The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (58 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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The we-they mentality that results from the exclusion of career managers in these models is advocated by theorists such as Nathan (1985), Rector and Sanera (1987), and others at conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. As discussed, it was put into practice by the officials of the Reagan administration. This administration saw a nostalgic return to the politics/administration dichotomy in a presidential control model in which political appointees sought to make all decisions, and careerists were to offer expertise only to implement political dictates but not themselves to advocate policy positions (Ingraham and Ban 1988, 12).
These models of exclusion have developed over time and do not take into account the fact that the roles of political and career officials are, in fact, converging.
Both make policy, both represent interests, both have policy objectives. . . . The moral dilemma posed by bureaucratic policymaking is power without responsibility; the dilemma of policymaking by politicians is power without competence. Excessively bureaucratic policymaking may lead to a crisis of legitimacy, but excessively political policymaking threatens a crisis of effectiveness. (Ingraham and Ban 1986, 153)
There are two other problems that are not adequately addressed by any of the three models. For one thing, political appointees have no incentives to be expert managers. Any failings in the system eventually get laid at the feet of the career managerspoliticals are long gone by the time they appear. The second, and perhaps more troubling, deficiency of these models is "the absence of direct consideration and pursuit of the public interest." While each model addresses the public interest, it is only an indirect and glancing consideration, according to Ingraham and Ban (ibid., 158-59).
Competence-Based Models
In contrast to the technical competence models of political-career relationsneutral, responsive, and managerial competenceare the moral-ethical models that seek to address the broader purpose of public administration. They ask, public administration to what end? Directed to career civil servants, they seek out the special responsibility of those servants to promote the public interest that is missing or downplayed in the other models.
Neutral competence is grounded in the politics/administration dichotomy that assumes separate realms for political and career responsibility. It can be defined as "the ability to do the work of government ex-
 
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pertly, and to do it according to explicit, objective standards rather than to personal or party or other obligations and loyalties" (ibid., 152).
Political leaders determine policy and the civil service carries it out, in this view. "Neutral competence assumes that the public interest is best served by objective applications of career expertise." The central values are economy and efficiency. The development of a professional civil service best serves the needs of efficiency, providing "stability and the institutional memory to balance the rapid turnover of political executives" (ibid., 159, 152). However, this view is too limited.
It is simply naive and wrong to believe that the role of the career service is to "do what they are instructed to do." At least since the Nuremberg trials, the defense of individual responsibility and accountability for one's actions cannot be based upon the proposition that one was ordered by a higher authority to execute a particular action. Society expects our public officials, whether political or career, to act in ways reflecting high ethical and moral character. (Zuck 1984, 16)
Watergate, and then the Iran-Contra scandal, add more recent frames of reference of this lesson that even presidents and their surrogates (whether political or career) acting in their name, are not above the law. "The oath of office taken by career staff is the same as that taken by political executives; . . . career executives have also sworn to uphold the laws of the land and defend the Constitution" (ibid.).
Simply put, there are no solid, easy-to-define boundaries between politics and administration. American society and government are too complex and interrelated to make such clean divisions of labor. It is clearly unwise to ignore the knowledge, experience, and skills of the careerists in the development and evaluation of policy options.
Responsive competence is seen by some as an attractive antidote to counter what is perceived as insularity and excessive professional or agency loyalty on the part of careerists. Defined as competence "at the disposal of and for the support of, political leadership," responsive competence leans in the direction of presidential control and centralization of power in the White House and the expansion of political appointees across and down the executive agencies. It correlates the public interest with partisan interest and is less concerned with efficiency, per se.
This model asserts that the line between politics and administration is a fuzzy one, since many decisions made in administering a program have
 
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policy consequences. Therefore, even line administrators need to "buy in" to the administration's programs, and political appointees need to play a direct role in line operations. Inefficiencies which result are an acceptable cost of democracy. (Ingraham and Ban 1986, 153)
Like the neutral competence-politics/administration dichotomy model, the political responsiveness model fails to comprehend the complexity of modern government. Appointees are inevitably at some disadvantage because they generally "do not know 'how to put their fingers on the switches'. . . . In contrast, careerists know not only the switches but also which ones are most likely to work." While the value of expertise is unclear in this model, "in the hierarchy of policy choice . . . political demands are clearly superior to program expertise as well as to other public values (ibid., 158). Bluntly stated, "a strict application of this theory is that the role of the career service is to 'do what you're told to do' by political officials. Any contrary conduct is perceived as being 'disloyal' to the political executive or as the bureaucracy's demonstrating traditional impediment to carrying out administration policy" (Zuck 1984, 15).
Managerial competence contains elements of both neutral and responsive competence and draws heavily upon private sector business management practices with an emphasis on eliminating structural barriers to management flexibility. It "assumes that 'good' management practices include consideration of the public good." Its failings are that managerial competence relies on private sector definitions of competence, which often are not appropriate for the public sector, and it neglects to ask the question, "managerial competence for what purpose?" (Ingraham and Ban 1986, 153, 158-59).
Moral-Ethical Models
Another set of models is addressed to the career service and seeks to deal with the gaps in the three technical competence models. They are the moral-ethical models of social equity, regime value, and public interest.
The social equity model "proposes an activist-administrator who, by virtue of the public responsibility inherent in her-his career choice, is driven by moral and ethical concerns for social justice." The regime values model relies on the Constitution and its inherent values to guide public administrators to discern the public interest and direct their actions in its name. "The oath of office legitimates a degree of professional autonomy

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