By the late 1800's United States policy makers realized they had to adopt a model for selecting public servants based on job related requirements. The model would have to separate career public servants from politics and the unorthodox and often non-standardized approach to policy and program implementation employed by the ever changing administrations. The selection of employees based on merit and limited political influence could lead to a standardization in terms of policy implementation and equity in service delivery. The assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 by a person seeking employment was the event which finally compelled policy makers to act. Congress went on to pass the Pendleton Act of 1883 which established the Civil Service Commission and implemented a system of merit employment for most federal employees. In 1939 the United States Congress passed the Hatch Act, the legislation limited the political activities of public servants at all levels of government. This paper examines the relationship between career merit system employees and changing political administrations. While the merit system provides a clear division between administrations and career public servants and makes it possible for merit employees to carry out their duties based on a legislative charge, there still appears to be inequities in this system. The system limits the extent to which administrations can influence how agencies carry out their missions, however, it does not limit the impact merit employees have on how policies are formulated and implemented. Essentially, policy makers rely on information and expertise from career public servants to help them make informed policy decisions. This gives career merit system employees the opportunity be policy advocates. This paper is an attempt to determine whether not career merit system employees should be policy advocates particularly when they have the knowledge, experience and expertise in areas which could lead to greater efficiency, savings and an overall improvement in the quality of service. More importantly, when merit employees become policy advocates, does this constitute a political activity and does this activity run counter to the underlying premise of the Hatch Act of 1939.

The ninth edition of Public Administration: Understanding Management, Politics, and Law in the Public Sector grounds students in the fundamentals of public administration while embracing its complexity. It describes, explains, and analyzes public administration through the lenses of three well-established perspectives: management, politics, and law. In addition to thoroughly refreshed examples and case studies, significant updates to this new edition include the following: The discussion of management has been collapsed into a single category, contemporary public management, to better reflect the blending of traditional/orthodox and new public management approaches in the field. Significant changes to federal administration initiated by the Trump administration, the emergence of "hyper-" partisanship, major court decisions affecting public administration, and newer scholarship and foci in public administration. A thoroughly rewritten chapter on budgeting and public finance. New public governance material is incorporated throughout the book, including collaborative models for coordinating administration with private organizations, particularly nonprofits. Additional attention is paid to public participation in public administration, including public administration's potential contribution to strengthening democratic citizenship. Thorough discussion of the latest managerial techniques and concepts as well as the contemporary performance orientation in the public sector. Downloadable instructor support materials including Key Points, Discussion and/or Test Questions, Multiple Choice Questions, True or False Questions, and an Answer Key to accompany each chapter in the book. Together these revisions reinvigorate the book yet retain its core structure, ideas, and familiarity for students and instructors alike. While the new edition retains its focus on the U.S. context, the focus on managerial, legislative, and judicial functions lends itself well to public administration in many developed nations, making the book a popular choice with instructors around the globe. This time-tested and fully up-to-date textbook is required reading for all students of public administration, public management, and nonprofit management.

Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.

Expert analysis of American governance challenges and recommendations for reform Two big ideas serve as the catalyst for the essays collected in this book. The first is the state of governance in the United States, which Americans variously perceive as broken, frustrating, and unresponsive. Editor James Perry observes in his Introduction that this perception is rooted in three simultaneous developments: government's failure to perform basic tasks that once were taken for granted, an accelerating pace of change that quickly makes past standards of performance antiquated, and a dearth of intellectual capital that generate the capacity to bridge the gulf between expectations and performance. The second idea hearkens back to the Progressive era, when Americans revealed themselves to be committed to better administration of their government at all levels—federal, state, and local. These two ideas—the diminishing capacity for effective governance and Americans' expectations for reform—are veering in opposite directions. Contributors to Public Service and Good Governance for the Twenty-First Century explore these central ideas by addressing such questions as: what is the state of government today? Can future disruptions of governance and public service be anticipated? What forms of government will emerge from the past and what institutions and structures will be needed to meet future challenges? And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, what knowledge, skills, and abilities will need to be fostered for tomorrow's civil servants to lead and execute effectively? Public Service and Good Governance for the Twenty-First Century offers recommendations for bending the trajectories of governance capacity and reform expectations toward convergence, including reversing the trend of administrative disinvestment, developing talent for public leadership through higher education, creating a federal civil service to meet future needs, and rebuilding bipartisanship so that the sweeping changes needed to restore good government become possible. Contributors: Sheila Bair, William W. Bradley, John J. DiIulio, Jr., Angela Evans, Francis Fukuyama, Donald F. Kettl, Ramayya Krishnan, Paul C. Light, Shelley Metzenbaum, Norman J. Ornstein, James L. Perry, Norma M. Riccucci, Paul R. Verkuil, Paul A. Volcker.