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Wilson Center (2)
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118568894
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Wilson Center (2)
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Records of the Office of the Chief of Staff (Reagan Administration)
James Cicconi's Subject Files
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Calendar of Events
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS
Smithsonian Institution Building Washington D.C. 20560 202 357-2115
FEBRUARY & MARCH 1983
Noon Discussion
Remarks by Clare Boothe Luce, writer, editor,
Monday
former Ambassador to Italy, former Member of Congress
February 28
Dinner*
Dinner in honor of Ambassador Max M. Kampelman, Member
Tuesday
and former Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Wilson
March 1
Center, and Chairman of the United States Delegation
to the Madrid Conference on Security and Cooperation
in Europe.
Speakers: Henry M. Jackson, United States Senator from Washington
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, United States Permanent
Representative to the United Nations
Noon Discussion
"Soviet Consumption and GNP: Are Western Estimates
Wednesday
Radically Off?"
March 2
Igor Birman, editor, Russia magazine
Colloquium
"The Skybolt Crisis, 1962: Harold Macmillan, the
Thursday
'Special Relationship,' and the French Connection"
March 3
4-6 pm
Alistair Horne, London, former Fellow, The Wilson Center
Commentators: McGeorge Bundy, Professor of History, New York University
Ernest May, Fellow, The Wilson Center; Charles Warren
Professor of History, Harvard University
Evening Dialogue*
"Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism: A Workable
Tuesday
Distinction?"
March 8
Speakers: Sidney Hook, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution
and Peace, Stanford
Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton
Noon Discussion
"Prokofieff and the Cult of Personality: On the 30th
Wednesday
Anniversary of the Deaths of Prokofieff and Stalin"
March 9
Malcolm Brown, Professor of Music, Indiana University
Colloquium
"The Evolution of the State under Authoritarian Regimes:
Wednesday
Argentina, 1976-1982"
March 9
4-6 pm
Oscar Ozlak, Center for the Study of the State and
Society, Buenos Aires
Noon Discussion
"Contemporary Political Trends"
Tuesday
March 15
George E. Reedy, Nieman Professor of Journalism,
Marquette University; former Fellow, The Wilson Center
Evening Dialogue*
Forthcoming Delegation of U.S. House of Representatives
Tuesday
to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., with present and
March 15
past Fellows of the Kennan Institute for Advanced
Russian Studies, The Wilson Center
Noon Discussion
"U.S./U.S.S.R. Grain Trade: Prospects for the Future"
Wednesday
March 16
Donald Novotny, Director, Grain & Feed Division,
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Noon Discussion
"The Problems and Prospects of the Atlantic Alliance"
Tuesday
March 22
Jan Hendrik Lubbers, Ambassador of the Netherlands
to the United States
Colloquium
"Intellectuals and Nationalism in Postwar Japan:
Tuesday
Takeuchi Yoshimi, Yoshimoto Ryumei, and Eto Jun"
March 22
4-6 pm
Lawrence Olson, Professor of History, Wesleyan
University; former Fellow, The Wilson Center
Noon Discussion
"The Papal Assassination Attempt: New Evidence on a
Wednesday
Soviet Connection"
March 23
Paul Henze, Resident Consultant, Rand Corporation;
former Fellow, The Wilson Center
Colloquium
"An Anthropological Approach to Caribbean Social History"
Wednesday
March 23
Sidney Mintz, Professor of Anthropology, The Johns
4-6 pm
Hopkins University; former Fellow, The Wilson Center
Colloquium
"Issues and Nonissues in Russian Social History and
Thursday
Historiography, 1890s-1920s"
March 24
4-6 pm
Michael Confino, Fellow, The Wilson Center; Samuel
Rubin Professor of Russian and East European History,
Tel Aviv University
Noon Discussion
"National Security Decision Making: Soviet and
Wednesday
American Variance"
March 30
Tyrus W. Cobb, Lt. Col., USA, Associate Professor of
International Politics, United States Military Academy
*By invitation
It is suggested that events be confirmed on the day of the event by telephoning
Louise Platt or Cynthia Ely, 357-2115.
THE WILSON CENTER
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
STUDIES PROGRAM
Tocicconi
JAB
Samuel F. Wells, Jr., Secretary
ADVISORY COUNCIL
15 February 1983
pls
Alexander L. George, Chairman
Stanford University
John P. Crecine
Carnegie-Mellon
Mr. James A. Baker, III
AA
University
Assistant to the President
and Chief of Staff
Pl.do.
Andrew J. Goodpaster
The White House
General, USA (Ret.)
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D. C.
20500
2-23 ye Done
Craufurd D. Goodwin
Dear Jim:
Duke University
Robert Jervis
I would like to invite you to attend an evening dialogue on Monday,
Columbia University
February 28, 1983 to examine the question "Does the United States
Philip A. Odeen
Strategic Force Need the MX?" As you know, the President's Blue
Coopers & Lybrand
Ribbon Commission will shortly submit its recommendations on how
Washington
the MX missile should be based. The debate over the optimum basing
Bernard Reich
mode has raised larger questions about the vulnerability of the
George Washington
U.S. strategic force, in particular whether a new land-based
University
system is the appropriate response to those concerns.
Zara S. Steiner
New Hall
To address this important issue, we have invited three distinguished
Cambridge University
experts to present three different perspectives on the problem.
Charles H. Townes
Dr. Ronald Lehman, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
University of California,
Strategic and Theatre Nuclear Forces Policy, will present the
Berkeley
Administration's argument for deployment of the MX. Dr. Richard
Garwin, Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard and Fellow at the IBM Thomas J. Watson
Research Center, will explore alternatives to the MX, and Dr.
Jeremy Stone, Director of the Federation of American Scientists,
will discuss the arms control option for dealing with MX.
The session will begin with refreshments in the Wilson Center
rotunda at 6:00 p.m. with the proceedings to begin promptly at
6:30 p.m. A buffet supper will be served at about 7:30 p.m. The
seminar will reconvene after dinner at 8:30 p.m. when participants
will have the opportunity to exchange views in detail; we will
adjourn by 10:00 p.m. This meeting will be off-the-record to
encourage a frank and uninhibited discussion.
Please let us know whether you will be able to attend by calling
our office at 357-2968, before Thursday February 24. We hope you
will be able to join us.
Yours sincerely,
Sam
Samuel F. Wells, Jr.
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 202 357 2968 CABLE: WILCEN
THE WILSON CENTER
James H. Billington, Director
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
William J. Baroody, Jr., Chairman
Robert A. Mosbacher, Vice Chairman
February 14, 1983
James A. Baker III
Theodore C. Barreaux
William J. Bennett
Daniel J. Boorstin
Kenneth B. Clark
AA RSVP. I'm
Stuart E. Eizenstat
Max M. Kampelman
Jesse H. Oppenheimer
S. Dillon Ripley
going pl alone.
Mr. James Cicconi
Richard S. Schweiker
Special Assistant to the President
Anne Firor Scott
and to the Chief of Staff
Thanks ge
George P. Shultz
Robert M. Warner
The White House
Charles Z. Wick
Washington, D. C. 20500
2.23.Done
Dear Mr. Cicconi:
I am writing on behalf of the Board of Trustees of
The Wilson Center to invite you to a small dinner and evening
to honor Max Kampelman for his outstanding service as Chairman
of our Board of Trustees from 1979 to 1982. As you know, Max
served in this capacity--and has continued to serve energet-
ically as a member of this Board--concurrently with fulfilling
his continuing duties with distinction as Chairman of the
United States Delegation to the Madrid Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe.
We hope very much that you and your spouse will be able to
attend this special evening on Tuesday, March 1, and join with
our Board in honoring a distinguished American who has done so
much for this presidential memorial, as well as for the country.
The evening will begin with a social hour at 6:30 p.m. in
the beautiful old castle building of the Smithsonian. Dress
will be informal. The Wilson Center is on the third floor of
the castle facing the Mall at 1000 Jefferson Drive, S.W.
There is parking on Jefferson Drive in front of the building.
Please enter the building through the east door; a guard will
direct you from there.
The Board and the Center's director, James Billington,
join me in expressing the hope that you will be able to be
with us for the evening.
Sincerely,
Bill Baroody
William J. Baroody, Jr.
Chairman of the Board
R.S.V.P to Louise Platt or Cynthia Ely at 202-357-2115.
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 202 357-2429 CABLE: WILCEN
THE WILSON CENTER
James H. Billington. Director
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
cicconi
William J. Baroody, Jr., Chairman
Robert A. Mosbacher. Vice Chairman
James A. Baker III
February 14, 1983
Theodore C. Barreaux
William J. Bennett
Daniel J. Boorstin
Kenneth B. Clark
Stuart E. Eizenstat
Max M. Kampelman
Jesse H. Oppenheimer
S. Dillon Ripley
Mr. James A. Baker, III
Richard S. Schweiker
Anne Firor Scott
Assistant to the President
George P. Shultz
and Chief of Staff
Robert M. Warner
The White House
Charles Z. Wick
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Jim:
I am writing on behalf of the Board of Trustees of
The Wilson Center to invite you to a small dinner and evening
to honor Max Kampelman for his outstanding service as Chairman
of our Board of Trustees from 1979 to 1982. As you know, Max
served in this capacity--and has continued to serve energet-
ically as a member of this Board--concurrently with fulfilling
his continuing duties with distinction as Chairman of the
United States Delegation to the Madrid Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe.
We hope very much that you and your spouse will be able to
attend this special evening on Tuesday, March 1, and join with
our Board in honoring a distinguished American who has done so
much for this presidential memorial, as well as for the country.
The evening will begin with a social hour at 6:30 p.m. in
the beautiful old castle building of the Smithsonian. Dress
will be informal. The Wilson Center is on the third floor of
the castle facing the Mall at 1000 Jefferson Drive, S.W.
There is parking on Jefferson Drive in front of the building.
Please enter the building through the east door; a guard will
direct you from there.
The Board and the Center's director, James Billington,
join me in expressing the hope that you will be able to be
with us for the evening.
Sincerely,
Bill Baroody
William J. Baroody, Jr.
Chairman of the Board
R.S.V.P to Louise Platt or Cynthia Ely at 202-357-2115.
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON 20560 202 357-2429 CABLE: WILCEN
regret and mealed 2/2
onter
THE WILSON CENTER
bh
JAMES H. BILLINGTON, Director
REJRET in CA/IF.
MEMORANDUM
To
TO:
Members of the Board of Trustees
DATE: 26 January 1983
of The Wilson Center
FROM:
Janes James H. & Billington, Biys
Director
SUBJECT: Board meeting and other meetings at the Center
This memorandum is to bring you up to date on some events planned for
the near future at the Center and to remind you of the upcoming Board meeting.
The next Board of Trustees meeting will be on Tuesday, March 1, from
3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. It will be followed by a dinner honoring Max Kampelman
for his service as Board chairman, as well as his chairmanship of the U.S. Dele-
gation to the Madrid Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. I hope
we can have a good Board attendance at both the meeting and the dinner following.
I am enclosing a card for you to indicate if you will be able to be here for
either or both of these events.
Also enclosed is a revised list of committee assignments as announced
by Chairman Baroody at the October Board meeting. If you have questions or
comments, please give me a call. As you know, Secretary Schweiker, of Health
and Human Services, has resigned and will soon be succeeded by Margaret Heckler.
Board members are all also particularly welcome at two other events to
be held soon here at the Center. First, the Fellowship Committee of the Board
will be meeting at 9:30 a.m. on February 1 in the Regents' Room here at the
Center. Any member of the Board would be welcome. We would need advance notice
to send out the stack of material if you plan on being there.
The Wilson Council will be meeting on the morning of Thursday, Febru-
ary 3, beginning at 10:00 a.m. Some Board members have in the past been able to
sit in on these meetings and to become more familiar with the valuable role the
Council is playing in the Center's private fund-raising needs. Now that we are
launched on a major endowment campaign, it would be particularly helpful to have
more contact between the Board and the Wilson Council.
I would be grateful if you would return the enclosed card to let us
know whether you will attend the March 1 Board Meeting and dinner following and
the February 3 Wilson Council meeting.
Enclosures
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 202 357-2429 CABLE: WILCEN
THE WILSON CENTER
W
James H. Billington, Director
January 5, 1983
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
William J. Baroody, Jr., Chairman
Robert A. Mosbacher, Vice Chairman
James A. Baker III
Theodore C. Barreaux
William J. Bennett
Daniel J. Boorstin
Kenneth B. Clark
TO:
Members of the Board of Trustees
Stuart E. Eizenstat
Max M. Kampelman
FROM:
B
William J. Baroody, Jr., Chairman
Jesse H. Oppenheimer
S. Dillon Ripley
Richard S. Schweiker
SUBJECT: Revised Board Assignments
Anne Firor Scott
George P. Shultz
Robert M. Warner
Charles Z. Wick
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
Mr. Baroody, Chairman;
Mr. Ripley, Vice Chairman;
Messrs: Baker, Bennett, Kampelman,
Mosbacher and Shultz
FINANCE COMMITTEE:
Mr. Mosbacher, Chairman;
Messrs: Barreaux, Kampelman, Oppenheimer,
Powers*, Ripley, Shultz, and Wick
PERMANENT SITE COMMITTEE:
Mr. Ripley, Chairman;
Messrs: Baker, Boorstin, Schweiker**,
Warner and Wick
FELLOWSHIP COMMITTEE:
Mr. Warner, Chairman;
Messrs: Barreaux, Bennett, Clark,
Kampelman, Ripley and Ms. Scott
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Mr. Eizenstat, Chairman;
Messrs: Baker, Oppenheimer, Schweiker**,
Warner and Wick
PUBLICATIONS AND MEETINGS
COMMITTEE:
Mr. Wick, Chairman
Messrs: Boorstin, Clark, Eizenstat
Mosbacher and Schweiker**
*designates non-Board member Mr. John J. Powers, Jr., Chairman of
The Wilson Council.
**to be succeeded by Margaret M. Heckler, subject to confirmation
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 202 357-2429 CABLE: WILCEN
THE WILSON CENTER
JAMES H. BILLINGTON, Director
MEMORANDUM
TO:
Members of the Board of Trustees
DATE: 26 January 1983
of The Wilson Center
FROM:
Janes James H. N Billington, Biy
Director
SUBJECT: Board meeting and other meetings at the Center
This memorandum is to bring you up to date on some events planned for
the near future at the Center and to remind you of the upcoming Board meeting.
The next Board of Trustees meeting will be on Tuesday, March 1, from
3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. It will be followed by a dinner honoring Max Kampelman
for his service as Board chairman, as well as his chairmanship of the U.S. Dele-
gation to the Madrid Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. I hope
we can have a good Board attendance at both the meeting and the dinner following.
I am enclosing a card for you to indicate if you will be able to be here for
either or both of these events.
Also enclosed is a revised list of committee assignments as announced
by Chairman Baroody at the October Board meeting. If you have questions or
comments, please give me a call. As you know, Secretary Schweiker, of Health
and Human Services, has resigned and will soon be succeeded by Margaret Heckler.
Board members are all also particularly welcome at two other events to
be held soon here at the Center. First, the Fellowship Committee of the Board
will be meeting at 9:30 a.m. on February 1 in the Regents' Room here at the
Center. Any member of the Board would be welcome. We would need advance notice
to send out the stack of material if you plan on being there.
The Wilson Council will be meeting on the morning of Thursday, Febru-
ary 3, beginning at 10:00 a.m. Some Board members have in the past been able to
sit in on these meetings and to become more familiar with the valuable role the
Council is playing in the Center's private fund-raising needs. Now that we are
launched on a major endowment campaign, it would be particularly helpful to have
more contact between the Board and the Wilson Council.
I would be grateful if you would return the enclosed card to let us
know whether you will attend the March 1 Board Meeting and dinner following and
the February 3 Wilson Council meeting.
Enclosures
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 202 357-2429 CABLE: WILCEN
THE WILSON CENTER
W
James H. Billington, Director
January 5, 1983
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
William J. Baroody, Jr., Chairman
Robert A. Mosbacher, Vice Chairman
James A. Baker III
Theodore C. Barreaux
William J. Bennett
Daniel J. Boorstin
Kenneth B. Clark
TO:
Members of the Board of Trustees
Stuart E. Eizenstat
Max M. Kampelman
FROM:
B
William J. Baroody, Jr., Chairman
Jesse H. Oppenheimer
S. Dillon Ripley
Richard S. Schweiker
SUBJECT: Revised Board Assignments
Anne Firor Scott
George P. Shultz
Robert M. Warner
Charles Z. Wick
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
Mr. Baroody, Chairman;
Mr. Ripley, Vice Chairman;
Messrs: Baker, Bennett, Kampelman,
Mosbacher and Shultz
FINANCE COMMITTEE:
Mr. Mosbacher, Chairman;
Messrs: Barreaux, Kampelman, Oppenheimer,
Powers*, Ripley, Shultz, and Wick
PERMANENT SITE COMMITTEE:
Mr. Ripley, Chairman;
Messrs: Baker, Boorstin, Schweiker**,
Warner and Wick
FELLOWSHIP COMMITTEE:
Mr. Warner, Chairman;
Messrs: Barreaux, Bennett, Clark,
Kampelman, Ripley and Ms. Scott
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Mr. Eizenstat, Chairman;
Messrs: Baker, Oppenheimer, Schweiker**,
Warner and Wick
PUBLICATIONS AND MEETINGS
COMMITTEE:
Mr. Wick, Chairman
Messrs: Boorstin, Clark, Eizenstat
Mosbacher and Schweiker**
*designates non-Board member Mr. John J. Powers, Jr., Chairman of
The Wilson Council.
**to be succeeded by Margaret M. Heckler, subject to confirmation
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 202 357-2429 CABLE: WILCEN
Wilson
THE WILSON CENTER
JAMES H. BILLINGTON, Director
MEMORANDUM
TO:
Members of the Board of Trustees
DATE: 27 October 1982
FROM:
Janes
SUBJECT: Follow-up from Board Meeting and Date of Next Meeting
We were pleased to have so many of the Board members at the October 6
meeting. We were also pleased to have Secretary Schweiker's excellent presen-
tation at the Wilson Council meeting the following day, Secretary Shultz at
our Inter-American Dialogue a few days later, and James Baker at a special New
York evening a few days earlier. We are truly grateful for such full Board
support and participation. We hope to have more Board meetings in cooperation
with the Council in the future, and are planning a special event in conjunction
with the next Board meeting, honoring Max Kampelman both for his role as former
chairman of the Wilson Center Board and for his services to the nation as
chairman of the U.S. delegation to the Madrid Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe. Please hold on your calendar Tuesday, 1 March 1983,
3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. for the Board meeting and in the evening, 6:00 p.m. to
10:00 p.m. for the dinner.
As you may recall from the October meeting, Chairman Baroody requested
that all members contact him soon to indicate any special personal preference or
suggestions for others in serving on committees of the Board. If you have not
yet done so, we hope that you can by the end of next week.
CC: James Cicconi
AA
Re last TP above,
pl call Mernie.
If prefer to contimue
wky an JAB's behalf on the
Program Comm. ask her %
pass on to Baroody, or else
get # and leave message
11-1-82 - Done (spoks w/ Isabel in B'sof) ARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 202 357-2429 CABLE: WILCEN
ar his asst. Thanks
357-2763
Marriz Wrathers
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
October 27, 1982
MEMORANDUM FOR JIM CICCONI
T.T.
FROM:
T. A. D. THARP
SUBJECT:
Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars
Regarding your memo of October 22, be advised that Baroody
and Mosbacher were approved by Senior Staff for reappointment
on October 6.
They will actually be reappointed this Friday. Thank goodness
they have been holding over in the meantime.
10-28
deft missagr for Billington w/ lady standing in for
Mernie (shr's on leave this werb).
THE WILSON CENTER
wanted yesterday. to slip but
PROGRAM ON AMERICAN SOCIETY
AND POLITICS
Michael J. Lacey, Secretary
further 1 to got you out weeting of the Regel before
you goard
TO:
James W. Cicconi
5, 1982 you
DATE: October
Special Assistant to the President
and Assistant to the Chief of Staff
The White House
FROM:
Michael J. Lacey With
SUBJECT:
Wilson Center Conference
Jim Billington suggested that I get in touch with you to see if we couldn't
get some White House people to attend a major conference we have coming up on
October 23 and 24. The subject is "The Role of the State in Recent American
History," and the papers being prepared for it (I am enclosing for you one of
them on the civil service by Hugh Heclo) are very wide ranging, enough, I think,
to be of real interest to some of the administration people. We would be
delighted to have you join us if you could possibly get free, and I have
attached a letter of invitation with details. But I hasten to add that I
understand how difficult it is for someone in your position to get loose for
a weekend.
Because of his interest in this general field, we will call Richard
Williamson and see whether he could come (we are also planning a conference on
federalism for next February and hope to get him involved). But in checking
around I have been told that there are two White House people who would be ideal
for this group, and I wanted to find out whether you agree and could help us to
approach them. They are Christopher DeMuth, and Richard Beale. Should we try
to involve them?
We expect to have a small group of about 24 people for this conference, and
they will represent some of the best people in the country in history and political
science. We intend bureaucratically to use it as a kind of planning group, and
know that as the papers are discussed and criticized we will get ideas for
Wilson Center conferences for the future as a follow-up. It would be very
helpful to us therefore if we could get someone with an interest in this area
to join us from the White House. No preparation would be required other than
to read the papers, and the group is small enough that it will be an informal
gathering.
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 02 357-2965 CABLE: WILCEN
THE WILSON CENTER
PROGRAM ON AMERICAN SOCIETY
AND POLITICS
October 5, 1982
Michael J. Lacey, Secretary
Mr. James W. Cicconi
Special Assistant to the President
& Assistant to the Chief of Staff
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Dear Jim:
I am writing to invite you to join us for a conference during the
weekend of October 23 and 24. The subject for the conference is "The Role
of the State in Recent American History," and the session is being sponsored
by the Woodrow Wilson Center's program on American Society and Politics. It
will be held at "Belmont", the Smithsonian Institution's conference center,
a country estate located between Washington and Baltimore. We will begin on
the evening of Friday, October 22, and will finish up at lunch on Sunday.
Three papers being prepared now will form the basis for discussion.
Professor Morton Keller of Brandeis University will offer an introductory
paper which will set up the problem by focusing on relations between politics
and the state from the period of the founding up through the New Deal.
Professor Otis Graham of the University of North Carolina will concern himself
with relations between society and the state since the New Deal, and will
discuss the controversies over the role of government that have been elaborated
since that time. He will also suggest some areas in which the investment of
fresh attention might be helpful. The third paper is by Professor Hugh
Heclo of the Government Department at Harvard University, and it deals with
the state and America's higher civil service.
The conference center can accommodate only 24 people, and so we are
trying on a selective basis to pull together some of the people in political
science and history, and from government as well, who have been most concerned
with the problems involved in this admittedly broad area of interest. We are
hoping that the discussion of the papers presented will help us at the Wilson
Center to decide whether some form of continuing involvement in the area on
our part would be useful, and if so, of what kind.
If you can get free for that weekend, we can provide for your accommodation
during the conference. No advance preparation would be necessary, other than
to read the papers before we get underway, and I will get these to you prior
to the meeting. The group involved is small enough that we should all be
able to fit around the same table, and I am hoping that you will be able to
join us. Please let me know, either by phone (357-2965) or by letter whether
you can accept, and let me ask also that you do so at your earliest convenience,
so that we can go alternates if necessary.
If you have any questions in connection with the conference, I would be
happy to try and answer them for you, and in the meantime I shall look forward
to your reply.
Sincerely,
Michael Clike J. Lacey
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 202 357-2965 CABLE: WILCEN
THE STATE AND
AMERICA'S HIGHER CIVIL SERVICE
Hugh Heclo
Harvard University
FOR DISCUSSION AT WILSON CENTER CONFERENCE ON THE ROLE OF THE STATE
IN RECENT AMERICAN HISTORY. OCTOBER 23-24, 1982. NOT FOR QUOTATION
OR CITATION WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.
THE STATE AND
AMERICA'S HIGHER CIVIL SERVICE
Hugh Heclo
Harvard University
In an European setting any discussion of the state poses familiar
issues of structure, philosophy, and history. The situation is different
in the United States. To speak of the state summons images of permanance,
of coherence, of a self-contained quality in government that sounds alien
to American ears. The American state is everywhere and nowhere.
One approach to this amorphous subject is to consider the American
state in terms of the officials who man it. In this paper I will concentrate
on one of the most direct human embodiments of any established state,
the higher civil service.
The higher civil service in the United States is a study in ambiguities.
Topbureaucrats' status, their role in policy-making and politics, their
relationship to the larger society--all these features are poorly defined
in American central government and subject to immense counter pressures.
It is even questionable whether or not there actually is an American
higher civil service, at least not in the sense by which that term is used
in other countries. To study the higher civil service in Washington, we
need to think not only of hierarchies with formal, clear career lines, but
also of loose groupings of people where the lines of policy, politics, and
administration merge in a complex jumble of bodies.
Washington seems to have everything. Look for the equivalent of
French corps and you will find the closed, elitist model reflected to some
degree in the membership of the Forest Service, Army Corps of Engineers,
U.S. Geological Survey, Federal Highway Administration, or Justice
Department Anti-Trust Division. Look to duplicate the British Administrative
class and you find resemblances in the State Department's Foreign Service
and the President's budget agency. Although not as self-consciously managed
as their Japanese counterparts, administrative cohorts in Washington have
-2-
been created by major events such as the New Deal of the 1930s, the
Great Society/New Frontier initiatives of the 1960s, and the Nixon-Ford
policies of the 1970s. Lawyers have carved out their own niche in the
personnel structure of federal agencies and frequently play the role
of organizational negotiators along Norwegian lines. Likewise, strong
bureau chiefs can claim the German title of "political bureaucrats"
in advancing their programs with Congress, political interests and
department heads. And surely their is no lack of pettifoggery Italian-
style in insulated pieces of Washington officialdom.
Each foreign image can be found in America's higher civil service,
but none is complete as a characterization of the whole picture. To
suggest that one or another pattern predominates would be midleading.
And yet to think that the senior bureaucracy is simply a random collection
of people and styles would be obtuse. Like any montage, the U.S. higher
civil service is best appreciated by its themes, not its individual pictures.
One such theme is the unmanaged quality of America's higher civil
service. By that I do not mean that there is runaway growth or absence
of legalistic constraints. Far from it. Growth in personnel has been
meager and restrictive personnel regulations abound. I mean that no one
looks after the higher civil service as such, and certainly senior
bureaucrats themselves do not (as in other countries) oversee its workings,
traditions, and fate.
A second theme, related to the first, is the peculiar absence of a
formal civil service presence in the central executive institutions of
government, especially the President's Office and the offices of major
department heads. This situation appears to have been a gradual development
of the last forty years or so: one part a "disappearing act" by senior
officials who once made up such a presence, and one part a failure to
-3-
discover effective new ways of using senior careerists as these central
offices have grown over the years. But whatever the explanation, the
result is clear. Compared to its counterparts in other countries, the
U.S. higher civil service seems hollow at the center.
A final theme explored in this paper concerns a profound and
probably growing duality in the higher civil service as an informal
personnel system. Certainly, it is possible to identify a schizoid
quality in the upper level bureaucracy of every country. This condition
is the natural byproduct of having to accommodate twin tasks in any higher
civil service: overall supervision of the administrative machinery below
and personal advisory relations with political ministers above. The
effect in many countries is to create a kind of bifurcation in the
civil service itself--service in the French cabinets and grands corps
versus the more narrow career corps; German political bureaucrats who
are state secretaries and the gradations of less political work below
them; those at the top of the British administrative class and all the
others; Japan's "politically sensitive" bureaucrats enmeshed in the web
of conservative politics across the top of government versus the purer
organization men below; and so on. The United States, on the other hand,
has erected this dual need into a two-track system of top bureaucratic
manpower, a formal civil service bureaucracy and an informal political
technocracy.
The three themes are of course related. If the system as a whole
tends to be unmanaged, how can there be any reliable civil service
presence at the center or any coherent organization of the dual tasks
at the top of the bureaucracy? If the civil service is largely excluded
from the executive center, i.e., Presidency, how can it be managed or
even imagined to have a topside structure? With no real top but instead
a duality of senior bureaucratic manpower, what is there to be represented
at the center? And SO the circle of ambivalence about the higher civil
service continues unbroken in Washington. In the past several years, a
-4-
new attempt has been made to reconstitute the senior executive personnel
system of the bureaucracy, but as we shall see there are powerful
historical and political forces working against any movement in the
direction of a European or Japanese style of higher civil service. The
real definition of America's higher civil service is being written, not
in the language of formal personnel statutes, but in the quiet, informal
understandings that shape people's careers in public service. In this
as perhaps in no other country, the higher civil service is molded by
forces external to itself. Its emerging structure, broadly understood,
is shaped by changes in the larger political society, its character stamped
by the unwritten no less than the written polticial constitution.
A Historical Anomaly
The ambiguous position of the higher civil service in the United
States owes much to history. Taken as a whole, these background conditions
add up to a situation that is uniquely American compared with most other
bureaucracies.
In the first place, the national civil service was founded and developed
only well after the basic constitutional framework of the nation had been
established. The written constitution of 1787 was generally silent concerning
the administrative nature of the new national government, leaving the eventual
growth of the bureaucracy subject to successvie feats of improvization.
Once the Founders had settled on the principle of a single executive head
in the form of the President and his appointment of department heads with
advice and consent of the legislature's Senate, their constitutional advice
about the remainder of any administrative arrangements was, in effect "leave
it to Congress and [sotto voce] the President.
-5-
Unlike its counterpart in other countries, the national bureaucracy
in Washington had no roots in a pre-existing monarchical or aristocratic
government (as Britain, France, Norway for example). Neither was it
grounded in the struggle to attain nationhood (Germany, Italy) or to
protect that nationhood against foreign threats (as in Japan). The first
civil service law began to make itself felt in Washington almost a century
after the constitutional design had been established and almost 20 years
after the chief threat to that design--the War between the States--had
been settled. During all this time the main threats had been internal,
Federalists versus anti-Federalists, Abolition versus Slave states.
Rather than a rallying point for defense of the nation, what small
bureaucracy there was in these times became part of the spoils for which
antagonists for different definitions of that nationhood contended.
The result is that civil servants have appeared on the government scene
in a way that seems somewhat detached from the accepted structure of
American political institutions. That fact has helped foster ambivalent
public sentiments about "Washington bureaucrats," although no one would
2/
want to claim constitutional history is the only factor at work.
Perhaps the most important effect of their detachment from constitutional
history has been within the minds of bureaucrats themselves. There is less
basis for American senior bureaucrats to feel sure of their place in
government as civil servants as such (rather than as particular kinds of
professionals, specialists, etc.). Their profession as civil servants,
their responsibility as representatives of the national state, has never
been a part of the constitutional culture.
A national bureaucracy not only failed to develop in tandem with the
constitution and nation-building process. It also lagged behind the
development of more or less democratic forms of political participation.
This is a second important distinction of the higher civil service in the
United States compared with other countries. A popularly-elected lower
house of the national legislature was of course part of the original
design for government in 1787, and Congress as a whole, not the President,
-6-
retained the power to regulate the appointment of the bulk of the Federal
workforce
Within the next few decades, voting became an accepted
right of virtually all adult white males, and mass political parties and
organized interest groups were well underway. This gave the American
national bureaucracy a more permeable, less elitist administrative structure
than the European or Japanese cases and, for the same reason, heightens
the similarity with the Chilean civil service. Before the higher civil
service could establish its own coherent identity or defind its prerogatives,
other political structures or modern democracy were in place and making demands.
Paradoxically, the fact that the U.S. civil service was born into a
democratically mobilized world was a powerful impulse for seeking a clear
separation between politics and administration. By the last quarter of
the 19th century, the civil service concept was generally regarded as
synonymous with the protection of administrative machinery against political
influence. This approach severely inhibited any serious attention to defining
the legitimate political functions of a higher civil service. It was a model
that fit the expanding technical requirements of modern government, but it
also fit the political needs of the situation. Bureaucrats were less
vulnerable to the political crowds if they could justify their existence
in terms of technical expertise. Congressmen could find the presence of
high-paid bureaucrats politically acceptable on the same grounds
Civil service reformers had paid little attention to the higher civil
service because it would inevitably blur the line between politics and
administration. The advocates of managerial modernization did likewise
because it had little to do with either efficient routinization or technical
specialization in the government workforce. And certainly politicians in
Congress and the White House had little reason to jeopardize their credientials
as democratic representatives by championing such an elitist concept. The
higher civil service therefore has been an outstanding "non-subject" in the
development of American central government.
-7-
Here then is a combination of forces admirably suited to confuse
the status of high level bureaucrats in Washington. If they had been
identified with the creation and defense of the American nation-state,
if they had been already in place to help socialize the emerging crowd
of democratic politicians to understand their ways, if the Constitution
sanctioned their existence with its mantle of authority, if they were
expected to serve as aides to politicians as well as technical specialists
or democratically programmed bits of machinery--if some or all of these
conditions were met, the political status of America's higher civil
service would be much less problematic. Instead, the United States has,
at most, tolerated the existence of "Washington bureaucrats" and evolved
a complex system of high level administrative personnel that is both
democratic and technocratic. Seen in relation to other countries, this
is a remarkable combination of characteristics. No one could have invented
it. America's higher civil service--broadly understood--is an unintended
byproduct molded between the internal demands of government and the external
demands of the larger political society. Generations of personnel experts
in the US have envied the tidy bureaucratic system of Europe. Growing up
around them, untidy and unobvious to be sure, has been a democratic
technocracy that may have much to say about the prospects for self-
government in many nations.
The Dual Structure
Seen as a whole, the Washington bureaucracy has a dual, or two-track
system of administrative management: one growing out of the formal civil
service rules of the personnel system and one based on an informal, but
also technocratic quasi-bureaucracy of appointed manpower. Consider the
gross structure of several departments as shown in Table 1.
-8-
The general distribution is more important than the exact numbers
and job titles. These American images of departmental management contrast
with the situation found in other developed countries in these respects:
there are (1) more appointive political positions extending (2) farther
down into the administrative structure and (3) combining career and
political appointments at some of the same levels in the agency hierarchy.
During 1979, new rules for a 'Senior Executive Service' brought somewhat
more order to these arrangements. But this reform did not alter the basic
mixed structure of career and political personnel in the bureaucracy.
Approximately 8,000 managerial positions located predominately in the
supergrade level (but not 2,000 mainly scientific and professional jobs
at the same level) compose the Senior Executive Service. Approximately
45 percent of these 8,000 positions are reserved for career civil servants
by virtue of the political sensitivities associated with the work (e.g.
Internal Revenue Service auditors, contract-awarding executives, and so on.)
The remaining 55 percent may be filled either by career or politically-
appointed executives, but the number of political executives may not
total more than 10 percent (i.e. 800) of all Senior Executive Service
appointments. The new senior executive system is obviously not the whole
picture because Presidential and other political appointees at the higher
"Executive Schedule" level (see Table 1, ranks I-V) can also be deeply
engaged in administrative management of the departments and agencies.
Governmentwide there are roughly 550 of these appointees, ranging from
the 13 Cabinet secretaries at level I to the over 400 appointees at levels
IV and V who often do head major departmental divisions.
Who are these people? One may well ask. Certainly they are unknown
to the general public and largely unmentioned in the news media. In some
respects, political executives and career executives share characteristics
that distinguish them from senior bureaucrats in Europe. In other respects,
they differ from each other in significant ways. Table 2 lays out some of
these key differences and similarities.
by Rank as 01 1975-76
DEPARTMENT
Agriculture
Housing and Urban Development
Justice
RANK
P
C
P
C
P
C
Executive Schedule
I
1
-
1
-
1
I
II
-
-
-
-
2
-
III
1
-
].
-
3
I
IV
F1
-
11
-
16
I
V
3
-
7
--
6
-
Supergrade Level
18
10
11
5
2
17
6
TABLE 1.
-6-
17
15
37
21
15
42
15
16
36
162
17
67
88
64
Mid-level Grades
15
20
1151
28
571
14
1096
14
7
2422
14
1075
39
1959
13
6
5.151
10
1756
56
5047
Source: Unpublished data from the respective personnel offices of each department.
For further details of position classification, see Hugh Heclo, A Govern-
ment of Strangers (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1977) pp.36-43.
-10-
Table 2. Selected Characteristics of Senior Bureaucrats
in Different Countries, 1970-71
Britain Virance Serbany Italy United State
car.ex, pol
Father's Occupational Status
high managemt. & professional
51%
66%
46%
46%
39%
49,
lower
"
If
11
17
30
21
36
30
27
skilled non-manual
16
3
19
16
11
11
lower non-manual
5
0
2
0
7
7
skilled manual
5
1
11
3
7
4
semi- & unskilled manual
8
0
1
0
7
2
Bureaucrat's Educational Background
below university level
14%
na
1%
0%
0%
3,
law
3
55
53
18
28
humanities
38
2
0
6
7
social sciences
12
17
36
29
38
technical, hard sciences
26
14
10
42
10
university major unknown
7
2
1
5
15
Has One or More Relatives in Politics
or the Civil Service Now or in Past
48%
50%
80%
67%
37%
33%
Father Employed in Government
20%
na
32%
41%
9%
O°
Percentage Who Have Spent at least
Onc-Quarter of Adult Life Outside
their respective National Govt.
12%
07%
49%
24
30%
76)
Percentage Who Have Served in a
National Ministry other than
Present Ministry
51%
na
32%
18%
27%
157
Source: Joel D. Abercach and Robert D. Putnam, "Paths to the Top, 11
(reproduced), paper presented to the Conference on Frontiers
in Comparative Analysis of Bureaucratic and Political Elites,
Waassenaar, Netherlands, November, 1977.
-11-
In general, the senior bureacratic manpower of every country is
unrepresentative in the sense of being drawn disproportionately from the
university educated, middle class and professional sectors of each nation's
population. However, judging from a comparison of the parents' occupational
status vis-a-vis the general population in each country, both political and
career executives in America appear less unrepresentative than their counter-
parts in British, French, German or Italian bureaucracies. Their educational
backgrounds suggest an American bureaucracy run mainly by people from the
social, technical and hard sciences compared with a European elite trained
in the law and humanities. Most significant of all (and the information
is scanty), both political and career executives in the United States
betray little evidence of a family tradition in government service; as
observers have noted for at least 150 years, Americans have been less apt
than Europeans to create a "political class." All these data add to the
picture of democratic technocracy that distinguishes bureaucratic life in
Washington from that in London, Paris, Bonn or Rome.
And yet there are also important differences between the two tracks of
senior bureaucratic manpower within the United States. One track, the
de jure higher civil service, may be regarded as a grouping of persons at
the upper end of government personnel systems characterized by civil
service rules, in other words (in the U.S. tradition) by an open, competitive
examination of non-political qualifications. In this sense, we know a top
civil servant when we see one by virtue of his or her place in a formal
personnel structure.
Even under this formalistic description, the situation in the Federal
Government is very complex. What really exists is a collection of civil
services, for there are a number of personnel systems thriving at the
periphery of the so-called "general schedule" civil service that can be
-12-
said to use civil service-type rules in their operations. All of these
'services' have resolutely opposed every attempt to integrate them into
the larger system overseen by the Civil Service Commission (or, since
1979 reforms, the Office of Personnel Management). In March 1979,
approximately 70 percent of full-time civil service employment (excluding
postal workers) fell under the general schedule and the remainder in other
self-contained pay systems. Thus, the higher civil service in Washington
is something of a verbal artifact embracing the effectively autonomous
leadership of units such as the Foreign Service and Forest Service, FBI
and CIA, National Park Service and Atomic Energy Commission, Veteran's
Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority and SO on and on.
By and large, the senior bureaucrats of this de jure, conglomerate
civil service spend the bulk of their adult lives working inside the
national government, more similar in this respect to the British administrative
class than senior bureaucrats on the continent. But unlike the British elite--
and more on the lines of top Italian and Japanese officials-- the American career
executives also tend to develop their careers within the confines of a single
agency. This is generally both the base that supports their careers and the
ladder on which they (again though, unlike their Japanese counterparts on
the bureau "escalators") either climb or stagnate. These American bureaucrats
may be better educated and more white collar than the mass of American citizens
(also more white colored and male) but there is also something distinctly
non-elitist in their more technical education and devotion to specialized
programs. It is the bureau and its program that crosscuts any tendency
there may be to aggregate the advantages of their diverse positions into
a presumption of governmental or social privilege. Indeed, the Program is
more likely than not defined in terms of some type of service to one or
another interest in the society at large, whether it be conservation for
farmers or nuclear energy supplies to skeptical consumers.
-13-
But the vexing question remains, are these people the sum and
substance of America's higher civil service? Certainly not in the sense
that would be familiar to Europeans or Japanese. The career executives
of the de jure higher civil service do not serve with any continuity as
direct subordinates and assistants to the top appointed or elected
political ministers. They do not oversee the general work of officialdom
in their departments as a whole. Their work typically filters through a
political subordinate of the minister an executive aide, special assistant,
assistant secretary or the like--and for most career executives, a distinct
sense of unease would set in were they to spend long hours working with
"the political brass" as it is sometimes known. (As far as I can tell,
every agency has a special name by which careerists refer to the usually
separate complex of offices housing political executives, but the connotation
is always one of a distant "them.' ")
It has not always been they way. As Leonard White noted there was
also a dual system in the public service of the 19th century, but in that
period more or less permanent staff was also present atop the departmental
structures. The chief clerks were "the pivots on which daily business
turned.
As ministers and their very few political assistants came and
went, the chief clerks continued to superintend the departmental workforce
in the daily grind of government paperwork. When the minister (or Cabinet
secretary as they are know in the United States) was away, the chief clerk
could be found filling in as acting secretary, not a rare occurrence in
those un-airconditioned days in Washington. The chief clerk received the
daily mail, distributed it to political officers and subordinate clerical
staff, supervised the writing of all letters going out of the department,
the distribution of publications, and the collection of subordinate clerks'
monthly timesheets when that innovation was introduced. But this form of
management could not hope to keep pace with the more complex, less routinized
work of government, and by the end of the First World War this embryo form
of higher civil service had largely disappeared amid a welter of problems
and temporary officials.
-14-
Yet there are people today who are regularly counted on to service
cabinet secretaries and other top appointees and who oversee the workings
of departmental machinery. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine how
the work of government could go on if there were not such people. If we
loosen our concept of the higher civil service so as to include indeliberately
organized, loosely woven career lines, then the outlines of a second, de facto
higher civil service begin to emerge.
The unilluminating term generally used for these persons is "In and
Outers." This is an unhelpful concept because it can apply to anyone with
a temporary stint in government, especially the top poltical appointees
whose tenures are short and sometimes (as one U.S. Senator put it) possessing
all the impact of a snowflake on the bosom of the Potomac. The public
careerists, as I will call them, do occasionally rise to the ranks of
Secretary or agency head. In fact, as the role of political parties
and their patronage power had declined, public careerists have become a
more prominent source of senior political appointments. Approximately
one-half of President Reagan's top appointees in the winter of 1980-81
had held subordinate appointments in earlier administrations. But what
truly distinguishes public careerists is not that they are part of any
coherent, political career ladder, as is the case for example with the
progression of British political executives (from parliamentary secretary,
to junior minister, to senior minister).
What distinguishes the de facto, higher civil service of public
careerists is their ability to combine top level assistance to senior
presidential appointees with some measure of familiarity about the issues
and processes of government. What they know about policies--and public
policy issues have become an increasingly complex area of technical
specialization makes the public careerists useful to the senior political
executives. What the public careerists know about the ins and outs of
government work and their own networks of personal contacts in Washington
helps this de facto higher civil service use, if not administratively control
in a classic bureaucratic sense, the machine of government.
-15-
It would be fruitless to try to draw clear lines around the careers
of those participating in this informal system of bureaucratic executives.
Some who participate in it are former career civil servants, especially those
who are ambitious to expand their careers beyond the boundaries of their
agencies. Some have worked in Congressional staff positions. Some are
academic experts with a penchant for government affairs. Any attempt to
apply a single label such as public careerists does some injustice to the
complexities involved. But the key point is that these are people who
build their careers around problems of public policy and do SO outside the
confines of the formal civil service personnel system. They are not like
career executives, who spend their lives within one or another government
agency. Neither are they exactly like senior political appointees, who are
often transient on the scene of public affairs and have little prospect
for reentering government. Table 3 suggests something of the intermediary
position held by public careerists: less experienced in government jobs
than career executives but far better grounded that the normal run of
presidential appointees. This latter feature is particularly striking
inasmuch as the information shown is for a time when a new Republican
administration had been in office less than two years and after a preceding
eight years of control by the Democrats; yet over one-half of the non-career
executives had already had more than five years prior experience in
government at one time or another.
The potential recruitment pool for the de facto civil service is
indeed immense. Since the mid-1950s the number of full-time permanent
Federal employees had remained unchanged at approximately 3 million persons,
but the size of the so-called indirect Federal workforce has grown to an
estimated 8 million persons; of these, an estimated 3 million are doing
work that Federal employees would have to do themselves to keep the government
operating if the indirect employees were not there. I am certainly not
suggesting that these millions of people themselves are public careerists
-16-
Table 3 Political and Career Executives'
Experience in the Federal Government, 1970
Years of Govern- -
Percentage of All:
ment Experience
Presidential
Noncareer
Career
Appointees
Supergrades
Supergrades
under 2
69
40
3
2 to 5
19
7
11
6 to 10
6
14
9
over 10
6
3.9
77
-
>
Source: Adapted from Heclo, A Government of Strangers, n. 101
-17-
as I have been using the term. But if one could look behind the numbers,
deep into the tangle of relationships that is implied by this indirect
or third-party government, what one would find are significant numbers
who learn a great deal about particular policies and the administrative
processes that go with them. Because of what they know and can do, at
least by reputation if not in practice, they are likely to be called on
when a new Administration or new Secretary begins "staffing up" and looking
for "some good people who can help us," as the sayings go.
When not holding temporary positions in the executive branch or
mushrooming Congressional bureaucracy, public careerists can be found in
academic departments, think-tanks, interest group associations and
public interest lobbies, law firms, consulting and policy research firms
and so on (rarely in state and local governments but sometimes in the
lobby organizations for state and local governments!). The one thing that
these places have in common is a stake in concrete problems of public policy
and programming. The number of potential roosts for public careerists has
grown phenomenally in recent years as the Federal government has intervened
in more policy areas and used various profit and non-profit organizations--
rather than the government workforce- to do its work. The largely inadvertent
result has been to expand a kind of on-the-job training by which persons
outside the formal civil service system acquire policy expertise and a
working familiarity with many aspects of government administration.
The evidence can be only impressionistic, but it seems that more and
more bright, young people who are interested in public service see their
futures in terms of the loosely structured career lines of public careerists.
To build a career in the formal civil service structure is likely to be
regarded as plodding and unambitious. Better a stint teaching at a graduate
school of public policy and management or organizing the RFP process
(requests for proposals to be funded by federal agencies) for some new
-18-
policy evaluation firm. Better still to gain an academic position
that combines only a little teaching with opportunities for extensive
writing and consulting on particular problems of public policy, or to
become a partner in a law firm or management consulting company dealing
with particular policy issues. When back in government, public careerists
will hold jobs that are formally designated as political appointments,
but they are likely to know much more about the intricacies of given
policies and their special brand of politics (with Congressional staff,
interest groups, the analytic community and so on) than they are to know
about political parties and elections. The best of these public careerists
will know a great deal about the administrative machinery of government and
so form a very useful link between senior Presidential appointees and
lower level career bureaucrats in the agencies. The worst are in Washington
merely to build a resume and promote their particular policy preferences
with little regard to administrative realities.
Policy and Politics in the Dual Structure
By now it should be clear that there can be no simple model describing
the role of America's higher civil service in politics and policy-making.
Even the concept of a higher civil service is diffuse and subject to
differing interpretations. "The" higher civil service is really an
inadvertant byproduct shaped within a quadrilateral of four immensely
powerful political forces.
First, the higher civil service is part of an executive branch that
the framers of the Constitution designed to have a single executive head,
the President. Second, however, it is also part of an administrative
structure that is beholden to a legislature or more accurately various
specialized parts (committees and subcommittees) of a legislature--that has
enduring and independent power to shape administration. Congress can deny
the civil servant and his organization funds, overturn decisions, specify
-19-
actions and generally make the bureaucrat's life miserable in a dozen
says. Third, administrative leadership is vested in a mix of permanent
careerists and transient appointees who have only the most tenuous
attachment to either Presidents or Congressmen as party politicians.
Finally, the Washington bureaucracy has depended more and more on
largely independent third parties in the private sector and subnational
government level to accomplish its purposes.
One way of summarizing all this is to say that the basic organzing
principle--more unintentional than planned--of the higher civil service
is horizontal. For members of both de jure and de facto systems, the
lines of loyalty run outward through programs and policies rather than
upward to bureaucratic or political superiors. That is, of course, a
gross simplification of a very complex system, but it does encapsulate
the essential difference of higher civil service work in the United
States compared to other Western nations.
Thus, high level career officials in the de jure civil service find
it most useful to work closely with those in Congress and outside groups
10/
who have an enduring stake in the programs of their particular agencies.
Parochialism is its own reward, for in identifying one's career with a
given bureau and its program lies long-run safety from political interference
and personal advancement in the agency. Unlike the situation in France, which
tends to eliminate risks for civil servants taking an overtly political role,
the American system imposes extreme risks on any careerist performing the
higher civil servant's role in working closely with top political ministers.
Given the general American ambivalence about the Washington bureaucracy
and narrowly technocratic assumptions about civil servants' work, given
the transience and weak political position with Congress and the public
of top Presidential appointees, it is not surprising that career executives
feel vulnerable if they are too closely identified with the department's
"political brass." If France subsidizes civil servants to become politicans,
America penalizes career bureaucrats for performing as higher civil servants.
-20-
The horizontal rather than vertical principle also applies to
public careerists. Those closest to the Cabinet secretary or agency
head are not SO much his political lieutenants as they are members
of his personal entourage or liaison staff to outside groups. Public
careerists mixed elsewhere in the administrative structure are political
subordinates only in the most formalistic sense (job titles and payscales)
of that term. More realistically, they should be seen as peers drawn
from collateral networks of analysts, lobbyists, and other activists in
public affairs for whom politics is policy. This is true in foreign
affairs no less than in domestic policy where the horizontal alliances
tend to be more obvious. Some flavor of the processes at work can be
gained by looking more closely at one small example from the new Reagan
administration. This portrait of a "defense intellectual" is drawn from
the career of W. Scott Thompson, a 39 year old professor and member of
the Reagan transition team for Defense issues.
"The main challenge of conservative intellectuals is to beat down
the New Class in the State Department and Defense Department. "
Thompson speaks in equally confident tones of sending the new
message of toughness to the Russians
Nine years ago he was
on the foreign policy task force of George McGovern's presidential
campaign. Thompson disagreed with McGovern's posture, but felt a
need to occupy a formal place on his team. "It was an exercise
in damage limitation," he says
A few years later in 1975-76
he became a White House Fellow and served as assistant to Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, establishing Republican credentials
When Jimmy Carter became President he shunned hard-line Jackson and
Moynihan Democrats in making his foreign policy and defense appointments.
Those shunned founded the Committee on the Present Danger
Most
members were old enough to have held high office in the Johnson and
Kennedy Administrations, but there was a younger cadre, and Thompson
was chief among them. "The Committee on the Present Danger has been
the most influential elite-affecting institution in American history,"
-21-
says Thompson. "It has not tried to influence the masses. "
The views of the Committee
were elaborated in an anthology
edited by Thompson and published in 1980 by the Institute for
Contemporary Studies, a California based think tank founded in
1975
by, among others, Edwin Meese, now the President's
counselor, and Caspar Weinberger, now Secretary of Defense
In the
1980 presidential campaign, Thompson offered himself as an advisor
to any and all candidates who shared his perspective. When
Alexander Haig considered a run at the Republican nomination,
Thompson secured a hearing for him.
before the Massachusetts
Republican State Committee Then he served as chief of John
Connally's national security task force. But when Ronald Reagan
emerged from the field, Thompson joined his camp
He says he has
been offered jobs he has turned down (in the new administration),
and is mulling over others. "I'm on the standard lists," he says.
"I'm on 20 lists. I like what I'm doing now, being a plugged-in
intellectual.
11/
Other public careerists may be a little more adept at hiding their candle,
but the same pattern repeats itself again and again in Washington: for large
numbers of people at senior levels of the bureaucracy, engagement in public
office and politics occurs through the vehicle of policy issues and the
networks of people associated with them. Far from increasing political
control from the top of the department or the White House, adding more
and more "political appointments" tends to diffuse control through the
spread of horizontal loyalties.
Missing from this picture of mixed career bureaucracies and policy
technocracies is "politics" in the traditional party-political meaning
of that term. Neither career nor political executives have any tradition
of serving in the national legislature, although some movement back and
forth between legislative staff positions and the executive bureaucracy
has become more common in recent decades. There is also little experience
-22-
with senior bureaucrats serving in elective or appointive positions
in state and local government (contra France and West Germany for
example). Career officials in the Federal service are prohibited
from engaging in all but the most routine grassroots, non-partisan
political activity. 12/ Public careerists face no such prohibition
but their policy interests generally lead them to shun the "non-
substantive" and often tedious work associated with Congressional
careers or state and local government service. Likewise, career
civil servants almost never rise to the top ranks of political
appointments although, as we have seen, they can be found migrating
into lower level political executive positions and there is some
tendency for public careerists to form part of the potential pool
for senior Presidential appointments.
In this American system it is obviously very difficult to view
the bureaucracy as an autonomous participant in policy making. At the
senior levels of government, where matters of high policy are discussed
and hopefully settled, the field of relevant "others" extends outwards,
across institutions, through public careerists and into the networks
mobilized around particular policy issues. At lower levels, where policy
lies disguised as problems of administration, career executives and the
mixture of lower level political executives have a field of discourse
that also extends outwards in a similar way, even if the subject matter
is expressed in terms of hard program details rather than high policy.
In this setting, the hardest problem is to make the conversation that is
policy-making extend upwards and downwards within the government. The
sideways talk outside the state apparatus comes naturally. Only in
America would "implementation" seem an exciting new frontier of policy
analysis and academic fashion!
-23-
The Hollow Center
It is at this point--the nature of policy and administration as
an up and down conversation within the machinery of government that we
come to the core problem in the search for a role in any higher civil
service in Washington. The one institution with an inherent interest
in taut verticle strength in the executive branch is the Presidency.
That is the inevitable consequence of a Constitution vesting the
executive function in a single rather than a plural head chosen
independently of the legislature. As the Federalist Papers put it,
Energy in the Executive is a leading character of good
government
The ingredients which constitute energy in the
Executive are, first, unity
This unity may be destroyed
in two ways: either by vesting the power in two or more
magistrates of equal dignity and authority; or by vesting
it ostensibly in one man, subject, in whole or in part, to the
control and co-operation of others in the capacity of counsellors
13/
to him.
The logic of the Constitution means that there can be no government-wide,
coherent higher civil service unless it is somehow attached to and led
from the Presidency. Anything less must represent less than the executive
branch as a whole. Only the Presidential office has a vested interest
in integrating the diverse parts.
And yet there is a powerful political logic that had mulitated against
the constitutional logic for the higher civil service. Everything said
earlier about the difficulty of career executives working in close relations
with senior political executives applies in extremis to the Presidency.
-24-
Secure in their horizontal loyalties, Congressmen, departmental bureaucrats
and outside groups are deeply hostile to anything that smacks of permanent
officialdom near the President. Likewise, Presidents and their transient
aides suspect any official who has been closely identified with the work
of a preceding administration. And always in the background is the
pervasive historical attitude that civil servants are at their best on
narrowly technical matters and unfit for working in a political environment
on questions of general policy--precisely the situation in the White House.
It seems strange to say but it is true: the surest way for a higher civil
servant to cut short his career in government is to work faithfully as a
higher civil servant to the President.
This political logic means that the closer one approaches the person
of the President, the farther into the background recede higher civil servants
in both the de facto and de jure senses of that term. One searches in vain
for anything even approaching a higher civil service presence in the
Executive Office of the President as a whole. A closer look at the
President's Executive Office will help clarify the paradox of a hollow
center in the American higher civil service.
At the fringes of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) have
traditionally been a number of special purpose units, usually put there
at the insistance of one or another group convinced that the Presidential
seal of office will highlight the importance of their concerns. Consumer
issues, drug abuse, and urban affairs are recent examples, as are the
current environmental and science offices. Their staffs are generally
a hodgepodge of personnel, some detailed from operating agencies, some
from outside the government but all have an evanescent quality as far
as the larger working of the President's office is concerned.
-25-
Closer to the core of the EOP are four units, each with its own
characteristics. The oldest is the Office of Management and Budget,
and for some years after moving in 1939 from the Treasury Department to
the President's office, this unit approached being a general staff
agency for the Presidency with a fairly well defined structure of
higher civil service careers. Much of that tradition has been lost
in the past 15 years and several layers of political appointees now
tend to insulate career staff from direct contact with senior presidential
staff, much less the President himself. The political OMB appointees do
reflect some of the characteristics of the de facto higher civil service
discussed earlier but so far, the unpopularity of the budget decisions they
must enforce has limited their chances for returning elsewhere in government.
By and large, a generation of senior civil servants with careers built
through years of work in this part of the central machinery of government
has simply disappeared and not been replaced.
The National Security Council and Council of Economic Advisers
constitute two more parts of the core EOP staff agencies. The personnel
of each is drawn from powerful communities of policy professionals, the
one in foreign affairs and the other in economics. Frequently young staff
members will reappear later as more senior members of the NSC and CEA. Some,
after a stint on the outside move on to departmental positions and vice versa.
In other words, these staffs have something of the quality of public careerists
discussed earlier, although it must be immediately added that their main
interest is almost always on matters of policy rather than administrative
machinery and process.
The Domestic Council is a recent addition to central EOP operations, and
its personnel have had the more diverse quality one would expect in a policy
area where, unlike foreign affairs and economic policy, there is no well
developed community of specialists. Its staffs have generally been a
mixture of personal acquaintances with an analytic bent and tie to the
Presidential candidate, young policy specialists from outside government,
and detailed departmental staff to work on topical policy problems.
-26-
Often their small numbers and inexperience in the ways of the bureaucracy
has led to considerable dependence on the much larger, more institutionalized
staff of OMB for indepth staffwork. At the same time, the loosely structured,
highly maneuverable nature of Domestic Council personnel, as well as their
perceived closeness to the White House, facilitates dealings with high ranking
political appointees in a way that is no longer open to OMB careerists (who
are likely to leave such matters to their own layer of appointees).
Taking these four units of central EOP machinery as a whole, one can
say that each is (on the record of the past decade) likely to be headed by
a senior personal assistant to the President, supported by a staff whose
leading members are policy specialists drawn from outside and at the fringes
of the Federal Government. One might stretch terms and call these people
informal higher civil servants (their careers are not heavily government-based),
but three things should be recalled before going very far with that label.
First, their service is highly compartmentalized, limited to one of these
four units at present or at any time in the future. An NSC staffman simply
will not turn up later as a CEA, OMB or DC staffer, and the same applies
for each of the other offices. Even if one accepts that there can be an
informal type of higher civil service, that clearly does not apply to the
EOP as a central entity, only to its parts.
A second reservation is that in all these offices, the general
preoccupation is with policy problems and decisions, not with the
administrative workings of government. Where there is administrative
involvement it is likely to be concerned with checking to see that
painfully arrived at presidential decisions are in fact being carried out.
But this kind of 'checking for obedience' hardly amounts to the oversight
of administrative machinery normally associated with the functioning of
a higher civil service. The one exception to these statements has been
the Office of Management and Budget, which for a few brief periods in its
history had an administrative management staff engaged in high level work.
-27-
In general, however, this staffwork has lacked presidential backing,
grown narrowly technical and largely atrophied. The Office of Adminis-
tration that appeared in 1977 is a newly created housekeeping unit
for the EOP (mail service, library etc.) with a relatively large number
of low level civil service positions and a topside staff of non-career
employees. It is revealing of the place of a "higher civil service" in
the central machinery of government that with a change in political control
of the White House, virtually all of the staff in even this routine EOP
establishment (in the British sense) unit disappeared after the 1980
Presidential transition.
The third problem in speaking of an informal higher civil service
within the perimeters of OMB/NSC/CEA/DC professional staffs is that these
people simply do not interact directly with their chief client, the
President. If he is their 'minister,' then they are not part of the
strategic center of his activities. Only the head of each of these
units is in that position, along with a number of other people in the
White House. The White House Office, the second largest piece of the
EOP, is, of course, itself a deviously complex bureaucracy. But none
of the persons heading up the major units there is a civil servant in
the de jure sense; that designation applies to only the lower level
clerical staff and by no means all of them. Neither can the non-clerical
White House staff be fitted into the category of higher civil servants in
the de facto meaning of the term. By and large there is no expectation
that they will have or have had anything to do with the administrative
machinery of government. With only very rare exceptions, they have never
before worked in the immediate environs of a President and never will again
(Bryce Harlow, James Baker, and Lloyd Cutler being major exceptions in
recent history). The White House is not a place for civil servants or
public careerists.
-28-
It has not always been so. In the period roughly between the 1890s
and the late 1930s, the staff immediately surrounding a President had
acquired its own dual nature. The office of Secretary to the President
had a long and checkered career. Generally filled by personal friends,
young political aides, and an occasional relative, the Secretary's
position gradually became more specialized and by the outbreak of
World War II there were four personal aides performing different
functions as FDR's secretaries. However, there was also a second side
to White House staff assistance. As routine functions of the Presidency
expanded after 1890, a more permanent staff to deal with these tasks
gradually took shape behing the scenes. By the end of the 1930s, the
White House was virtually the only place left in the executive branch
where the old Chief Clerk's role (see page 13) still persisted. It did
so in the person of Rudolph Forster. Forster's exact title varied over
the 45 years in which he served in the White House, but by the 1930s
Forster was most commonly identified as Executive Clerk to the President
and was responsible for supervising administrative functions of the
White House much as Chief Clerks had done for departments. Under his
jurisdiction fell the expanding offices for mail, correspondence, files,
records, messengers, spending accounts and personnel. Seeing the overwhelmingly
routine nature of these tasks, presidential scholars have generally dismissed
the role of the executive clerk and its eventual demise as unimportant.
In fact the executive clerk's position and what happened to it are
central to understanding the absence of a higher civil service function
in the central executive institution of government. Far from being
routine, executive clerk operations were highly judgmental. Far from
being relegated to lowly organizational levels, the executive clerk worked
directly and intimately with Presidents, their senior aides, leading
political figures (even attending the President's senior political
staff meetings every day during the Truman Administration). Beyond
the mechanical handling of paper lay terribly important functions of
advice, warning, presidential protection, and institutional memory in an
office chronically subject to disruptive changes. In short, there were
the makings here of a higher civil servant's performance.
-29-
Rudolph Forster and Maurice Latta, who served as assistant clerk
and succeeded Forster as executive clerk in 1943, both joined the White
House in 1898 as civil service stenographers. on detail from Federal agencies.
In subsequent years Forster and Latta shared two desks opposite each other
directly outside the President's office (comparable to the still traditional
position of Cabinet Office civil servants outside the British Prime Minister's
office). All visitors to and from the President passed by the desks.
All incoming correspondence and materials for the Presidents passed over
those desks. All presidentially signed documents and written instructions
from the President (since the Executive Clerk had to pass them on to the
messenger service for delivery) went past the eyes of the Clerk. This
continued not only inthe drowsy days of Presidential leadership in the
14/
1920s but also during the tenure of Franklin Roosevelt.
It could not last. As the Presidency acquired vastly greater respons-
ibilities in the build-up to World War II, the position of Executive Clerk
gradually faded in significance. It was a gradual process because Forster
continued to be regarded by FDR as indispensable, and the smartest of the
new "administrative assistants" to the President (created in 1939) used
Forster's knowledge and advice about government processes to smooth their
ways. But an Executive Clerk's office that merely perpetuated the traditional
Chief Clerk functions had little chance of maintaining its position amid the
growing responsibilties of the Presidency. That much is obvious. Less
obvious are the underlying political constraints that stifled any chance
that civil service responsibilities at the center could keep pace with
the Presidency. Simply try to imagine the constraints at work if one
were the Executive Clerk trying to keep up with the frenzy of Presidential
work and transitions. Any holdover civil servants from a previous administration
were inevitably subject ot profound suspicion. Since one's loyalty is always
in doubt, the best practical rule is to demean the services one might have
offered, viz. do not push yourself; let the successive waves of Presidential
aides be assured that they, not you, know how things should be done. Wait
for the phone to ring with questions as to how things could be done.
-30-
As the White House and Executive Office of the President became
suffused with more and more temporary aides--visible to outsiders
and confident of their proven loyalty to the President--t phone rang
less frequently. In essence, there was no client for a higher civil
service presence in the Presidency. Not Presidents or their aides and
certainly not Congressmen or departmental bureaucrats. Hollowing out
the center of any potential higher civil service was a process that
fed on itself. No Executive Clerk could reasonably feel justified in
trying to attract high-quality civil service staff to the White House.
Working hard, doing well, and serving faithfully an incumbent would
very likely lead to nothing with the next administration. Far from
helping one's career in the government service, it was a road that offered
political vulnerability or routine paper shuffling in deference to the
ever growing number of political appointees in the White House.
Events have confirmed the political logic. Perhaps the easiest
way to see the overall trend is simply to observe the physical position
of the Executive Clerk in the never-ending struggle for White House office
space. The time honored position had two administrative careerists seated
together in the office directly outside the President's door; one of these
was the Executive Clerk, the other his senior assistant. When Foster died
in 1943, the Forster/Latta duo was replaced by Latta and another careerist,
William Hopkins, who had already been in the White House 14 years; Hopkins
succeeded Latta during the Truman Administration and remained Executive
Clerk until retiring under Nixon. While the personnel continuity is
impressive, so too is the loss of office stature. Early in the Eisenhower
administration, the President's new staff secretary was added to the Clerk's
office, forcing the Clerk's assistant to an office downstairs and breaking
the traditional career duo. Later in the Eisenhower years, with a new staff
secretary, a wall was built, a new staff secretary office carved out, and
a walkway created between the President's office and that of his senior
assistant. No longer was the Executive Clerk at the point of access to the
President. In the Johnson administration the space needs of even more
-31-
Presidential aides took over what had once been a washroom (turned into
a private room for rest after Eisenhower's heart attack) and combined
this area within the remnant of the Executive Clerk's office. The Clerk
then moved upstairs in the White House to what had been a telephone room.
In the Nixon administration, assistants to Presidential aides acquired the
upstairs space and the Executive Clerk ended up in the basement. There
the Executive Clerk was remained, with most of his even routine functions
taken over by a new office of administration housed outside the White House
and manned by temporary appointees.
Trivial as these developments seem, they illustrate a larger point
concerning the problematic existence of any civil service functions in
proximity to the President. What the Executive Clerk's office could not
become was a focus of continuing responsibility for the operation of the
central executive institution of government. Failing to include that
function, "the" higher civil service should mainly be regarded as a term
of art in American central government.
A Prologue to Democratic Technocracy
America's higher civil service is an unmanaged affair, weak in the
central executive apparatus and extensive in horizontal links to the
larger political society. The two faces of the higher civil service,
de facto and de jure, are really both reflections of the profound duality
in modern government--at once inward-oriented by the immense technical
complexity of modern policy and outward-directed by the broader social
cooperation on which its policies depend.
-32-
The profile of the senior bureaucracy is therefore etched by the
interaction of powerful external agents on the hard surface of government
expertise. The great strength of this system is its capacity to make
government accessible to those who are actively interested in affecting
its work. The great dangers are that the government will be unable to
act as a collective enterprise (rather than a collection of interests)
and fail to represent those ordinary people who are not actively mobilized
to affect its work. No nation seems likely to reverse the growing need
for technical expertise at all government levels. What America's "non-
system" of public careerists may have to offer are some hints about tilting
the inevitable technocracy in more broadly democratic directions. What
Washington has yet to discover is a means of meshing its formal and informal
higher civil service with Presidential leadership and more unified government.
Without some way of linking the broad base of public support for non-
partisan merit principles in government work to the everyday staff services
offered top departmental political executives and the Presidency itself,
then one must continue to search in vain for any coherent higher civil
service role in American government. That linkage may not be enough to
overcome the historic cross-pressures on the bureaucracy, but without it
there is no hope at all for a truly effective higher civil service in
Washington.
In 1978, President Carter signed into law the first comprehensive
Civil Service Reform Act since the passage of the original statute in 1883.
15/
It would clearly be premature to try and judge the full impact of this major
act, but there are four features that reaffirm the thesis of this paper.
The real definition of America's higher civil service is being written not
so much in formal personnel laws as in the ambiguous, informal understandings
that shape people's careers in public service.
-34-
Finally, there is simply no meaningful system for using the
higher civil servants of the Senior Executive Service in the Executive
Office of the President. The Office of Management and Budget, with
40 percent of all Executive Office staff, has its own procedures for
its own purposes. Several other units do likewise, and the White House
Office, with 30 percent of total Executive Office manpower, has no
systematic means for using the Senior Executive manpower. As far as
the Presidency is concerned, the new, reformed system is merely a formal
accounting device for registering personnel numbers, not a tool for
managing government.
The conclusion seems inescapable. Neither the historic constraints,
nor current practice, nor the 1978 reforms point toward a significantly
different future for the formal, de jure concept of a higher civil
service in American government. Yet there is a system, and it carries
with it the strengths and dangers of a democratic technocracy. To find
a higher civil service function developing we must loosen our categories,
take a deep breath, and keep an eye on the public careerists.
NOTES
1/ A useful overview is contained in James 2. Wilson, "The Rise of
the Bureaucratic State," The Public Interest, Fall 1974. For a
more comprehensive review of the issues discussed in this section
of my paper, see House of Representatives Committee on Post Office
and Civil Service, History of Civil Service Merit Systems of the
United States and Selected Foreign Countries, 94 Cong. 2nd sess.
(GPO, 1976).
2/ There is little comparative information regarding public attitudes
toward the higher civil service in different countries. The most
relevant studies contain some hints that, during the 1960s at least,
Americans were more trusting of national administrators than they
appear to be today, more confident than citizens of western Europe
that they could organize to influence administrative decisions, and
less cynical about the integrity of public bureaucracies than were
citizens in less developed countries. See M. J. Jennings et al,
"Trusted Leaders", Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 30, (Fall 1966),
pp. 368-84; Senate Committee on Government Operations, Confidence
and Concern: Citizens View American Government, 93 Cong. 1st sess.
(GPO, 1973), part 2. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The
Civic Culture, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 70-73;
Samuel J. Eldersveld et al, The Citizen and the Administrator in a
Developing Democracy (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1968).
3/ Article II, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
4/ Cf. William Dudley Foulke, Fighting the Spoilsmen, (New York:
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1919).
Footnotes/2
5/ Creation of higher grade positions in the civil service, as for example
with the addition of supergrades in the Classification Act of 1949,
has always been debated and politically accepted in Congress largely
on the grounds of attracting specialists and experts into the government
service and not as a means of promoting a system of more high level,
general assignments for the existing bureaucracy. See for example,
Congressional Record, daily edition, Sept 14, 1950, and Sept 21, 1950,
pp. 15036-37, 15558.
6/ Further details comparing U.S. executive structure with that in France
and Britain are contained in James W. Fesler, Public Administration:
Theory and Practice, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1980),
pp. 132-35.
7/ Leonard D. White, The Jacksonians. (New York: Macmillan, 1954), p. 352.
8/ The only other time that a department-wide civil service begins to
come into view is during the 1950s and early 1960s. Following
recommendations publicized by the Hoover Commission on government
organization, the major executive departments established posts that
were usually termed Assistant Secretary for Administration. The
original expectation was that these positions, although filled through
Presidential appointment, would be held by careerists from the general
civil service and that they would serve as each Secretary's chief
deputy for internal department management. Most of these offices
therefore encompassed budgeting, personnel, and procurement functions.
The intentions for these assistant secretaries were clearly not
realized during the 1960s and 1970s for reasons discussed in Heclo,
op.cit., chapter 2.
Footnotes/3
9/ This point is discussed more fully in Frederick C. Mosher, "The
Changing Responsibilities and Tactics of the Federal Government,"
Public Administration Review, winter, 1980-81; and Samuel H. Beer,
"The Modernization of American Federalism," Publius, Fall 1973.
10/ See for example, Joel Aberbach and Bert Rockman, "The Overlapping
Worlds of American Federal Executives and Congressmen," British
Journal of Political Science, vol. 7, no. 1, January 1977.
11/ Sidney Blumenthal, "Portrait of a Defense Intellectual,"
Boston Sunday Globe, February 8, 1981, p. C-2.
12/ Permissible political activities are spelled out in 5 US Code of
Federal Regulations, sections 733.111 to 733.122. The prohibition
has been challenged several times, most recently in 1973, but has
been upheld by the Supreme Court as being constitutional. United
States Civil Service Commission V. National Association of Letter
Carriers, AFL-CIO, 413 US 548 (1973).
13/ The Federalist, Number 70.
14/ A lively, popular account of the Presidential Secretaries is in
Michael Medved, The Shadow Presidents (New York: Times Books, 1979).
Enticing hints of Forster's work, despite his passion for anonymity,
and of FDR's regard for him are in FDR, "Memorandum to Bill Hassett,"
Sept 4, 1942; and "M. H. McIntyre to Rudolph Forster," May 1, 1937,
all in Rudolph Forster Papers, Box 1, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
15/ The Act and its passage are described in Felix A. Nigro, "The Politics of
Civil Service Reform," (reproduced), paper presented to the 1979 Annual
Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C.
A preliminary and largely negative evaluation of SES experience to date
is contained in Peter Smith Ring and James L. Perry "Reforming the
Upper Levels of the Bureaucracy: A Longitudinal Study of the Senior
Executive Service," Graduate School of Management, University of California,
Irving, 1982 (mimeographed).
for
THE WILSON CENTER
JAMES H. BILLINGTON, Director
July 16, 1982
Mr. James W. Cicconi
Special Assistant to the
President and to the
Chief of Staff
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Jim:
Our dinner/discussion meeting with Senator Larry Pressler on Wednesday
of next week (July 21) will consider the role of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee--and the Congress more broadly--in foreign policy. I think that you
and/or another key White House figure or two might find it of interest to join us.
The dinner will be a small one for only about twenty-five guests.
Among those who have accepted are Stansfield Turner, Millicent Fenwick, Helmut
Sonnenfeldt, G. Philip Hughes, Richard Burt, Robert Pranger, Philip Odeen, and
several of our own Wilson Fellows like Bill Leuchtenburg as well as other leading
scholars.
Senator Pressler is in the midst of a major research and writing
project on this subject, and after his introductory presentation, the discussion
will be opened to the Center's guests.
We do hope that you will be able to join us at 7:00 p.m. in our library
for what promises to be an interesting evening and ask that you respond to my
assistant, Ada McDill, on 357-2763. The evening will be over by 10:00 p.m.
With best wishes,
Sincerely,
Jr James H. Billington
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 202 357-2429 CABLE WILCEN
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 16, 1982
MEMORANDUM FOR JUDGE CLARK
FROM:
Jim Cicconi
SUBJECT:
Wilson Center Foreign
Policy Discussion
The Wilson Center, on whose board
Jim Baker sits, is having a dinner
discussion next Wednesday on the
role of Congress in foreign policy.
As you can see from the attached
letter they already have a fairly
prominent cast of participants, and
I thought either you, Bud or John
Poindexter might be interested in
attending. If so, please let me
know and I will be happy to make the
arrangements with Jim Billington.
Thanks.
foc
THE WILSON CENTER
JAMES H. BILLINGTON, Director
May 27, 1982
Mr. James W. Cicconi
Special Assistant to the President
and to the Chief of Staff
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Jim:
Here is the letter on June 3; Walter Ong has a huge book coming out
on this subject. He is a very deep Jesuit thinker--the heir to (and far more
respected in the scholarly world than) Marshall McLuhan, and his book on the
subject of how electronic technology is transforming thought will make a real
splash, I believe, when it comes out in the fall. We will have some other
interesting people there: Dave Packard (chairman of Hewlett-Packard), Frank
Shakespeare, Dan Boorstin, Joan Manley (chairman of Time-Life books), Plato
Malozemoff (chairman of Newmont Mining and a very interesting as well as
quietly influential business leader), the novelist Herman Wouk, Michael
Maccoby (head of the Harvard project on technology and work), Frank Haig
(a Jesuit physicist, university president, and brother of the Secretary of
State), Frank Lindsay (chairman of ITEK and of the CED), Tim Wirth (head of
the House committee dealing with some of these matters), and others. There
should be no more than 25, and it would be a pleasant dinner and discussion
with no formal program. I hope you and Rich and/or any other key person that
you think specially appropriate from the administration will come. Please let
me know as soon as you know, and I will not make other calls into the White
House so as to be sure not to cross wires.
With many thanks,
Sincerely,
James H. Billington
Enclosure
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 202 357-2429 CABLE. WILCEN
THE WILSON CENTER
JAMES H. BILLINGTON, Director
I write to invite you to attend a special dinner discussion that we are
planning for June 3, 1982, at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The subject of the
evening will be the question "How does technology transform thought?" Father
Walter Ong, University Professor of Humanities at St. Louis University, will
discuss how the electronic media are changing thought. In his earlier work,
Professor Ong has treated the transition from oral to written thought in the
sixteenth century, which he characterized as "the decay of dialogue," the movement
"from the art of discourse to the art of reason." Are we now on the threshold
of a change equally momentous in patterns of thought, again marked by a powerful
new technology?
Our evening will begin with a social half-hour at 6:30 p.m. Dinner and our
discussion will follow at 7:00 in the Regents' Room of the Smithsonian Institution
"Castle" Building. We will adjourn our discussion promptly at 10:00 p.m.
Joining us for this evening will be members of the Wilson Council whose
spring meeting will be held that day. The Council is the Center's advisory
committee, and among its members are the chief executives of some of this coun-
try's most prominent high technology corporations. Their participation and
yours will add much to a discussion that we expect to be especially stimulating
and memorable.
I hope you can attend.
Sincerely,
James H. Billington
Enclosure
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20560 202 357-2429 CABLE: WILCEN