Tourists

Political appointees vs. career bureaucrats

Photo by Ving N on Unsplash

The Story

After practicing architecture in private firms for over a decade, I took an opportunity to join a new start-up department in Philadelphia city government tasked with overhauling how the city managed capital projects. I was a political appointee—with a letter signed by the mayor himself—and my new job was to lead a team of a dozen union-represented city employees, including architects, engineers, and construction inspectors, who were responsible for managing the design and construction contracts for $200 million worth of capital projects. The mayor had secured funding for these projects, and he wanted to see the projects built while he was still in office, but the bureaucratic machinery was moving too slowly for him. Our job was to speed things up. Our new department of about 100 included people from two other departments, plus a half dozen new appointees like me, hired from outside the city to bring entrepreneurial private sector skills to bear on an inefficient bureaucratic organization. We private sector folks were excited about our new jobs and the opportunity to serve in government and teach those public sector people some new tricks, while we were at it. Suffice it to say that we had a lot of confidence in ourselves despite having zero experience working in government. After all, how hard could it be? Well, it ended up being the hardest thing I’ve ever done, starting with managing my new staff. I still remember having my first team meeting, introducing myself, and offering my usual friendly management axioms like, “My door is always open,” “come to me with answers not problems,” “I’ll always support you,” and “the only thing I don’t like is surprises.” They all gave me the thousand-yard stare—a combination of fear and boredom—and no one said anything or asked any questions. A big gulf lay between us that I did not yet understand.

It wasn’t until around the third month that my boss told me,

“You know, they call us ‘tourists.’”

She was referring to our union-represented staff. Around the same time, one of my direct reports—a crusty old construction inspector nearing retirement- asked for a private meeting with me. He was frustrated by some new policy we had tried to implement so he started yelling at me, unloading about everything, and concluding by letting me know, and I paraphrase:

“You are just one in a parade of many bosses who have all come and gone—you aren’t the first and you won’t be the last.”

This begins to explain why they called us “tourists,” but the bigger question is, how effective are political appointees like me?

The Theory

A word search for “Appointees vs Civil Servants” yields a significant body of scholarly literature, much of it focused on presidential appointees, a subject that seems particularly relevant today, and to which we will return. One article by three political scientists focused on “bureaucratic competence” offers both a simple theoretical framework and some interesting evidence-based conclusions.¹ The theoretical framework contrasts the ideas of “neutral competence” and “responsive competence” in government leaders. “Neutral competence” argues that elected leaders (presidents, governors, and mayors) should hire career professionals over political appointees for senior administrative positions, because internal personnel are,

“More apt to possess specialized policy expertise, meaningful experience, public management skills, and longstanding relationships with key stakeholders and other institutional actors,” and as a result, they can act as “honest brokers” in a politically divided and partisan context.²

The “responsive competence” perspective takes a more skeptical view of the professional bureaucracy, claiming that a general lack of understanding and loyalty on the part of staff drives a political leader’s need to go outside the civil service to hire leaders. These political appointees,

“Serve as a counterweight to bureaucratic inertia, bring fresh ideas, and strengthen connections with a variety of interest groups and constituencies,” while “creating the requisite risk-taking and entrepreneurial climate found in high-performing organizations.”³

For their empirical evidence, the authors studied the accuracy of state budget forecasting under different types of government structures, and found that the right mix of career civil servants and political appointees leads to higher levels of bureaucratic competence but,

“What is more important is striking the right balance between political responsiveness and bureaucratic autonomy.”

Another article, by one of the authors of the article discussed above and provocatively subtitled “Do Political Appointees Make Worse Bureaucrats?,” calls this whole “balance” idea into question. Using a rating system to evaluate the performance of appointees and careerists in the presidential administration of George W. Bush, this study found that the appointees received consistently lower scores than the careerists, who benefited from previous experience and longer tenure in government positions. And while appointees may have had higher levels of education, private management experience, and experience working in other organizations, these perceived advantages contributed very little to their performance in government positions. An example, despite Bush’s shoutout of “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job,” is FEMA Director Michael Brown’s mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina—a grim illustration of what can happen when too much confidence and responsibility are placed in the hands of a political appointee with little subject matter expertise. The understated conclusion, which seems relevant now, more than ever, is that

“Reducing the number of appointees or increased sensitivity to appointee selection based on certain background characteristics could improve federal bureau management.”⁴

They called us “tourists” for a reason

The job of civil servants, relying upon their institutional knowledge, wealth of experience, and long tenures, is to keep government running relatively smoothly across ever-changing administrations and elected officials, even when it means having to integrate the bright shiny ideas and new processes introduced by clever, if sometimes naïve, appointees like me. From the appointee’s perspective, the job is to fix or improve a specific process or service important to the official who appointed you, and that requires you to figure out how to work effectively in government and improve on what may seem like stereotypically ossified bureaucratic processes. For me, this first meant learning how an enormous enterprise with 27,000 employees and 59 departments functions—politically, bureaucratically, and economically—and how politicians, civil servants, private companies, and individuals interact to build our cities. More specifically, it meant learning how to get my job done in that environment, a job that involved a full daily schedule of meetings with city officials, the management of staff, and tours of countless buildings and facilities needing improvement or replacement that I never had reason to even think about before, from police stations and prisons to abandoned underground trolley tunnels and the morgue. It was exciting, frightening, stimulating, fun, and the best education I’ve ever been paid to receive. So yes, I was a tourist, but I did work harder than I ever have before or since—and our department’s efforts helped that mayor achieve his goal: We spent most of the funds and got most of those capital projects completed, or at least started. As an aside, when I decided to leave the city, three and a half years later, I had earned at least a little respect and trust from my team: As a going-away gift, they gave me a big coffee mug that said “World’s Best Boss” on it. They may have been pulling my leg, but I chose to interpret their gesture as sincere.

The Lesson

I am biased and lean towards the “balance” model of appointees and careerists. I believe that knowledgeable and skillful bureaucrats and entrepreneurial appointees focused on an elected politician’s priorities can, together, incrementally improve government. I also think that appointees can only make important contributions once they have come to understand and respect the important roles played by the civil servants who keep our governments running and the longstanding institutions that act as a buffer against the whims of their transient and mortal leaders. Finally, based on the two studies I’ve cited here, we can conclude that appointees are most effective when the appointing official has clear goals, uses objective criteria for their selection, and knows what they want those appointees to accomplish.

“For the last century, almost all top political appointments [on the planet Earth] had been made by random computer selection from the pool of individuals who had the necessary qualifications. It had taken the human race several thousand years to realize that there were some jobs that should never be given to the people who volunteered for them, especially if they showed too much enthusiasm. As one shrewd political commentator had remarked: “We want a President who has to be carried screaming and kicking into the White House — but will then do the best job he possibly can, so that he’ll get time off for good behavior.”

― Arthur C. Clarke, Imperial Earth

1. Krause, George A., David E. Lewis, and James W. Douglas, “Political Appointments, Civil Service Systems, and Bureaucratic Competence: Organizational Balancing and Executive Branch Revenue Forecasts in the American States,” in American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 2006, pages 770-787.

2. Heclo, Hugh, “OMB and the Presidency—The Problem of Neutral Competence,” in The Public Interest, 38(Winter), 1975, pages 80-99.

3. Bok, Derek, “Government Personnel Policy in Comparative Perspective,” in For the People: Can We Fix Public Service?, John D. Donohoue & Joseph S. Nye, Jr., eds., Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2003, pages 255-272; Bilmes, Linda J., and Jeffrey R. Neal, “The People Factor: Human Resources Reform in Government,” in For the People: Can We Fix Public Service?, John D. Donohoue & Joseph S. Nye, Jr., eds., Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2003, pages 113-133.

4. Lewis, David E., “Testing Pendelton’s Premise: Do Political Appointees Make Worse Bureaucrats?,” in The Journal of Politics, 69(4), 2007, pages 1073-1088.