Comparing Public Bureaucracies: Problems of Theory and Method

6. Conclusion

The Pursuit of Power tional expertise (Mosher, 1978). And this tendency will, in tum, produce a civil service which tends to be very well versed in the policies it administers and may well be able to defeat any political elites coming to office that are less well acquainted with those issues. And given that the agencies for which these civil servants will work also tend to have close connections with the interest groups in the respective policy area, they may frequently be part of functional patterns of interaction, with the political executives being perhaps the least important constituents . This pattern has been altering in the direction of a more adversarial model as the development of "issue networks " has produced more knowledgeable political executives (Heclo, 1978; Jordan, 1981). Careers. The career patterns of civil servants are related to the patterns of training described above and may also independently influence the patterns of interaction between civil servants and political executives. Civil service career patterns routinely differentiate between generalists and specialists. The career patterns fostered by individual administrative systems may either reinforce or counteract the pattern of training received by the civil servant before entry. The training received by British civil servants is quite general, for example, and the career pattern according to which younger civil servants move relatively frequently between jobs reinforces the generalist perspective . On the other hand, although law is an all-purpose, general training for the civil service, once selected, Swedish or Danish civil servants will typically remain within a single organization for a good part or all of their careers. I would hypothesize that, just as with generalist patterns of training, generalist career patterns tend to create something of a village life relationship between civil servants and political executives. This career pattern reinforces a variety of contacts among the civil service and with political executives and at the same time reduces the commitment of a civil servant to any particular policy area. The generalist career pattern tends to give the individual civil servant some sense of the generic problems of government and may consequently limit his or her willingness to press the claims of one department or agency 174 The Pursuit of Power against the overall demands of centralized control and management (Kellner and Crowther-Hunt, 1980:22-45). Rather obviously, the specialist· career would be hypothesized to produce a rather different pattern of behavior. This pattern might be best exemplified by the civil service system in the Scandinavian countries which, apart from centralized standards for recruiting civil servants, leave the majority of personnel decisions to individual ministries and boards. Although individuals may at some time in their career apply for other positions and receive them, the modal civil servant will spend a career within the single organization. These career patterns, or the somewhat more centralized pattern of recruitment in the United States, might be hypothesized to be related either to an adversarial relationship with political executives or to the functional model of interaction. In either instance, there would not be the integration across agencies that is predicted by a generalist career pattern. Specialized Bureaucratic Organizations. Several specialized career structures within public bureaucracies may also influence patterns of interaction. Most notably, the corps structures which exist in France, Italy, and Spain may produce highly integrated subsets of individuals within the bureaucracy with a pronounced organizational identity of their own. Particularly in France these civil servants are not confined to their nominal functional designations (for example, the Inspection des Finances is involved with more than just financial probity) but constitute an all-purpose elite for government and the society. The personal contacts, prestige, and knowledge which members of these grand corps obtain enables them to manage their own village very well and the entire society not too badly (Suleiman, 1985). Another specialized structure, although not nearly as clearly defined as the grand corps, is the "superbureaucrats" (Campbell and Szablowski, 1979). These civil servants work for such coordinating organizations within government as the Office of Management and Budget in the United States; the Treasury in the United Kingdom; the Privy Council Office, Treasury Board Secretariat, and so forth in Canada; and the host of other orga175 The Pursuit of Power nizations which attempt to coordinate fiscal, personnel, and legal actions across the wide variety of organizations in government . Although a number of career civil servants are employed by these organizations, they stand in a special relationship to politics...