Rules and Governance in the Public Sector: The Case of Civil Service

A Tale of Two Cities: Bureaucratisation in Mayor-Council and Council-Manager Municipalities

“…Those limits to the discretion of politicians are considered as one of the defining characteristics of bureaucracies (Holdaway et al 1975, Rainey 1976, Frant 1993. Williamson (1990) distinguishes three main forms of governance: two of them have been extensively analyzed in the transaction-costs literature -market and hierarchy-and the third one remains mostly overlooked -bureaus.…”

“…There are municipalities whose employees are selected, promoted and dismissed by the administration 'chief executives' (either council members, mayors or citiymanagers); and, on the contrary, there are local governments where those functions are partially or totally delegated to an autonomous body called Civil Service Commission -which remains isolated from the main organizational line of command that flows from elected politicians to public employees (Tolbert and Zucker 1983, Frant 1993, Ruhil 2003. This paper presents a New Political Economy theoretical model to explain those differences across municipalites.…”

“…For Frant (1993), the existence of a popular election of the chief executive is what explains the introduction of civil service arrangements replacing a patronage system. If the key purpose of civil service were preventing nepotism or corruption, as some theories suggest, we would expect to see it in private corporations, since corporate managers certainly might engage in nepotism at shareholders' expense (Frant 1993:996).…”

“…In CM cities, the council provides legislative direction while a manager -appointed by the council-is responsible for day-to-day administrative operation of the city based on the council's recommendations. This governance system is thus much like that of a corporation: executive authority is vested in a manager who is appointed by a board made up of elected officials (Frant 1993;996). The principals are, in the first place, the elected officials (council members) and, in the second place, the appointed professional manager that acts as a Chief Executive Officer.…”

“…Where there is no disagreement is on naming CM plan's founding father: Richard S. Childs, a business man who was at that time the secretary of the National Short Ballot Association and who later was to become president of the National Municipal League. Childs wrote of "the resemblance of the plan to the private business corporation with its well-demonstrated capacity for efficiency" (quoted in Frant (1993;996). For further details, see East (1965).…”