Civil Service

Civil service refers to the civilian, that is, nonmilitary employees of the public service, whether employed by the central, state, provincial, or local governments. Usually these employees are hired into merit systems through competitive processes, such as by testing or based on demonstration of relevant experience or by other competitive processes. However, noncompetitive influences continue to be rampant, especially in many developing nations, even where the trappings of formal merit systems exist. This is especially true of many nations of Africa, Latin America, and, to a lesser extent, Asia. For most countries of Western Europe and North America, job security follows a period of probation. Still other merit procedures, such as performance ratings, partially govern compensation increases and promotions, although all systems are subject to the tendency to increment pay based on seniority.

Three models of the merit system are common in Europe: general career systems, specialized career systems, and decentralized function-oriented systems. The first two emphasize rather restricted qualifications for entry and progression and remuneration over time and with assignments. Technically trained personnel are found in the specialized career systems or corps, such as those connected with science, engineering, fiscal services, and police. The general system is mostly the senior civil service, who are administrative generalists, such as those found in Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands, and are often deeply involved in policy formulation. Admission to the general career system is dominated by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England. Technical educational preparation is requisite to specialized career system employment in Great Britain. The French versions of these two models are even more controlled at the entry level. The general career system is usually staffed by graduates of the National School of Administration and the specialized corps by the National Polytechnic School.

What Europeans refer to as the decentralized function-oriented system is basically the U.S. system applied with variations throughout North America, many countries in Latin America, as well as Norway and the Netherlands.

Most civilian employees of American governments are part of a classified service, which is a comprehensive system of occupational specialties related to a common set of pay ranges. However, many employees are appointed to other career and noncareer systems. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Foreign Service are three career systems separate from the federal classified service. Additionally, appointments are made of a noncareer nature by elected officials, policy-making officers, and, in general, by the legislative and judicial branches of government.

The Northcote and Trevelyan reforms in 1854 in Great Britain on the organization of the permanent civil service sought to create a largely self-sufficient career civil service that would train its own administrators so that they could, on merit, hold the highest positions in the service, instead of, as at the time, having to fill them from outside ranks and independent of ministerial politics. Though the reforms were not fully implemented in Great Britain until about 1920, the ideas involved greatly influenced American reformers of the federal civil service, where most government personnel appointments were political patronage, the so-called spoils system in which government jobs were rewards for political party membership, campaign support, and financial contributions to electoral candidates. Public support was growing for the idea that civil servants were actually supposed to perform the work of government based on their qualifications rather than hold office as political rewards. Urged on by the muckrakers in the press, such as Lincoln [Page 91]Steffens and Ida Tarbell, the New York Civil Service Reform League, and public outrage following the assassination of President Garfield by a disappointed office seeker, Congress passed the Civil Service Act of 1883, also known as the Pendleton Act, named for the senator who proposed it. The law established the principle of merit in federal government employment and a civil service commission to administer the act and a body of rules governing the concepts of merit and political neutrality of federal employees.

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