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The Selection of Federal Political Executives*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Dean E. Mann
Dean E. Mann
Affiliation:
The Brookings Institution
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Extract

Central to the problem of obtaining intelligent and effective management and policy direction in the federal government are the sources and procedures used in the selection of federal political executives. These executives, occupying positions usually subject to presidential appointment and senatorial confirmation, constitute the “key group in making representative government work within the executive branch.” Through them the President directs and controls his administration, creates political support, and establishes lines of defense for his political program. Increasing attention has been paid to the selection process in recent years because of frequent reports of extreme difficulty in recruiting able people, inability to retain their services, and allegations that those who have served have proven less than adequate. The problem as broadly stated by the (Jackson) subcommittee on National Policy Machinery of the Senate Committee on Government Operations is: “how to make the quality of appointments of private citizens to national services keep pace with the spiraling complexity and difficulty of foreign policy and defense problems.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , March 1964 , pp. 81 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1964

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References

1 Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, Task Force Report on Personnel and Civil Service, February 1955, p. 39Google Scholar.

2 “The Private Citizen and the National Service,” Organizing for National Security, Hearings, vol. 3, 1961, p. 63Google Scholar.

3 New York, Oxford University Press, 1956, p. 233.

4 New York, Columbia University Press, 1939, p. 302.

5 Shannon, William V., “The Kennedy Administration: The Early Months,” The American Scholar, fall 1961, pp. 484–85Google Scholar.

6 As defined in this study political excutives are limited to under secretaries and assistant secretaries in major departments and deputies in several other agencies: Bureau of the Budget, Veterans Administration, General Services Administration, Housing and Home Finance Agency, Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, United States Information Agency, International Cooperation Administration and predecessors.

7 The people whom Laurin Henry identifies as being important figures in the “Commodore” operation after the election suggest the types and range of contacts which could be made from this central source. Presidential Transitions (Washington, D. C., Brookings Institution, 1960), pp. 464–65Google Scholar.

8 First-Hand Report (New York, 1961), p. 59. Our findings essentially confirm this viewGoogle Scholar.

9 See Yarmolinsky, Adam, “The Kennedy Talent Hunt,” The Reporter, June 8, 1961, pp. 22–25Google Scholar.

10 Macmahon and Millett, op. cit., p. 288.

11 Ibid., p. 36.

12 See Warner, W. Lloyd, “The Careers of American Business and Government Executives: A Comparative Analysis,” in Strother, George B., ed., Social Science Approaches to Business Behavior (The Dorsey Press and Richard D. Irwin Inc., 1962), pp. 116–118Google Scholar.

13 See Warner, op. cit., p. 120.

14 A significant percentage—over 40 per cent—failed to give information on religious preference, particularly among those who probably were Catholics or Jews.

15 Principal occupation was determined on the basis of the length of time spent in the occupation and the proximity of that work to the appointment as a political executive. The common practice of identifying principal occupation with professional training (e.g., classing all law graduates as lawyers), when in fact an individual may have spent a large part of his life in public service, was rejected.

16 The Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery of the Senate held up the Deputy Secretary of Defense position as an example of excessive turnover, failing to give any weight to the fact that the occupants of this position had had an average of four years and nine months of service prior to service in that particular position.

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