Civil service

A civil servant or public servant is a civilian career public sector employee working for a government department or agency. The term explicitly excludes the armed services, although civilian officials will work at "Defence Ministry" headquarters. The term always includes the (sovereign) state's employees—whether regional, or sub-state, or even municipal employees are called "civil servants" varies from country to country. In the United Kingdom, for instance, only Crown employees are civil servants, county or city employees are not.

Many consider the study of civil service to be a part of the field of public administration. Workers in "non-departmental public bodies" (sometimes called "QUANGOs") may also be classed as civil servants for the purpose of statistics and possibly for their terms and conditions. Collectively a state's civil servants form its Civil Service or Public Service.

Early civil services

No state of any extent can be ruled without a bureaucracy, but organizations of any size have been few until the modern era. Administrative institutions usually grow out of the personal servants of high officials, as in the Roman Empire. This developed a complex administrative structure, which is outlined in the Notitia Dignitatum and the work of John Lydus, but as far as we know appointments to it were made entirely by inheritance or patronage and not on merit, and it was also possible for officers to employ other people to carry out their official tasks but continue to draw their salary themselves. There are obvious parallels here with the early bureaucratic structures in modern states, such as the Office of Works or the Navy in 18th century England, where again appointments depended on patronage and were often bought and sold.

One of the oldest examples of a merit-based civil service is the Imperial bureaucracy of China which can be traced back as far back as the Qin dynasty. In the areas of administration, especially in the military, appointments would be based solely on merit. After the fall of the Qin dynasty, the Chinese bureaucracy would regress into a semi-merit system known as the Nine-rank system. However, the eventual Tang dynasty would decreasingly rely less on aristocratic recommendations and more and more upon promotion based on written examinations. The Chinese civil service became known to Europe in the mid-18th century, and influenced the development of European and American systems.

Ironically, and in part due to Chinese influence, the first European civil service was not set up in Europe, but rather in India by the East India Company, distinguishing its civil servants from its military servants. In order to prevent corruption and favouritism, promotions within the company were based on examinations. The system then spread to the United Kingdom in 1854, and to the United States with the Pendleton Civil Service Act.

The United States Civil Service

In the United States, term "civil service" was coined in 1872. The Federal Civil Service is defined as "all appointive positions in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the Government of the United States, except positions in the uniformed services." (U.S. Code Title 5 § 2101). In the early 19th century, government jobs were held at the pleasure of the president—a person could be fired at any time. The spoils system meant that jobs were used to support the political parties. This was changed in slow stages by the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 and subsequent laws. By the 1950s most U.S. Federal civil servants were appointed based on merit, in many cases that is qualifications measured by tests. Certain senior civil service positions, including some heads of diplomatic missions and executive agencies are filled by political appointees. Under the Hatch Act of 1939, civil servants are not allowed to engage in political activities while performing their duties.

The U.S. civil service includes the Competitive service, and the Excepted service. The majority of civil service appointments in the U.S. are made under the Competitive Service, but certain categories in the Diplomatic Service, the FBI, and other National Security positions are made under the Excepted Service. (U.S. Code Title V)

U.S. state and local government entities often have competitive civil service systems that are modeled on the national system, in varying degrees.

Other countries

Other countries tend to use systems which vary between these two extremes. For example, in France all civil servants are career officials as in Britain, although ministers have a greater ability to select the occupants of senior posts on grounds of political sympathy (and consequently senior officers have the opportunity for lengthy secondments to the private sector when they are seen as unsuitable to work with the party in office); while Germany makes a clear distinction, as in the U.S., between political and official posts (though the threshold is placed rather higher).

Brazilian civil service is composed mostly of career servants, with nomination based on writen examinations, but it is allowed for governants to freely nominate some posts, especialy the higher ones, situation that brings as consequences several acusations of unapropriate use of the public system, such as nepotism.

Employees of international organisations (e.g., the United Nations or the International Atomic Energy Agency) are sometimes referred to as international civil servants.

References

Bodde, D. Chinese Ideas in the West [1]
Brownlow, Louis, Charles E. Merriam, and Luther Gulick, Report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management. (1937) U.S. Government Printing Office.
P. N. Mathur. The Civil Service of India, 1731-1894: a study of the history, evolution and demand for reform (1977)
Kevin Theakston. The Civil Service Since 1945 (Institute of Contemporary British History, 1995)
Ari Hoogenboom. Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865-1883. (1961)
Schiesl, Martin. The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal Administration and Reform in America, 1880-1920. (1977)
Van Riper, Paul. History of the United States Civil Service (1958).
White, Leonard D., Introduction to the Study of Public Administration. (1955)
Leonard D. White, Charles H. Bland, Walter R. Sharp, and Fritz Morstein Marx; Civil Service Abroad, Great Britain, Canada, France, Germany (1935) online

Early civil services

The United States Civil Service

Other countries

References

See also