Does Where You Stand Depend on Where You Sit? Careerists' Attitudes toward Political Appointees under Reagan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2374-7781.2010.31.0.91-112Abstract
With the noted exception of George H.W. Bush, Republican presidents since Dwight Eisenhower have pursued administrative presidency strategies, which include political appointments to subcabinet positions. Less clear is whether and how appointments strategies affect the reactions of careerists to political appointees. Here, we turn for insight to data collected from senior careerists during the administration of Ronald Reagan, which emphasized such strategies. The findings indicate that careerists’ ideology influenced their views of the political appointees for whom they worked, particularly in regulatory agencies. Agency affiliation also was important, though not always as anticipated.References
Aberbach, J.D. 2000. A Reinvented Government, or the Same Old Government? Pp. 118-139 in The Clinton Legacy, eds. C. Campbell and B.A. Rockman. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers.
Aberbach, J.D. 2004. The State of the Contemporary Presidency: Or, is Bush II Actually Ronald Reagan's Heir? Pp. 46-72 in The George W. Bush Administration: Appraisals and Prospects, eds. C. Campbell and B.A. Rockman. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly.
Aberbach, J.D., and B.A. Rockman. 1976. Clashing Beliefs Within the Executive Branch: The Nixon Administration Bureaucracy. American Political Science Review 70: 456-468. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1959650
Aberbach, J.D., and B.A. Rockman. 2000. In the Web of Politics: Three Decades of the U.S. Federal Executive. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Aberbach, Joel D., Robert M. Copeland, and Bert A. Rockman. 1990. From Nixon's Problem to Reagan's Achievement: The Federal Executive Reexamined. Pp. 175-194 in Looking Back on the Reagan Presidency, ed. Larry Berman. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Allison, G.T. 1971. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Boston: Little, Brown.
Ban, C., and P.W. Ingraham. 1990. Short-timers: Political Appointee Mobility and Its Impact on Political-career Relations in the Reagan Administration. Administration and Society 22:106-124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009539979002200106
Brehm, J., and S. Gates. 1997. Working, Shirking, and Sabotage: Bureaucratic Response to a Democratic Public. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mpub.15149
Brown, R.G. 1982. Party and Bureaucracy: From Kennedy to Reagan. Political Science Quarterly 97:279-294. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2149479
Clark, P., and J.Q. Wilson. 1961. Incentive Systems: A Theory of Organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly 6:129-166. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2390752
Cohen, D.M. 1998. Amateur Government. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 8:450-497. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.jpart.a024393
Cole, R.A., and D.A. Caputo. 1979. Presidential Control of the Senior Civil Service: Assessing the Strategies of the Nixon Years. American Political Science Review 73:399-413. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1954887
Downs, A. 1967. Inside Bureaucracy. Boston: Little, Brown.
Durant, R.F. 1990. Beyond Fear or Favor: Appointee-careerist Relations in the Post-Reagan Era. Public Administration Review 50:319-331. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/976614
Durant, R.F. 1998. The Administrative Presidency: Retrospect and Prospect. PRG Report 21:1-7.
Durant, R.F. 1992. The Administrative Presidency Revisited: Public Lands, the BLM, and the Reagan Revolution. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Durant, R.F., and A.L. Warber. 2001. Networking in the Shadow of Hierarchy: Public Policy, the Administrative Presidency, and the Neoadministrative State. Presidential Studies Quarterly 31:221-244. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0360-4918.2001.00168.x
Eisner, M.A. 1993. Regulatory Politics in Transition. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Friedman, T.L. 2001. Reforming Success. New York Times, September 7, p. A1.
Golden, M.M. 2000. What Motivates Bureaucrats?: Politics and Administration During the Reagan Years. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gruber, J.E. 1987. Controlling Bureaucracies: Dilemmas in Democratic Governance. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Harris, R.A., and S.M. Milkis. 1996. The Politics of Regulatory Change: A Tale of Two Agencies, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Heclo, H. 1977. A Government of Strangers. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Higgs, R. 1987. Crisis and Leviathan. New York: Oxford University Press.
Howell, W.G. 2003. Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9781400874392
Hult, K.M. 2003. The Bush White House in Comparative Perspective. Pp. 51-77 in The Presidency of George W. Bush: An Early Assessment, ed. F.I. Greenstein. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ingraham, P.W. 1987. Building Bridges or Destroying Them: The President, the Appointees, and the Bureaucracy. Public Administration Review 47:425-435. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/976068
Kirschten, D. 1983. White House-Administration Using Carter-era Reform to Manipulate the Levers of Government. National Journal 33:732-736.
Lewis, David E. 2008. The Politics of Presidential Appointments. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9781400837687
Light, P.C. 1995. Thickening Government: Federal Hierarchy and the Diffusion of Accountability. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Mackenzie, G.C., ed. 2001. Innocent Until Nominated: The Breakdown of the Presidential Appointments Process. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Maranto, R. 2005. Beyond a Government of Strangers. Lanham, MD: Lexington.
Maranto, R. 1989. Political Executives and Career Bureaucrats in the Reagan Administration. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Ph.D. Thesis.
Maranto, R. 1993a. Politics and Bureaucracy in the Modern Presidency. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Maranto, R. 1993b. Still Clashing After All These Years: Ideological Conflict in the Reagan Executive. American Journal of Political Science 37:681-698. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2111570
Maranto, R. 1994. The Higher Civil Service Faces Reinventing Government. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York City, September.
Maranto, R., and K.M. Hult 2004. Right Rurn?: Political Ideology in the Higher Civil Service, 1987-1994. American Review of Public Administration 34:199-222. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0275074004263352
Mayer, K.R. 2001. With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mayhew, D.R. 1991. Divided we Govern. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Meier, K.J. 1975. Representative Bureaucracy: An Empirical Analysis. American Political Science Review 69:526-542. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1959084
Meier, K.J., and L.G. Nigro. 1976. Representative Bureaucracy and Policy Preferences: A Study in the Attitudes of Federal Executives. Public Administration Review 36: 458-469. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/974854
Miles, R.E. 1978. The Origin and Meaning of Milesi's law. Public Administration Review 38:399-403. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/975497
Moe, T.M. 1985. The Politicized Presidency. Pp. 235-271 in The New Direction in American Politics, eds. J.E. Chubb and P.E. Peterson. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
National Commission on the Public Service [Volcker Commission]. 1989. Leadership for America: Rebuilding the Public Service. Lexington, MA: Lexington.
Nathan, R.P. 1983. The Administrative Presidency. New York: John Wiley.
Niskanen, W.A., Jr. 1971. Bureaucracy and Representative Government. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton.
Ouchi, W.G. 1980. Markets, Bureaucracies, and Clans. Administrative Science Quarterly 25:129-141. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2392231
Parsneau, K. 2004. Presidential Appointment Strategies and the Partisan Loyalty and Expertise of Subcabinet Officials. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April. http://archive.allacademic.com/ publication.search.php, accessed July 16, 2004.
Pfeffer, J. 1985. Organizations and Organization Theory. Pp. 379-440 in Handbook of Social Psychology, 3rd ed., eds. G. Lindzey and E. Aronson. New York: Random House
Pfiffner, J.P. 1996. The Strategic Presidency. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Pfiffner, J.P., and B.H. Patterson, Jr. 2003. The Office of Presidential Personnel. Pp. 165-192 in The White House World: Transitions, Organization, and Office Operation, eds. M.J. Kumar and T. Sullivan. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
Romzek, B.S. 1992. The Dynamics of Employee Commitment. Pp. 146-161 in Agenda for Excellence, eds. P.W. Ingraham and D.F. Kettl. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.
Rubin, I.S. 1985. Shrinking the Federal Government. New York: Longman.
Sanera, M. 1984. Implementing the Mandate. Pp. 457-560 in Mandate for Leadership II, eds. S. Butler, M. Sanera, and W.B. Weinrod. Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation.
Sanera, M. 1987. Paradoxical Lessons from In Search of Excellence. In Steering the Elephant: How Washington Really Works, eds. Robert Rector and Michael Sanera. New York: Universe Books.
Simendinger, A. 2004. Power Plays. National Journal 36:1166-1172.
Stehr, S.D. 1997. Top Bureaucrats and the Distribution of Influence in Reagan's Executive Branch. Public Administration Review 57:75-82. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/976694
Welfeld, Irving. 1992. HUD Scandals. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Wilson, J.Q. 1989. Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It. New York: Basic Books.
Wood, B.D., and R.W. Waterman. 1994. Bureaucratic Dynamics: The Role of Bureaucracy in a Democracy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Zaneski, C.T. 2001. Environment: It's Wildlife Protectors vs. the Resource Industries. National Journal 15:184-185.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with American Review of Politics agree to the following terms:
The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
Attribution: other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
Non-Commercial: the materials may not be used for commercial purposes;
Share Alike: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a pre-publication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access). Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
The Author represents and warrants that:
the Work is the Author’s original work;
the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
the Work has not previously been published;
the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
