• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Civil Service

Review

1. The Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883 established several features of the U.S. civil service that remain to this day. The four features outlined by the text are: government hires employees by merit; government pays according to their positions, not their personal characteristics; government workers are protected from political interference and dismissal once in the system; and government workers have an obligation to accountability. What do you think of these four features? Which ones do you think contribute to government efficiency? What about government transparency? Which support democratic values? Do any run contrary to these values? Why do you think they were established, and why do you think they have endured?


2. Comparing bureaucracies around the world, does it strike you as strange that the U.S. bureaucracy, as measured proportionately as government employment as a share of total employment, falls in the middle range of the world's industrialized nations? Do you find it strange that the U.S. bureaucracy is far smaller than the government bureaucracies of Ireland, France, Finland, Hungary, and Canada and about the same size of bureaucracies as Australia, Portugal, Poland, and Spain? What do you think accounts for large government bureaucracy and our perceptions of them from country to country?


3. The position classification system is perhaps one of the most basic elements of the U.S. government, but it is worth discussing. What do you think about attaching generic grade level qualifications that place certain jobs in the same category? What do you think about a system that can be so generalized such that your grade indicates instantly your salary and your level of education? What are the pluses of such a system and what are the minuses?


4. The text states, "Civil service systems have long held that public employees should not be burdened with constraints on their public and private behavior of citizens and human beings beyond those borne by private employees unless such constraints are required by the special nature of government itself". What do you think about this statement? Apply it, as the text does, to the reaction of public employees to unionization. What are your thoughts on this? In the attempt to maintain equity between the public and private sector, is the government, in fact, doing just the opposite, or does justice prevail?


5. What do you think about the 1986 executive order signed by President Reagan authorizing agencies to impose mandatory drug testing on newly hired or transferred employees, inclusive or random, despite employee unions' protestation that this is in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures? Remember that the Supreme Court made the decision upholding the order in 1989 that was a 5—4 decision (a split court). What do you think about government officials in "sensitive" positions and the necessity to make sure they are "clean"? Is this an unjust invasion of privacy or a well-founded safety measure?