild beasts.”</p>
<p>Even Abraham Lincoln, who followed Buchanan, made extensive use of the system,
<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Civil_Service_and_the_Patronage/URJPPqndZGYC?hl=en">replacing at least 1,457 of the 1,639 officials</a> then subject to presidential appointment. The number would have been higher but for the secession of Southern states, which put some federal officials out of his reach.</p>
<h2>A ‘vast public evil’ comes to an end</h2>
<p>The tide began to turn in the late 1860s following <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_the_Federal_Civil_Service_178.html?id=dwbvhZnJT9sC">public revelations</a> that positions had been created requiring little or no work and other abuses, including <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/jacksonians-a-study-in-administrative-history-1829-1861/oclc/498178">illiterate appointees</a>, and a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_the_Federal_Civil_Service_178.html?id=dwbvhZnJT9sC">congressional report about the success</a> of civil service systems in Great Britain, China, France and Prussia. </p>
<p>In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant asked Congress to take action, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_the_Federal_Civil_Service_178.html?id=dwbvhZnJT9sC">complaining,</a> “The present system does not secure the best men, and often not even fit men, for public place.” Congress responded with legislation that authorized the president to use executive orders to prescribe regulations for the civil service. That power exists today, most recently exercised in Trump’s own order. </p>
<p>Grant established a Civil Service Commission that led to some reforms, but just two years later a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_the_Federal_Civil_Service_178.html?id=dwbvhZnJT9sC">hostile Congress cut off new funding</a>, and Grant terminated the experiment in March 1875. The number of jobs potentially open to patronage continued to soar, <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1975/compendia/hist_stats_colonial-1970.html">doubling from 51,020 in 1871 to 100,020 in 1881</a>.</p>
<p>But across the U.S., <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00024784/00001/3x">citizens were becoming disgusted</a> by a government stuffed with the people known as “spoilsmen,” leading to a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2508.t01-1-00003">growing reform movement</a>. The assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-federal-civil-service-and-the-death-of-president-james-a-garfield.htm">by a deranged office seeker</a> who felt Garfield had denied him the Paris diplomatic post he wanted pushed the movement over the edge.</p>
<p>Garfield’s murder <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1893171">was widely blamed</a> on the spoils system. George William Curtis, editor of Harper’s Weekly and an advocate for reform, published cartoons <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_j_YiYda81AC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false">lambasting the system</a> and called it “a vast public evil.” </p>
<p>In early 1883, immediately after an election that led to sweeping gains for politicians in favor of reform, <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001540761">Congress passed the Pendleton Act</a>. It created the Civil Service System of merit-based selection and promotion. The act banned “assessments,” implemented competitive exams and open competitions for jobs, and prevented civil servants from being fired for political reasons. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Donald Trump stands in front of a painting of former President Teddy Roosevelt in the White House." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379569/original/file-20210119-15-1craue6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teddy Roosevelt helped end the spoils system.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Trump/67fe2946462340c7a4a99409d94f295d/photo?hpSectionId=879083fa405d449fa332cbf742e7d609&st=hpsection&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=69&Query=teddy%20AND%20roosevelt&currentItemNo=7">AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Roosevelt was appointed to the new commission that oversaw the system by President Benjamin Harrison in 1889 and quickly <a href="https://www.opm.gov/about-us/our-mission-role-history/theodore-roosevelt/">became its driving force</a> – even as Harrison himself abused the spoils system, <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/series/american-presidency-series/978-0-7006-0320-6.html">replacing 43,823 out of 58,623 postmasters</a>, for example.</p>
<p>At first, the system <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00024784/00001/5x">covered just 10.5% of the federal workforce</a>, but it was gradually expanded to cover most workers. Under Roosevelt, who became president in 1901 after William McKinley was assassinated, the number of covered employees <a href="https://www.opm.gov/about-us/our-mission-role-history/theodore-roosevelt/">finally exceeded those not covered</a> in 1904 and soon reached <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00024784/00001/5x">almost two-thirds of all federal jobs</a>. At its peak in the 1950s, the competitive civil service <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00024784/00001/5x">covered almost 90% of federal employees</a>.</p>
<p>New York, where Roosevelt was an assemblyman, and Massachusetts were the first states to implement their own civil service systems. Although all states now have such systems in place at local, state or both levels, it was not until <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055411000256">after 1940 that most states adopted a competitive civil service</a>. </p>
<h2>A return to the spoils?</h2>
<p>Trump’s executive order would mark a significant change. </p>
<p>The Oct. 21 order <a href="https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3896676/posts">created a new category of the civil service workforce</a>, known as “Schedule F,” which would include all currently protected employees in career positions that have a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating character.” Because the language is both vague and encompassing, it may apply to as many as hundreds of thousands of the 2.1 million federal civilian workers – potentially to every worker who has any discretion in giving advice or making decisions. </p>
<p>The first agency to report a list of covered workers, the Office of Management and Budget, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-moves-to-strip-job-protections-from-white-house-budget-analysts-as-he-races-to-transform-civil-service/2020/11/27/d04f6eba-2e69-11eb-96c2-aac3f162215d_story.html">identified 425 professionals</a> – 88% of its employees – as transferable to Schedule F, which means <a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/10/stunning-executive-order-would-politicize-civil-service/169479/">they could be fired at will</a>.</p>
<p>Although the order didn’t formally take effect until Jan. 19, some agencies had already taken actions consistent with it – including an apparent “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-white-house-purge/2020/11/13/2af12c94-25ca-11eb-8672-c281c7a2c96e_story.html">purge</a>” of career employees deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump. But the Trump administration was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-civil-service-biden/2021/01/18/5daf34c4-59b3-11eb-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html">unable to fully implement Schedule F</a> before Biden took over on Jan. 20.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden wave as they arrive at the North Portico of the White House on Jan. 20." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379828/original/file-20210120-17-asygph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379828/original/file-20210120-17-asygph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379828/original/file-20210120-17-asygph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379828/original/file-20210120-17-asygph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379828/original/file-20210120-17-asygph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379828/original/file-20210120-17-asygph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379828/original/file-20210120-17-asygph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will Biden make reversing the Trump order one of his early acts of office?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/APTOPIXBidenInauguration/cea5f292cf324cdb87b2f67782507b18/photo?hpSectionId=8eeed13412704a308764ffb384c901fd&st=hpsection&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=4539&currentItemNo=1">AP Photo/Alex Brandon</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, Biden could quickly reverse the order – and <a href="https://fitzpatrick.house.gov/2021/1/fitzpatrick-connolly-introduce-the-preventing-a-patronage-system-act">there’s already a bipartisan push to forbid these transfers</a> – but rehiring anyone who has been fired won’t be easy or immediate. </p>
<p>Furthermore, Trump had <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/how-dozens-of-trumps-political-appointees-will-stay-in-government-after-biden-takes-over">tried to “burrow” political appointees deep into the senior executive service</a>, the top level of the civil service. The burrowing included the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/politics/nsa-michael-ellis-trump.html">controversial appointment</a> of Michael Ellis as general counsel of the National Security Agency. Senior executive service rules permit some political appointees to be converted to civil servants. This could protect them from easily being removed by Biden.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Biden may want to remove civil servants considered Trump loyalists who may try to subvert his policies. If so, he’ll <a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2021/01/dont-expect-trumps-workforce-policies-be-reversed-overnight/171488/">have to keep the executive order in place to expedite the process</a> and convert those employees to the new Schedule F classification, which would allow him to remove them. But keeping and using Schedule F, even for a relatively brief period, challenges the most fundamental principles of the civil service.</p>
<p>Trump’s order and Biden’s dilemma show that Teddy Roosevelt’s work is still unfinished. If, on a whim, a president can undo over a century of reforms, then the civil service remains insufficiently insulated from politics and patronage. It may be time Congress passed a new law that permanently shields one of America’s proudest achievements from becoming another dysfunctional part of the U.S. government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150039/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barry M. Mitnick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For decades, presidents routinely replaced large swaths of the government workforce, often requiring them to pay fees to political parties in exchange for their jobs.Barry M. Mitnick, Professor of Business Administration and of Public and International Affairs, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1528472021-01-11T14:55:37Z2021-01-11T14:55:37ZSouth African politicians, not bureaucrats, stand in the way of a professional civil service<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377729/original/file-20210108-19-1828kls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=45%2C36%2C1983%2C1195&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa has seen a sharp rise in protests due to incompetence within its civil service. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The post-COVID-19 world will demand that governments do more with less, or at least spend within their means. Economic activity has ground to a halt. In South Africa’s case, the country was in bad shape even before the pandemic. </p>
<p>COVID-19 coincided with the downgrading of the country’s credit <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/economy/2020-03-31-the-price-sa-will-pay-for-being-downgraded-to-junk/">status to junk</a>. More than three million people have since <a href="https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/job-losses-due-to-coronavirus-pandemic-will-take-several-years-to-recoup-economist/">lost their jobs</a> as companies shut down, reducing revenue collection. Estimates put the shortfall in revenue collection for last year between <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/30649/south-africa-vs-coronavirus-public-finances-looking-prickly/">R150 billion and R250 billion</a> (US$9.8bn-$16.3bn).</p>
<p>South Africa’s civil service, however, is notorious for wasteful expenditure. According to the Auditor General, in national and provincial departments alone for <a href="https://www.agsa.co.za/Portals/0/Reports/PFMA/201718/MR/2018%20PFMA%20Media%20Release.pdf">the year 2017/18</a>, the amount wasted stood at a staggering R2.57bn. The government’s recently released policy framework, in which it decries the lack of professionalism in the public service and <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202012/44031gon1392.pdf">recommits government to fix the problem</a>, is therefore welcome. </p>
<p>But there is a problem with the framework in its current form. It is overly focused on the administration. The real problem has more to do with politics. Yes, it’s true that the appointment of incompetent and uncaring civil servants has had a corrosive effect on government’s ability to do its job. And there may well be a substantial number of personnel who occupy positions for which they are unqualified. But all this has largely been caused, if not enabled, by politics.</p>
<h2>History of political appointments</h2>
<p>Democratic South Africa did not start off with an independent bureaucracy when apartheid ended <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/04597239308460952?journalCode=tssu20">in 1994</a>. Politics took priority over the bureaucracy. This was a necessary ordering of priorities for the new government, led by the African National Congress (ANC), to stand a chance of making any meaningful change.</p>
<p>An agreement reached before the first democratic elections included what became known as the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03005/06lv03006/07lv03096/08lv03104.htm">“sunset clause”</a>, which prescribed that apartheid bureaucrats be kept in their posts for the first five years of democracy. This created an odd situation. It meant that President Nelson Mandela’s newly elected administration would have to rely on apartheid bureaucrats to implement its policies of transformation.</p>
<p>But Mandela’s government ministers distrusted apartheid bureaucrats to implement their policies. </p>
<p>This vignette illustrates the point. A stalwart of the ANC, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/satyandranath-mac-maharaj">Mac Maharaj</a>, whom Mandela appointed to the cabinet, inherited C.F. Scheepers as his director general at the Department of Transport. </p>
<p>Maharaj explained the predicament facing new ministers to his biographer, <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/padraig-o-malley-shades-of-difference/jxmm-122-g960">Padraig O’Malley </a> (<em>Shades of Difference</em> pp 406, 2007).</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some of our people’s wariness was so strong that it literally translated to ‘I won’t show it, but I’m going to get rid of this bastard as quickly as possible. Not because the man is bad, but because I proceed from the assumption that he comes from the old guard. I want somebody else from my ranks that I have confidence in.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Maharaj chose to work closely with fellow activist Ketso Gordhan, whom he had appointed as special advisor.</p>
<p>Gordhan succeeded Scheepers as director general. A critical consideration in his appointment was familiarity with Maharaj. Not that Gordhan did not deserve the job. He had the competence that made him a leading and innovative public servant. But technical competence alone would not have got Maharaj to hire Gordhan. He still needed a track record of political activism.</p>
<p>Considering political affiliation a precondition for public service employment was more than a necessity. It was not new and had been prefigured by the apartheid government. As political journalists Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom revealed in their 1978 book <a href="https://www.warbooks.co.za/products/the-super-afrikaners-inside-the-afrikaner-broederbond-ivor-wilkins-hans-strydom"><em>The Super-Afrikaners: Inside the Afrikaner Broederbond</em></a>, no-one could be appointed into any meaningful position, not even inspector of a school district, without being a member of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/afrikaner-broederbond">Afrikaner Broederbond</a>, the secretive and exclusive intellectual vanguard of Afrikaner nationalism. </p>
<p>Gordhan’s appointment at director general in the first post-apartheid administration was partly enabled by the newly created <a href="http://www.dpsa.gov.za/">Department of Public Service and Administration</a>. It divested the old Public Service Commission of the responsibility for appointments. This placed politicians in charge of senior appointments <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/padraig-o-malley-shades-of-difference/jxmm-122-g960">in the public service</a>. Although appointed partly on account of political loyalty, most director generals were technically qualified. Most acquitted themselves superbly in their new posts.</p>
<p>So what went wrong?</p>
<h2>Meddling minister</h2>
<p>At some point, some of these senior appointees were behaving unprofessionally. </p>
<p>This was partly due to meddling from their political principals. Some senior executives, as we now hear from testimonies at the <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">Zondo Commission</a> on State Capture, caved in because they got a share of the favours they bestowed on their principals. Others carried out irregular instructions due to close personal relations. Some opted to leave the public service instead of capitulating to pressure <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Essays_on_the_Evolution_of_the_Post_Apar.html?id=DQ8iBgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">to commit misdemeanours or flout policies </a> (Maserumule, pp 197, 2013). </p>
<p>To its credit, the proposed policy implementation framework identifies political meddling in administration as one of the problems that requires remedying. </p>
<p>Yet none of the programmes it proposes – such as training, rotation among departments and secondment to academic institutions – are geared towards this problem. All target the bureaucrats. But ministers are just as blameworthy for lack of professionalism. Professionalism has to start with ministers for it to stand any chance of being embedded throughout the public service. </p>
<p>The proposed involvement of the Public Service Commission in the selection process may help. It will ensure appointment of personnel without any affinities to political heads. </p>
<p>This will protect them from political pressure. Having their job performance evaluated independently, which is not clearly spelt out in this framework, could also bolster the independence of bureaucrats. They will do their jobs freely without fear of dismissal if they disobey their political principals.</p>
<p>Ultimately, though, without ministers themselves being professional, the public service faces a tall order in achieving this goal. Their unprofessional conduct frustrates administrators and makes the work environment toxic. </p>
<p>There are countless instances of ministers changing the focus of the ministry, without completing existing programmes. These arbitrary changes betray a lack of appreciation for how long policies take to bear fruition. Instead, they insist on quick results, which entail cutting corners. By the end of their tenure, they have not only aborted what was a promising programme at the start of the term, but also have nothing show for their term.</p>
<p>Ministers too must be inducted. They clearly need it.</p>
<p><em>Mcebisi Ndletyana is the author of the <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/anatomy-of-the-anc-in-power">Anatomy of the ANC in Power: Insights from Port Elizabeth</a>, 1990 – 2019 (HSRC, 2020)</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152847/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mcebisi Ndletyana receives funding from the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. </span></em></p>Professionalism has to start with ministers for it to stand any chance of being embedded throughout the public service.Mcebisi Ndletyana, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1488362020-11-12T11:11:03Z2020-11-12T11:11:03ZTime to ditch the Dominic Cummings technocratic, mechanical vision of government<p>If crises bring with them new opportunities to think afresh, then the combined impact of Brexit and COVID has been to focus attention on the capacity and structure of the British state. This rethinking is increasingly framed in terms <a href="https://www.governsmarter.org/#:%7E:text=The%20Commission%20for%20Smart%20Government%20is%20an%20independent,consider%20how%20to%20make%20public%20administration%20more%20effective.">of “smart government”</a>. Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54925322">now departing</a> chief adviser, has been at the centre of a drive to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/smartergov">“harness the power of data and technology”</a> at every turn. Technology has a role to play in modern government, but what Cummings seems intent on fashioning appears something closer to a populist technocracy based on a belief in algorithmic governance.</p>
<p>Our argument is simply that this logic, and these ideas, <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41293-020-00148-2">should be dropped</a>. Indeed, a succession of recent failures and fiascoes has only underlined the paucity of the intellectual thinking behind this agenda as well as its lack of emotional intelligence.</p>
<p>Cummings appears to see British government as defined by institutionalised failure and dysfunctionality – nothing more, nothing less. What’s needed is strong “flexible, adaptive and empirical” leadership and the mastery of technology in order to control uncertainty. More than just “reform” is needed – only “transformative reform” will do. Cummings has described this in <a href="https://dominiccummings.com/2014/10/">his blog</a> in the following terms:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most of our politics is still conducted with the morality and the language of the simple primitive hunter-gatherer tribe … Our ‘chimp politics’ has an evolutionary logic: our powerful evolved instinct to conform to a group view is a flip-side of our evolved in-group solidarity and hostility to out-groups … This partly explains the persistent popularity of collectivist policies … and why ‘groupthink’ is a recurring disaster.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cummings has sat at the centre of a powerful hub-and-spoke model of governance that promotes a strident data-driven model of technocratic depoliticised governance. For every problem there is, in his worldview, a metric. For every social challenge, there is an algorithm. Data and technology are, as might be expected, the twin pillars of this (latest) revolution in government which, in turn, creates a need to recruit a new technological elite.</p>
<p>In July, Michael Gove delivered a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-privilege-of-public-service-given-as-the-ditchley-annual-lecture">lecture</a> in which he <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41293-020-00148-2?wt_mc=Internal.Event.1.SEM.ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst&utm_source=ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AA_en_06082018&ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst_20201019">enthused about these ideas</a>. Gove said he wants more government decision makers “to feel comfortable discussing the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/monte-carlo-method">Monte Carlo method</a> or Bayesian statistics”. This is the scientisation of politics; the belief in a pure, structured, depoliticised, technocratic and highly mechanical view of decision-making. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KJDvMwBd-_M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Michael Gove’s Ditchley lecture.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His view offers a glimpse of a rather unattractive model of hybrid populist technocracy that is devoid of emotional content and lacking political understanding. It deifies a rather pure model of brutal governing efficiency that is more nightmare than vision. It is a form of sacrificial statecraft because it sacrifices any understanding of <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bup/eas/2020/00000002/00000001/art00003">why feelings so often trump facts</a> in politics.</p>
<h2>When algorithms go wrong</h2>
<p>The blatant failure of algorithmic governance during the A-levels and GCSE fiasco of August 2020 is a prime example of where all this goes wrong. Computers are good at crunching big data, but their digits and dashes will at some point be translated into a real-world impact on someone’s life. To pretend that algorithms provide a somehow neutral, technical or depoliticised way of taking difficult decisions is torpedoed by the wealth of evidence on embedded biases and how these tend to mirror preexisting structural inequalities. Prime Minister Boris Johnson blamed a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-53923279">“mutant algorithm”</a> for the exams crisis. There is no sign that the broader lesson has been learned. </p>
<p>The government’s <a href="https://www.building.co.uk/communities/the-governments-algorithm-for-homes-may-be-its-next-a-level-style-fiasco/5107924.article">“algorithm for homes”</a> could be its next policy fiasco. Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick’s newly announced plans to build more homes propose replacing the current method for determining housing need by introducing an algorithm which will determine targets for every English region based on relative affordability and the extent of development in those areas. Sounds great until you dig into the data and discover that instead of “levelling-up” the new algorithm will <a href="https://lichfields.uk/blog/2020/august/17/levelling-up-what-does-the-new-standard-method-mean-for-yorkshire-and-the-humber?west-mids">continue to concentrate growth in wealthier regions</a>.</p>
<p>Technology, evidence and big data may well have a role to play in informing government policy, but let’s not pretend that it offers simple answers to complex problems. </p>
<p>We must also recognise that this is all part of a pattern of centralisation around Johnson – and to a large extent around Cummings. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/04/mission-control-dominic-cummings-nasa-mission-control-mistakes-space">From the Nasa-style mission control “hub” in 70 Whitehall</a> complete with floor-to-ceiling screens, real-time data and rolling news coverage, through to the decision to centralise government communications and hold Whitehouse-style televised daily press briefings. A new machine is being built almost by stealth. </p>
<p>And the metaphor of a machine is really quite apt. As a more centralised, presidential and technology-driven “hub” takes shape, then, so the capacity of local MPs or regional leaders to question the system declines.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, it’s not surprising that public officials have been left unable to understand the rules of the game. Where they used to be expected to keep their heads down, gain experience and expertise and remain politically neutral, <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/019926967X.001.0001/acprof-9780199269679-chapter-1">times appear to be changing</a>. When problems occur, it is officials that are sacrificed and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/28/crisis-boris-johnson-blame-purge-civil-servants">several permanent secretaries</a> have decided this is a game they don’t want to play. Political office-holders are landing top public roles, which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/20/dido-harding-appointment-corrupting-our-constitution-lord-falconer">raises serious concerns</a>. Mary “Dido” Harding’s appointment to lead the new National Institute for Health Protection, for example, is not only questionable because she sits as a Tory backbench peer but also because her performance leading NHS track and trace has been less than impressive – certainly not “world class”. Even the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2020/aug/18/uk-coronavirus-live-gavin-williamson-criticised-over-exam-results-u-turn">health secretary’s defence</a> of her appointment was far from convincing.</p>
<p>But maybe that’s the problem. The UK has, as <a href="https://consoc.org.uk/publications/good-chaps-no-more-safeguarding-the-constitution-in-stressful-times-by-andrew-blick-and-peter-hennessy/">Peter Hennessy has eloquently warned</a>, a constitution that relies on the “good chaps theory of government”. That structure now looks incredibly vulnerable when faced with a prime minister and key advisers who reject the rules, lack self-restraint and engage in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/pa/article/73/Supplement_1/225/5910271?guestAccessKey=2a907e1c-69a0-4e39-8a0d-0d575bee4974">populist posturing</a>. The result is sacrificial statecraft wrapped around a naive vision of populist technology. <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41293-020-00148-2">Ditch it now</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148836/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Blunkett is affiliated with a number of organisations - please see the Lords Register for full disclosure. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Flinders does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Politics cannot be separated from emotion, as the past few months have clearly shown.Matthew Flinders, Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, University of SheffieldDavid Blunkett, Professor of Politics in Practice, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1452572020-09-02T10:00:21Z2020-09-02T10:00:21ZWhy it matters that so many senior civil servants are quitting under Boris Johnson<p>A recent spate of departures at the top level of the British civil service is more than a matter of personnel change. It’s the result of a worrying shift in thinking within the government. </p>
<p>Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, resigned in June after he became the target for hostile anonymous briefings and toxic social media. Jonathan Slater, permanent secretary at the Department for Education, is also to step down following the <a href="https://theconversation.com/gavin-williamson-ofqual-and-the-great-a-level-blame-game-144766">exam results debacle</a> of this summer. Gavin Williamson, the minister in charge of his department, meanwhile, appears to be facing no consequences whatsoever. </p>
<p>Slater is only one of a series of permanent secretaries who have left their posts over the past six months. The Home Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Justice and Housing and Local Government have all seen their most senior civil servants depart. </p>
<p>The relationship between the Boris Johnson administration and its senior civil servants was poor from the start but has rapidly deteriorated. It is now probably the worst it has ever been. Tensions are predicted to worsen and it’s possible that the senior civil service will never be the same again. At times it looks as though the UK is heading towards the <a href="https://theconversation.com/dominic-cummings-wants-to-add-more-political-appointees-to-the-civil-service-heres-why-thats-a-problem-129097">American model</a> where the most senior advisers are brought in with each new government.</p>
<p>The civil service has long operated around the idea that civil servants advise but ministers decide – and therefore take responsibility when things go wrong. That changed significantly, like so much else, under Margaret Thatcher. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://oneworld-publications.com/the-blunders-of-our-governments.html">The Blunders of our Governments</a> Anthony King and Ivor Crew, two of the UK’s most distinguished political scientists, canter though a cornucopia of government cock-ups of the past 40 years. They also trace the origin of a change in relations between ministers and civil servants back to Thatcher. They note that she had a personal preference for proactive, ideological ministers who took firm control of their departments. In so doing, she recast the role of civil servants. They were no longer there to offer impartial advice as equal partners in the delivery of good government but were to be enthusiastic deliverers of whatever policy ideas or ideology her strong-minded ministers brought to the table.</p>
<p>King and Crowe also reveal how this changing relationship persisted throughout the subsequent administrations of New Labour, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition and the Conservatives. Ministers, even those responsible for the most serious and serial blunders, are seldom sacked and almost never resign.</p>
<h2>Rise of the SpAds</h2>
<p>Now, we see one senior civil servant after another being forced out. There had always been the odd involuntary resignation in the past but, if a civil servant fell out with a powerful minister, more often they would be moved away from that minister to another department or government agency. So what has changed?</p>
<p>One key factor has been the rise of the special advisers (<a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/special-advisers">SpAds</a>) to new heights of power and influence. Under Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief adviser, SpAds sit at the very centre of government and wield unprecedented power. </p>
<p>SpAds are political appointees that give party political advice, and their primary interest is their minister, his or her interests, his or her party and his or her political agenda. They do not act in the public interest or give impartial advice as is expected of civil servants. They will try to influence policy development and advise on how policy proposals will play with voters for political ends. They are unlikely to push back or fundamentally challenge their ministers’ ambitions. </p>
<p>First introduced in 1964, special advisers were often recruited for their expertise in particular policy areas and were usually attached to what Whitehall calls the major delivery departments, such as health, education or the Home Office. In these roles they usually worked constructively and collaboratively with the civil servants providing alternative perspectives and expertise welcomed by the departments. They were increasingly accompanied by media advisers and communication experts such as <a href="https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Slow-Downfall-of-Margaret-Thatcher-by-Bernard-Ingham-Iain-Dale-editor/9781785904783">Bernard Ingham</a> and <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/107/1074394/the-blair-years/9780099514756.html">Alistair Campbell</a>, who primarily influenced the presentation of government policy and interests. </p>
<p>When Johnson was elected, Cummings moved rapidly to consolidate and centralise power as soon as he was appointed, taking direct control of all SpAds across Whitehall. Cummings is a long-term critic of the civil service, calling it “<a href="https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/permanent-civil-service-an-idea-for-the-history-books-new-no10-adviser-dominic-cummings-views-on-whitehall">an idea for the history books</a>” and has been particularly scathing about the role of its permanent secretaries. He has a personal vision of what he believes the government should be doing and he pursues it with an almost evangelical zeal. </p>
<p>Sedwill reportedly had a difficult relationship with Cummings and his departure is seen as a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/28/mark-sedwill-expected-to-quit-as-uks-top-civil-servant">victory</a> for the PM’s adviser. His successor, Simon Case is a 41-year-old who has worked in the past as private secretary to former prime minister David Cameron, and was part of the Brexit negotiations. Having left in 2018 to become Prince William’s private secretary, he returned to Number 10 earlier this year to help with the government’s coronavirus response. </p>
<p>The shift in power is palpable. The senior civil servants who are supposed to offer impartial advice and “speak truth to power” are the clear losers. So is public discourse, democratic government and the public interest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145257/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Murphy was a Senior Civil Servant between 2000 and 2009. He served in four Whitehall Departments. </span></em></p>Chief adviser Dominic Cummings doesn’t have much time for the civil service, preferring political appointees instead.Peter Murphy, Professor of Public Policy and Management, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1431662020-08-26T12:23:50Z2020-08-26T12:23:50ZPresidents have a long history of condescension, indifference and outright racism toward Black Americans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353958/original/file-20200820-22-j6bawz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C10%2C3530%2C2623&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Theodore Roosevelt was one of many U.S. presidents who was racist.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/theodore-roosevelt-standing-on-a-podium-pointing-into-the-news-photo/515301984?adppopup=true">Bettman/Getty</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The fury over racial injustice that erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s killing has forced Americans to confront their history. That’s unfamiliar territory for most Americans, whose historical knowledge amounts to a vague blend of fact and myth that <a href="https://woodrow.org/news/one-state-pass-us-citizenship-exam/">was only half-learned in high school</a> and is only half-remembered now.</p>
<p>If their historical knowledge is lacking, Americans are not any better informed about the role of presidential leadership – and lack of leadership – on racial issues. They may have heard that five of the first seven presidents owned slaves, and they know – or think they do – that Abraham Lincoln “freed the slaves.” </p>
<p>But even those tidbits of fact are incomplete. Several other presidents, including Ulysses Grant, owned slaves. And Lincoln, whose Emancipation Proclamation was more symbolic than practically effective, <a href="https://www.nprillinois.org/post/lincoln-race-great-emancipator-didnt-advocate-racial-equality-was-he-racist#stream/0">hated slavery but never considered Blacks equal to whites</a>. </p>
<p>An honest assessment of American presidential leadership on race reveals a handful of courageous actions but an abundance of racist behavior, even by those remembered as equal rights supporters.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353959/original/file-20200820-24-1fi7v0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="President Rutherford Hayes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353959/original/file-20200820-24-1fi7v0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353959/original/file-20200820-24-1fi7v0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353959/original/file-20200820-24-1fi7v0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353959/original/file-20200820-24-1fi7v0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353959/original/file-20200820-24-1fi7v0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353959/original/file-20200820-24-1fi7v0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353959/original/file-20200820-24-1fi7v0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Rutherford Hayes claimed to be a friend of African Americans’ rights. He wasn’t.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rutherford-b-hayes-1822-93-19th-president-of-the-united-news-photo/1177464369?adppopup=true">Brady-Handy Collection, Glasshouse Vintage/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our book, “<a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/presidents-and-black-america/book236977">Presidents and Black America: A Documentary History</a>,” examines the record of the first 44 presidents on racial issues and explores their relationships with African Americans. What emerges is a portrait of chief executives who were often blatantly racist and commonly subordinated concerns for racial justice to their own political advantage.</p>
<p>Here are a few examples:</p>
<p>• <strong>Rutherford Hayes</strong>, president from 1877-1881, claimed to be a friend of African Americans’ rights. <a href="https://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/rutherford-b.-hayes-s-inaugural-address/">At his inauguration</a>, he said “a true self-government” must be “a government which guards the interests of both races carefully and equally.” But he cut a shady deal to win the presidency in the 1876 election, whose result was as hotly disputed as the 2000 Bush-Gore contest. In that deal, he agreed to withdraw federal troops from Southern states where they’d been <a href="https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/317">protecting Blacks from the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist depredations</a>. Over the next two decades, Southern whites <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html">drove virtually all Black elected officials from office</a>, often by fraud and sometimes at gunpoint, and about 1,500 Southern Blacks were lynched.</p>
<p>• <strong>William McKinley</strong>, president from 1897-1901, delivered an <a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-4-1897-first-inaugural-address">inaugural address</a> extolling equal rights and declared, “Lynchings must not be tolerated.” However, he remained silent when white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, staged an 1898 coup that ousted all Black elected officials and killed at least 60 Blacks. His lack of response to lynchings prompted a Black-owned newspaper to observe, “The Negroes of this country turn with impatience, disappointment and disgust from Mr. McKinley’s fence-straddling and shilly-shallying discussion of lynch law.” </p>
<p>• <strong>Theodore Roosevelt</strong>, president from 1901-1909, believed in white superiority while simultaneously advocating educational opportunity regardless of race. In a letter to a friend, he wrote, “Now as to the Negroes! I entirely agree with you that as a race and in the mass they are altogether inferior to the whites.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353961/original/file-20200820-20-8ljctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="President Woodrow Wilson, speaking from a platform." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353961/original/file-20200820-20-8ljctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353961/original/file-20200820-20-8ljctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353961/original/file-20200820-20-8ljctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353961/original/file-20200820-20-8ljctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353961/original/file-20200820-20-8ljctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353961/original/file-20200820-20-8ljctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353961/original/file-20200820-20-8ljctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Woodrow Wilson told Black leaders, ‘Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woodrow-wilson-the-28th-president-of-the-united-states-news-photo/2696038?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive / Stringer/Getty</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>• <strong>Woodrow Wilson</strong>, president from 1913-1921, promised fair treatment for African Americans in his 1912 campaign. But once elected, he defended his Southern Cabinet members who segregated workers in federal departments that hadn’t been segregated, <a href="https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=history">writing</a>, “It is as far as possible from being a movement against the negroes. I sincerely believe it to be in their interest.” Black Democrat Robert Wood of New York unsuccessfully urged Wilson to reverse the segregation policy: “We resent it, not at all because we are particularly anxious to eat in the same room or use the same soap and towels that white people use, but because we see in the separation in the races in the matter of soup and soap the beginning of a movement to deprive the colored man entirely of soup and soap, to eliminate him wholly from the Civil Service.” In <a href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr519445/">a testy White House exchange</a>, Wilson chastised William Monroe Trotter and other Black leaders, asserting that, “Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen. If your organization goes out and tells the colored people of the country that it is a humiliation, they will so regard it … The only harm that will come will be if you cause them to think it is a humiliation.”</p>
<p>• <strong>Franklin Roosevelt</strong>, president from 1933-1945, was widely admired among African Americans. While his New Deal programs did not benefit Blacks and whites equally, Blacks did receive benefits. But FDR’s actions were always guided by his need to appease Southern segregationists in Congress to pass his other agenda items. And his attitude could be condescending, as when he <a href="http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/transcr4.html">met with Black leaders</a> about integrating the military. He advised a gradual approach, particularly with the Navy: “We are training a certain number of musicians on board ship. The ship’s band. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a colored band on some of these ships, because they’re darn good at it.” </p>
<p>Political calculation has always been at work in presidential dealings with African Americans, from George Washington to Donald Trump. </p>
<p>But often, those dealings also reflected condescension, indifference, racial bias and outright racism in chief executives who took a solemn oath to serve all American citizens equally.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143166/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>President Woodrow Wilson told Black leaders, ‘Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.’ He was one in a long line of racist American presidents.Stephen A. Jones, Adjunct Instructor of History, Central Michigan UniversityEric Freedman, Professor of Journalism and Chair, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1313562020-03-09T15:38:31Z2020-03-09T15:38:31ZHow the technical expert emerged in 19th century politics – and what empire had to do with it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318598/original/file-20200304-66056-i9krqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C6%2C1050%2C793&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Technical expertise comes first: the first vessels through the Suez Canal in 1869. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SuezCanalKantara.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In many of today’s debates on the world’s great challenges, one question that keeps getting asked – <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/greta-thunberg-wants-you-to-listen-to-scientists-not-her">most prominently</a> by the climate change activist Greta Thunberg – is “why don’t politicians listen to the experts?” Why, for example, don’t governments listen to the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/were-almost-out-of-time-the-alarming-ipcc-climate-report-and-what-to-do-next/">recommendations of</a> the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and take the necessary action to reduce global warming?</p>
<p>While more expertise does sound like a good solution, it is more complicated than that – for two main reasons. First, experts can bring in crucial information and know-how, but politicians also need to cast judgements about, say, fairness and equality. Politicians can listen to the scientists, and agree that climate change is real, but their opinions about who is responsible and where to make changes may still diverge. </p>
<p>Second, who counts as an expert is not obvious. Often the selection is politically motivated – and once experts are selected, it’s unclear how much power they should have over policies. This means the way politicians use expertise can underestimate or even overlook important questions of legitimacy, and it’s far from an easy add-on to democracy.</p>
<p>In my ongoing doctoral research, I’m exploring how ideas about expert politics proliferated in the 19th century and evolved into a deeper “expert mentality”. This mentality was built around an urge for applying scientific method to all aspects of social and political life for the purposes of progress, an urge in common with imperialism, and most ideologies at the time. </p>
<p>Its proponents hoped to dissolve political disagreement by rendering political problems strictly technical. This hope was as attractive then as it is today – a promise that we might be able to overcome partisanship and replace the politics of belief with a politics of facts.</p>
<h2>Birth of a science of politics</h2>
<p>In the early 19th century, political theorists and practitioners (particularly in France, Britain and Germany) formulated ideas about what they came to call “political science” – a discipline that would somehow apply the principles of scientific method to the realm of politics. </p>
<p>The puzzle was that politics is often made up of hard-to-grasp phenomena – phenomena that can be observed, but don’t always look the same. Principles like good and bad, fair and unfair, equal and unequal all depend on assumptions, contexts and perspective. So too do actions, whether they are planned and rational, or spontaneous and irrational. The goal was to devise a scientific method that would allow for the observation and examination of such fuzzy concepts, and create “order” from “chaos.”</p>
<p>Determined to tackle this, 19th century political theorists such as <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27942/27942-pdf.pdf">John Stuart Mill</a>, philosophers such as <a href="https://archive.org/details/systemofpositive02comt/page/n6/mode/2up">Auguste Comte</a>, and statisticians such as <a href="https://archive.org/stream/grammarofscience00pearrich#page/n9/mode/2up">Karl Pearson</a> developed increasingly sophisticated methods that sought to distinguish truth from falsehood and fact from belief. But the problem they tried to address remained: politics was still replete with manipulation, partisanship and belief. The move to fact-based politics was far from straightforward.</p>
<h2>The making of experts</h2>
<p>As the science of politics <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-science/19th-century-roots-of-contemporary-political-science">became popular across Europe</a>, alongside the rise of capitalism and empire, a new mentality emerged. Keen reformers opened schools that would train technical specialists; created international organisations; and promoted the use of expert committees. One of the most widely read of these reformers was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-de-Saint-Simon">Henri de Saint-Simon</a>, who not only strongly influenced Comte’s notion of “positive science,” but also advocated government by an expert elite. </p>
<p>By the late 19th century, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07341510701300288">an expert mode for doing politics had emerged</a>: the idea that the more specialist knowledge we gather, the better we are equipped to tackle national and international challenges. </p>
<p>Yet from the start, this idea was far from politically neutral. Big technological projects at the time relied on specialist technical knowledge – but they were <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/history/history-science-and-technology/scientist-empire-sir-roderick-murchison-scientific-exploration-and-victorian-imperialism">political and imperial projects</a> first and foremost, looking to spread “civilisation” through technical progress and to extend imperial control.</p>
<p>The first transatlantic telegraph cable, completed in 1866, was an Anglo-American project with <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-invisible-weapon-9780195062731?cc=gb&lang=en&">obvious benefits</a> for speeding up the command structure of the British Empire. Upon the opening of the Suez canal, completed by a French company in 1869 and acquired by the British in 1875, a <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=msu.31293029591397&view=2up&seq=552">British contemporary characterised it</a> as “our highway to India.”</p>
<p>In these cases, expertise was brought in to assess the technical feasibility of laying a cable or excavating a canal – but who counted as an expert, and which experts politicians would listen to, were political questions. Often “technical feasibility” was taken as sufficient justification for projects that followed deeply political motivations. The Suez canal is a case in point: once an 1856 scientific commission had agreed the project was feasible, it was built as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Parting_the_Desert.html?id=67NDDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y">a private enterprise that exploited Egyptian labour</a> and strengthened European imperial transport routes.</p>
<p>There are various explanations for these projects, and imperial reach certainly <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/engineering-the-empire-british-water-supply-systems-and-colonial-societies-18501900/781E208AD13B9585818E56F5C40F4907">informed the rationales</a> for building infrastructure in colonies and protectorates. But the role of <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/4016693/politics_of_expertise">expert authority</a> and the supposed depoliticisation it brought about is crucial here, not least because it has survived to the present day.</p>
<h2>The technical point of view</h2>
<p>With the rise of using technical expertise to address complex political questions in the mid to late 19th century, politics became accessible not only to kings and courtiers, but to trained professionals as well – and with them, a new way of looking at and understanding politics <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/292997/governing-the-world-by-mark-mazower/">took hold</a>. The expectation was that, thanks to the involvement of technical experts in political decision making, politics would get “closer to the facts” and therefore better.</p>
<p>My ongoing research suggests that one effect of the introduction of expertise into politics is that technical experts can more easily claim to stand outside of politics. It renders politics a set of technical problems that can be solved with technical solutions. Moral problems disappear from view. But history shows that expertise is not something we can simply insert into politics in order to solve its problems.</p>
<p>After knowledge still comes judgement, which is always inherently political. Technical expertise can show that something is feasible, but not whether it is justified.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131356/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Eijking receives funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Oxford.</span></em></p>The science of politics became popular across Europe, alongside the rise of capitalism and empire in the 19th century.Jan Eijking, PhD Candidate in International Relations, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1326322020-03-04T12:31:47Z2020-03-04T12:31:47ZThe UK government tried to reshape the civil service with wacky psychology before – here’s how that went<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317795/original/file-20200228-24664-1k1jjb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=62%2C52%2C3132%2C2069&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dominic Cummings is looking for 'cognitive diversity' but history suggests that's not easy to define.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dominic Cummings, special adviser to the UK prime minister, has been continuing his shake-up of the civil service. Most notably, his plea for “<a href="https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/">misfits and weirdos</a>” resulted in the appointment of Andrew Sabisky, who was forced to resign after his eugenicist views on the supposed link between race and intelligence came to light.</p>
<p>Cummings is re-imagining the civil service as a force for disruption and innovation along the lines of Silicon Valley. He has been open about his infatuation with the Valley’s peculiar brand of technological utopianism, which imagines a future in which AI and computer forecasting are used to guide policy.</p>
<p>We should be wary of interpreting this shake up as truly progressive. This vision of the future is <a href="https://www.issuelab.org/resource/tech-leavers-study-a-first-of-its-kind-analysis-of-why-people-volunarily-left-jobs-in-tech.html">overwhelmingly white and male</a>. Cummings shuns what he calls “gender identity diversity blah blah” and advocates for “true cognitive diversity”. </p>
<p>However, his is not the first attempt at remodelling the civil service with the help of pseudoscientific thinking. In fact, the civil service experimented with an eccentric approach to recruitment in the 1940s. This post-war scheme also mobilised pseudoscientific concepts of intelligence, character and personality, all of which reflected a discriminatory set of values as to who was “fit” to do the job.</p>
<p>The civil service’s experiment in psychological methods of recruiting was directly influenced by a method of selection pioneered by the War Office. Concerns about the high failure rate of junior officers undergoing training prompted officials in the War Office to rethink their recruitment process. Following experiments by army psychiatrists, the first War Office Selection Board was established in Edinburgh in 1942, with others opening across Britain that same year.</p>
<p>Under this new scheme, candidates were taken to a country house and given a <a href="http://tihr-archive.tavinstitute.org/recreating-war-officer-selection-boards-archivists-experience/">series of assessments over the course of three days</a>. Potential officers took part in a role-play scenario to test their decision-making and teamwork skills as well as a series of what were called “personality pointers”. These included a word association test, a self-description exercise and a “thematic appreciation test”. Here, candidates were required to make up stories using a series of images as prompts. These were analysed for evidence of their aptitude and mental capability for the officer class.</p>
<p>The Treasury requested the War Office’s help in adapting this system to select civil service officers for the new Organisation and Methods division. This section was tasked with increasing efficiency in the civil service following its rapid expansion as a result of the war. The new “Organisation and Methods man” possessed initiative, flexibility and independence. Recruiters saw these traits as new qualities suitable for a reformed, streamlined civil service. They were to be as important in the selection of candidates as the old personality traits of reliability, accuracy and knowledge of precedent.</p>
<p>This experiment proved flawed, however. Senior members of the civil service and experienced members of the War Office Selection Boards came together to grade those who took the experimental test. Both groups gave wildly different marks to candidates.</p>
<p>The War Office even failed some candidates. And since everyone who took the experimental test was already employed in the civil service, this was a serious problem. </p>
<h2>An unflattering postmortem</h2>
<p>All this meant that when the selection process was held up to scientific scrutiny it appeared to fall apart. The report on the experiment tried hard to work out why this might be the case, spending pages upon pages on increasingly complicated statistics.</p>
<p>What none of these calculations did is challenge the basic, and flawed, assumption behind the experiment – personality traits cannot, as they thought, be objectively observed as incontrovertible facts. They are subjective judgements, the result of the interaction between the observer and the observed.</p>
<p>The role that the fledgling discipline of psychology played in these recruitment schemes was a discriminatory one. The personality tests were an attempt to weed out people with “immature” personalities: a euphemism for homosexuality. Potential junior officers or civil servant guinea pigs took intelligence tests alongside the “personality pointers”. Although they were seen as an objective test of natural intellect, they often reflected no more than the individual’s level of schooling, at a time when education provision was even more unequal than it is today. These intelligence tests have their modern counterpart in the IQ tests <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/19/sabisky-row-dominic-cummings-criticised-over-designer-babies-post">so admired by Cummings and Sabisky</a>.</p>
<p>Although these tests were designed in response to criticisms of the army’s elitism, the ways in which the tests attempted to police the boundaries of who was suitable ended up reflecting the same social prejudices the army and civil service had long struggled with.</p>
<p>Cummings’ call for “misfits and weirdos” is similarly superficial. His slavish devotion to techie solutions will continue to favour white, middle-class male computer scientists who don’t look any different from the “Oxbridge humanities graduates” who have tended to make up the civil service.</p>
<p>True diversity looks very different from Cummings’ vision. His and Sabisky’s worrying views on intelligence indicate how little space there is for neurodiverse individuals, disabled people or people of colour within Whitehall. Criticisms of the establishment are always welcome, but what the civil service and the War Office selection boards tell us is that wacky means of recruitment can be a smokescreen obscuring any real progress.</p>
<p>A supposedly meritocratic means of selection, either by personality test or by blogpost, hides the assumptions and biases of those doing the recruiting. More often than not, people pick those who resemble them physically and socially – and who share the same values. A commitment to true diversity is commendable. Unfortunately, I do not see that commitment from Cummings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132632/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grace Whorrall-Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Dominic Cummings should read up on a deeply flawed experiment from the 1940s before he reads through those job applications.Grace Whorrall-Campbell, PhD Candidate in History, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1302562020-01-23T12:04:22Z2020-01-23T12:04:22ZThe civil service doesn’t just need more scientists – it needs a decision-making revolution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311557/original/file-20200123-162190-9el6jf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-29-august-2017-whitehall-713386330">pxl.store/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/12/whitehall-needs-more-scientists-to-compete-with-china-patrick-vallance-dominic-cummings">recently said</a> he was mounting a drive to recruit more scientists and engineers into the civil service. His comments echo the <a href="https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/">much-discussed call</a> by the prime minister’s chief special adviser, Dominic Cummings, for more data scientists and other “<a href="https://theconversation.com/ive-studied-the-weirdos-dominic-cummings-is-talking-about-im-not-sure-he-really-understands-who-they-are-129418">assorted weirdos</a>” to become civil servants.</p>
<p>From our experience working with and in government departments, we know that there are <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41293-017-0068-2">many problems</a> in how the civil service uses evidence to support decision-making. And scientists (and other specialists from the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00064-x">social sciences and humanities</a>), who value sound methodologies and are trained to search for robust evidence, well-designed studies and research questions, could indeed help with that.</p>
<p>But more scientists working within current systems won’t be enough. We need a transformation in thinking that goes far beyond what degree civil service recruits studied. Some of this can be achieved by building on some excellent practice already underway in many parts of the civil service, for example, the increased use of <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0310-1">social science expertise</a> and the <a href="https://civilservice.blog.gov.uk/2014/10/27/50-years-of-the-government-chief-scientific-adviser/">valuable role</a> played by department chief scientific advisers.</p>
<p>But here are six further ways the civil service could transform its approach to evidence and decision-making. </p>
<h2>Horizon scanning</h2>
<p>The process of gathering evidence is more efficient if an issue <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901117302095?via%253Dihub">has been anticipated</a>, but civil servants often work reactively. Academic researchers, on the other hand, regularly carry out “horizon scans” of various issues to identify key forthcoming topics for policy and research.</p>
<p>For example, a recent horizon scan of <a href="https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(19)30299-X">conservation issues</a> found the increasing use of traditional Asian medicine, the use of artificial wombs, and the impact of the shrinking ozone hole on Antarctic sea ice could all be important issues to consider in 2020.</p>
<p>All government departments could ensure they routinely look ahead by reflecting on existing horizon scans and encourage further scans in missing subject areas. There is a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/horizon-scanning-programme-team">dedicated horizon scanning team</a> in the civil service already, and increasing its activity could benefit all aspects of government.</p>
<h2>Consider all the options</h2>
<p>When decision-makers are blinkered by convention, a restricted formulation of the problem or narrow self-interest, they may overlook better policy alternatives. Horizon scanning provides a measure of protection against this myopia, but civil servants can also work with outside experts, businesses, charities and other organisations to broaden the scope of scenarios they consider.</p>
<p>Listening to as diverse a suite of perspectives on the problem as possible is particularly important, because research has shown that diverse thinking brings <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1068/b39059">new ideas</a>. This is why Dominic Cummings wants to recruit more “misfits and weirdos”, because a greater <a href="https://theconversation.com/dominic-cummings-may-be-right-about-weirdos-and-misfits-britains-top-graduate-jobs-go-to-corporate-clones-129521">variety of thinking</a> could produce more alternative policy solutions.</p>
<h2>Collate evidence properly</h2>
<p>There can <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/evidence%2520and%2520evaluation%2520in%2520template_final_0.pdf">often be problems</a> gathering timely, suitable evidence to inform policymaking. But the civil service also has problems with its <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/evidence%2520and%2520evaluation%2520in%2520template_final_0.pdf">institutional culture</a> when it comes to storing and using rigorous evidence. Based on our own secondment experience, we’ve seen that it can be difficult simply to find the evidence that exists in the ether of government IT infrastructure, even when it comes from research commissioned by the civil service. This either slows down decision-making or results in the same evidence-gathering exercises being repeated.</p>
<p>Things that could address this problem include routinely carrying out reviews of all relevant available evidence on a topic (known as <a href="https://evaluation.lshtm.ac.uk/evidence-synthesis-2/">subject-wide evidence synthesis</a>), <a href="http://www.eklipse-mechanism.eu">academic partnerships</a> to fill critical knowledge gaps, and simply summarising evidence from previously commissioned research and evidence-gathering exercises. Producing clearly indexed summary paragraphs in accessible language (as done by the <a href="https://www.conservationevidence.com">Conservation Evidence</a> journal) would make it easier for new staff to find evidence and build institutional memory of previous research, even when staff <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/moving-on-staff-turnover-civil-service">move on to new jobs</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311558/original/file-20200123-162232-13jupgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311558/original/file-20200123-162232-13jupgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311558/original/file-20200123-162232-13jupgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311558/original/file-20200123-162232-13jupgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311558/original/file-20200123-162232-13jupgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311558/original/file-20200123-162232-13jupgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311558/original/file-20200123-162232-13jupgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You can’t make the right decision without all the options and evidence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/direction-decision-chance-opportunity-intersection-concept-261757220">Rawpixel.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Evaluate evidence quality</h2>
<p>Not all evidence is created equal. <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.13499">Research shows</a> that how a study is designed considerably affects the accuracy of its results. What’s deemed “good” evidence can <a href="https://health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12961-017-0192-x">often be questionable</a>. And “scientific” evidence isn’t necessarily more valuable than other forms, such as experience. </p>
<p>Civil servants may not be skilled at assessing these kinds of issues, which can affect the quality of evidence they use. So more need to be given an understanding of the basic elements of <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/policy-twenty-tips-for-interpreting-scientific-claims-1.14183">interpreting evidence</a>. This includes bias, chance, <a href="https://www.statisticsdonewrong.com/pseudoreplication.html">pseudoreplication</a> (repeating tests with the same subjects to bulk out your data), <a href="https://www.geckoboard.com/learn/data-literacy/statistical-fallacies/data-dredging/">data dredging</a> (selecting data that isn’t typical of the overall pattern) and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/34/1/215/638499">regression to the mean</a> (the fact that atypical values are likely to be followed by less extreme ones).</p>
<h2>Use experts properly</h2>
<p>Experts can be repositories of a wealth of useful information and are regularly used by government departments. But scientists’ views can be just as influenced by bias as anyone else’s, and this <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/policy-twenty-tips-for-interpreting-scientific-claims-1.14183">can affect</a> how they collect and interpret data. In fact, research shows that if experts are used to estimate facts or to judge the outcomes of future events, the most highly regarded scientist is rarely any better than a <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0022998">relatively recent graduate</a>. </p>
<p>Instead of relying on highly regarded individuals and the culture of scientific authority that goes with them, civil servants should seek a diverse set of independent estimates. They should collate the data with <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/2041-210X.12387">appropriate statistical procedures</a> and form an overall scientific judgement. To make sure civil servants get their interactions with experts right, they should use skilled in-house science brokers.</p>
<h2>Adopt effective decision-making techniques</h2>
<p>Transparent decision-making and reducing bias are hallmarks of evidence-based policymaking. Yet a <a href="http://senseaboutscience.org/activities/transparency-evidence-spot-check/">report published in 2018</a> found that, despite some improvements in transparency, many government departments did not routinely publish the evidence underlying new policies. It is often unclear how decisions are made. </p>
<p>A step change is needed to make the most of <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/policy-advice-use-experts-wisely-1.18539">proven group decision-making processes</a> designed to limit bias and increase transparency, such as the <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.12387">Delphi technique</a>. And this is one area where civil servants with scientific training really could make a difference, by helping separate facts and values, and orchestrating the discussion of trade-offs between policy options.</p>
<p>These changes wouldn’t be hard to introduce and many civil servants would agree they would help. But they also complain that there isn’t the time to make the changes. Instead of looking for a special fix, the civil service needs to overcome its institutional inertia and make these changes happen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Rose receives funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Burgman receives funding from UKRI, the Australian Research Council and DARPA.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Sutherland receives funding from Arcadia, David and Claudia Harding Foundation, MAVA and NERC. </span></em></p>Transforming the civil service needs to go far beyond what degree new recruits studied.David Rose, Elizabeth Creak Associate Professor of Agricultural Innovation and Extension, University of ReadingMark Burgman, Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College LondonWilliam Sutherland, Miriam Rothschild Chair in Conservation Biology, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1294182020-01-08T11:43:42Z2020-01-08T11:43:42ZI’ve studied the ‘weirdos’ Dominic Cummings is talking about – I’m not sure he really understands who they are<p>In a now infamous <a href="https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/">blog post</a>, Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s special adviser, declared he wanted to hire “misfits” to upset the stagnant equilibrium that he sees in the civil service. Rather than Oxbridge graduates, he wants “weirdos” and “true cognitive diversity”.</p>
<p>Part of Cummings’ inspiration for the kind of worker he hopes to find comes from the pages of William Gibson’s novels. Gibson made his name in science fiction circles as the “godfather of cyberpunk”, revitalising the genre with his debut novel, <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-494053335/neuromancer-cyberpunk">Neuromancer</a>. This gave a popular blueprint for understanding the possibilities of the nascent internet and even coined the term “cyberspace”.</p>
<p>In his blog, Cummings specifically cited two characters – Cayce from Gibson’s 2003 novel <a href="https://newleftreview.org/issues/II23/articles/fredric-jameson-fear-and-loathing-in-globalization">Pattern Recognition</a> and Tito, from Spook Country, published in 2007 as a sequel. He argues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole, weirdos from William Gibson novels like that girl hired by Bigend as a brand “diviner” who feels sick at the sight of Tommy Hilfiger or that Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cummings specifically asks that people who are struggling to find an environment to channel extraordinary talents apply. The idea seems to be that Cummings wants free thinkers who reject social conformity. But I have researched Gibson’s work for my PhD thesis. Cummings appears to have somewhat misunderstood the novels if he thinks this is what the characters represent. </p>
<p>Cayce and Tito both find themselves outside of society, but Cummings seems to think that this outsider status is a function of their exceptional skills. It’s actually more a function of the society in which they live.</p>
<p>Cayce suffers from an unusual allergy to marketing – she reacts badly to derivative branding, vomiting in response to the simulacra of simulacra represented by brands such as Tommy Hilfiger. Her “allergy” acts as a sixth sense for authenticity, making her valuable as a brand consultant and a “coolhunter”. She can observe trends at an LA urban basketball court, or in downtown Shinjuku, and predict which trends will go viral on a global scale. Her opinion on marketing and all things cool is highly sought after, but she also suffers from apophenia – “faulty pattern recognition” – or what we might more commonly refer to as paranoia.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309022/original/file-20200108-107209-b2471b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309022/original/file-20200108-107209-b2471b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309022/original/file-20200108-107209-b2471b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309022/original/file-20200108-107209-b2471b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309022/original/file-20200108-107209-b2471b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309022/original/file-20200108-107209-b2471b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309022/original/file-20200108-107209-b2471b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pattern Recognition: a novel in which the weirdos aren’t exactly thriving.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She is rocked by the experience of being rootless in a globalised world – a condition typical of the kind of freelance work in which she is engaged and familiar to those participating in the so-called “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38930048">gig economy</a>” in the real world. She feels as though she has left her soul behind by moving from job to job at breakneck speed and she is homeless when we meet her. Even though she is well paid (unlike many undertaking insecure work), her instability robs her of her sense of self, distracting her from her day job and blinding her to genuinely dangerous situations. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Tito lives in a single room above a Chinese restaurant, hiding in the shadows. He works as a courier for spies and illicit operations, using his multilingual background and his experience as a migrant and as a member of a crime family to survive in the underworld. Cayce is hired by Bigend, a businessman with interests that all come back to the desire to exploit new technologies before anyone else has the chance to understand them – whether Cummings sees himself in this Machiavellian, vampiric role is a matter for speculation.</p>
<p>Both characters live in a miasma of precarity, using their skills by necessity as a means of survival. Tito is highly talented, but his unofficial status sees him attacked by adversaries hired by shadowy forces, his outsider status weaponised against him. Not only does this endanger his life, it endangers the sensitive projects on which he is put to work – a reminder that having unprotected workers at the heart of government might be a security risk for both the individual and the institution.</p>
<h2>Workers’ rights for weirdos</h2>
<p>Gibson is known for the maxim, “<a href="https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/01/24/future-has-arrived/">the future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed</a>”. And Cummings seems to be describing just such a world for the people he wants to hire. He shows little respect for the rules of hiring and firing, warning his out-of-the-box “misfit” employees, “I’ll bin you within weeks if you don’t fit – don’t complain later because I made it clear now”. Many of his new hires, he says, should be “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/03/dominic-cummings-call-for-no-10-staff-may-break-employment-law">young</a>” – a specification that many have suggested breaches employment law. </p>
<p>Nor should his new hires expect much by way of support. Cummings thinks they should not be subject “to the horrors of ‘Human Resources’ (which also obviously need a bonfire)”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309024/original/file-20200108-107214-ircv0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309024/original/file-20200108-107214-ircv0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309024/original/file-20200108-107214-ircv0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309024/original/file-20200108-107214-ircv0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309024/original/file-20200108-107214-ircv0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309024/original/file-20200108-107214-ircv0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309024/original/file-20200108-107214-ircv0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spook Country’s Tito might actually quite like a visit from the HR department.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The theme is very much putting innovation above workers’ rights, but these concepts are not mutually exclusive. Cummings is well aware that the changing technological landscape will offer opportunities to wield and cement political power in ways that cannot (as yet) be predicted – but his excitement in taking advantage of this unstable historical moment seems to have blinded him to the importance of workers’ rights. He wants the best and offers them nothing by way of protection in return.</p>
<p>For brilliant weirdos like Cayce and Tito, workers’ rights buy the loyalty and security that money cannot. Wishing for the talents of a brilliant weirdo should not mean emulating terrible – and dangerous – fictional working conditions. When Cummings rails against stagnation, he should be careful what he wishes for. The insecurity of workers is the insecurity of the institution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna McFarlane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Boris Johnson’s adviser is asking job applicants to give him their all. And in return? He’ll fire them on the spot if they don’t fit in.Anna McFarlane, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1290972019-12-18T15:56:25Z2019-12-18T15:56:25ZDominic Cummings wants to add more political appointees to the civil service – here’s why that’s a problem<p>Civil servants in Whitehall are worried. One of the first items on the agenda of the new conservative government is reforming the civil service. There are plans to restructure some government departments, close others and <a href="https://www.civilserviceworld.com/articles/news/civil-service-hiring-and-firing-rules-set-review-cummings-and-johnson-plot-whitehall">move functions around</a>.</p>
<p>But it doesn’t stop with structural change. The prime minister’s chief policy adviser Dominic Cummings has long envisaged major reforms for the civil service. According to Cummings, Whitehall is staffed by “<a href="https://dominiccummings.com/2014/10/30/the-hollow-men-ii-some-reflections-on-westminster-and-whitehall-dysfunction/">hollow men</a>” who are plagued with group think and, he believes, would rather play it safe than get things done. To address this dire situation, Cummings has put forward a range of solutions including changing the way <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/12/14/boris-johnson-plans-radical-overhaul-civil-service-guarantee/">senior civil servants are appointed</a>.</p>
<p>One idea that Cummings is particularly fond of is making greater use of politically appointed experts to staff top jobs in the civil service. This is hardly new, of course. Until the middle of the 19th century, the UK civil service was largely staffed by political appointees. In 1854, a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1954.tb01719.x">report</a> by Stanford Northcote and C. E. Trevelyan, two senior civil servants, pointed out that this method of staffing the civil service led to a system run by “the unambitious, the indolent or the incapable”. </p>
<p>The report therefore recommended civil servants be appointed on merit by an independent body rather than on the basis of their political patronage. These reforms created the basis for the independent civil service which largely persists up to today.</p>
<p>However, political appointees began to reappear <a href="https://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/thereturnofpoliticalpatronage.pdf">during the 1960s</a>. The first special advisers of the modern era were appointed by Harold Wilson, who brought in two highly respected economists. Their role was to conduct the government’s battles with a largely conservative civil service.</p>
<p>In 1974, Wilson increased the number of special advisers from a handful to 30. During the years of Conservative government that followed, the number of special advisers stayed fairly static, but they became younger. They were often appointed less for their expertise and more for their political commitments. When Tony Blair’s Labour government came to power in 1997, the number of special advisers almost doubled from 38 to 72. They not only increased in power but also in influence. This trend only continued. By 2015, David Cameron had 95. The latest figures available from December 2018 <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/special-adviser-data-releases-numbers-and-costs-december-2018">identify 99 special advisers</a>.</p>
<p>This may not sound like a lot when compared to the 400,000 plus civil servants. However, special advisers often have significant power and influence. They often oversee and manage the activities of civil servants, acting as liaison between them and politicians, helping shape the agenda within the civil service.</p>
<h2>Learning the ropes</h2>
<p>If Cummings gets his way, the number and influence of these political appointees is likely to grow significantly. While his lengthy blog posts make the case for drawing in outside expertise, there is evidence that being too reliant on politically appointed advisers can be dangerous. Much of this comes from the United States, which operates on a patronage system. Each incoming administration can make around 4,000 political appointments in the <a href="https://presidentialtransition.org/workstream/appointments/">federal government agencies</a>.</p>
<p>Champions of political appointees claim they are likely to be more skilled and therefore more able to get the job done. This is only partly true. A study of the US federal government programmes found that political appointees did indeed tend to have higher levels of education and <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00608.x">more varied experience than career bureaucrats</a>. But federal programmes run by political appointees were systematically rated as less effective than those run by career civil servants.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307716/original/file-20191218-11904-1fg3b83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307716/original/file-20191218-11904-1fg3b83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307716/original/file-20191218-11904-1fg3b83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307716/original/file-20191218-11904-1fg3b83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307716/original/file-20191218-11904-1fg3b83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307716/original/file-20191218-11904-1fg3b83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307716/original/file-20191218-11904-1fg3b83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It takes time to find your way around in Whitehall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is, in part, because it takes a long time for a political appointee to learn the ropes in a public sector organisation. Newcomers to the civil service can bring a fresh perspective, but they also lack the detailed knowledge of the process of implementing their ideas. It can often take years to learn this, by which time political appointees have often grown frustrated and moved on. </p>
<p>During the Reagan administration, political appointees only had a tenure of around <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/009539979002200106?casa_token=sXEMQzwuzLEAAAAA:_RYU0Td5C9C8U1vv9r9X3FcoG25LeJkh5PGxJiz9tLwU7r54azGwSTXW1zjCDCP2y_252NZ-32g">1.7 years</a>. Such rapid turnover is fairly common under most US presidents. Political appointees appear to spend <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/976068?casa_token=aHIIj21WepUAAAAA:2atB101mvEanhmDSbWNwy0rD2iyeuVF15v77mqm7RmmAgryidhAgDxZhNgqh3_hTscX7S-6E0vvNKOlBRG6Ih8_6Anq_6JvWAkn1QVzCn2VNoRpGXQ&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">more time learning the ropes than doing the job</a>.</p>
<p>Another side effect of rapid turnover is that key leadership roles can remain vacant for some time. One study of the US federal government found that politically appointed roles were empty about <a href="https://weblaw.usc.edu/assets/docs/contribute/oconnellforwebsite.pdf">one-quarter of the time</a>. This meant departments were often rendered ineffective as they waited for new leadership.</p>
<h2>Turkey farms</h2>
<p>Political appointees often struggle to achieve much because their beliefs and leadership style are often quite different to careerists in the civil service they have to work with. Rather than generating creative tension, these differences often lead to <a href="https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1395">corrosive conflict</a> between political appointees and career civil servants. Such conflict reduces the effectiveness of the departments which they run.</p>
<p>There is also a significant danger that political appointees only pay attention to a selective set of signals. Because of the route through which they get their job, political appointees tend to focus on issues which their political masters care about.</p>
<p>One final damaging consequence of increasing the numbers of political appointees is that some parts of the civil service can become what US government insiders call “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article-abstract/27/2/217/2649135">turkey farms</a>”. These are the government departments that house loyal supporters of a ruling party who aren’t much use.</p>
<p>These “turkeys” end up in the parts of government where they can do the least harm. However, as a department gets crowded with turkeys, it becomes increasingly ineffective and bungling. And since no government department is entirely without use, the turkeys can end up causing real damage. </p>
<p>This is what happened to the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/976446.pdf?casa_token=dWulA7CrJqcAAAAA:tTHF0R5dwR5lf5f9A5CQ7XQKh765vBiqgGmMSPmBVpQRQr1wAALMnBRjNazCyVaKXNzyssBC2BzXyMBVX-sQ-TXYEY-KUe7iCem8IMQvn4pjIoi-rw">Federal Emergency Management Agency</a>. For decades, the organisation was seen as a turkey farm with incompetent leadership. And, when faced with large-scale emergencies such as hurricanes, FEMA has often responded in a bungling way. The consequences were made all too plain during the hopeless response when <a href="https://psmag.com/news/close-the-turkey-farm-4039">Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005</a>.</p>
<p>However, this is not to say appointed advisers have no place at all in government. Giles Wilkes, a former special adviser in Whitehall, makes a <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/InsideOut%20SPAD%20The%20Unelected%20Lynchpin_0.pdf">compelling case</a> for using them to manage the day-to-day bargaining process involved in making a government. A survey of special advisers in the UK government also found that they spent the majority of their time acting as political “fixers”, some of their time designing policy and spending much <a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66025/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_Page,%20Edward_New%20life%20at%20the%20top_Page_New_life_at_the_top.pdf">less time on policy delivery</a>.</p>
<p>By acting as a liaison between politicians and the bureaucracy, appointed officials can – in the best cases – smooth the way in the implementation of new policies. But the evidence from the US seems to suggest that political appointees are often much less useful at getting things done in government in a way which sticks in the long term.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andre Spicer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the US, some federal departments become known as ‘turkey farms’ – stuffed with loyal but ultimately useless political appointees.Andre Spicer, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Cass Business School, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.