"Political Appointments, Bureau Chiefs, and Federal Management Performance"

Abstract: "The relationship between appointments and federal management performance has been the subject of political science inquiry virtually from the start of the discipline yet we still know little systematically about the influence of appointments on management performance. In this paper I use the Bush Administration’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) scores—a numerical measure of management performance—to analyze the relationship between political appointees and federal management performance. I find that politically appointed bureau chiefs get systematically lower management grades than bureau chiefs drawn from the civil service. I find that career managers have more direct bureau experience and longer tenures and these characteristics are significantly related to management performance. Political appointees have higher education levels, more private or not-for-profit management experience, and more varied work experience than careerists but these characteristics are uncorrelated with management performance. I conclude that some combination of structural changes or increased sensitivity to appointee selection based upon certain background characteristics could improve federal bureau management."
David E. Lewis
Princeton University