Appointees v. Civil Servants

I wanted to point folks in the direction of this post by Matthew Yglesias on the dynamics of the debate around cutting the number of political appointees and increasing the power of career civil servants. I tend to think it's a good thing when this discussion bubbles up intelligently beyond the realm of management blogs and bureaucracy commentators and reporters into the mainstream political commentariat's discussions of policy problems. As long as the balance between civil servants and political appointees gets treated like an obscure, proceduralist obsession, it'll never be seriously addressed.

But I also think Matt's post is a good summary of the conventional lines into which this debate falls. Opponents of elevating civil servants assume that a) they're stupid, b) that they're unresponsive, c) that it might be better for government to be inefficient so larger incentives will exist for eliminating it. A) seems largely refuted by some of the political science research Matt points to, and not to remotely account for the questions of continuity and experience that frequently plague political appointees, b) ignores that no matter who controls agencies and programs, they can still be regularly hauled in front of Congressional committees and their budgets will still be under control of the regular budgeting process and c) is an intractable ideological difference. Maybe this is obvious to everyone, but I think it's useful to be aware of the lines of arguments and responses. Maybe this debate will actually reach up to the level where something can be done about it. If it does, proponents of civil servants' roles ought to be ready to make their case.