CAREER SERVICE: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON CIVIL SERVICE PROMOTION
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1983.tb00512.x |
| Date | 01 June 1983 |
| Published date | 01 June 1983 |
| Author | F. F. RIDLEY |
CAREER SERVICE:
A
COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
ON
CIVIL
SERVICE PROMOTION
~
F. F.
RIDLEY
This article looks at some of the ambiguities in the commonly-used phrase 'career service'
and considers what the essential elements of a true career service might be. It raises
uestions about civil service organization that may interest the reformist practitioner. It
&aws attention to an under-researched field (British textbooks are virtually silent
on
the
subject of promotion) that deserves further academic study. British arrangements are
placed in a comparative perspective. Until recently it could be said that the British civil
service better resembled the ideal
of
a career service than that
of
any other western
democracy.
As
a result
of
Thatcherite changes, we may
in
future look more like the rest of
Europe.
We think, with Weber, of civil services as professional bureaucracies, selected for
competence, hierarchically structured and with security of tenure. We tend also to
assume that the administrative system has two elements
:
an organization of
personnel (the civil service) and an administrative organization (the ministerial
bureaux), related in a variety of ways but separately structured. It is this which
allows
us
to think of civil servants as members of a service rather than
as
a
collection of job-holders.
One of the elements of Weber's ideal-type bureaucracy is that it constitutes a
career; and career he defined as involving a system of regularized promotion. This
characteristic
is
reflected in dictionary definitions: a career is a way of making a
livelihood, a profession, one's course through life
-
but 'especially
an
occupation
with opportunities for advancement or promotion'.
A
career civil service
is
thus
one that offers
a
course through life to its members: continuity
of
employment and
scope for advancement.
Another essential element of the Weberian model is that public service is a
profession apart, following its own path through life because it requires special
qualifications, employs special skills and expects its members to hold special
values. The rationale for career distinctiveness varies from country to country. The
German civil servant is proudly described
as
a holder of state sovereignty (more
prosaically: the unilateral powers bestowed on public administration).
In
France,
more weight
is
placed on the state's role as the incarnation of the national interest.
In Britain, where no real theory
of
the state has developed, the emphasis
is
on the
political element in civil service work: though technically servants of the Crown,
all
civil servants are told on recruitment that they must consider themselves the
F.
F.
Ridley,
OBE
is
Professor of Political Theory and Institutions at the University
of
Liverpool.
Public Administration
Vol.
61
Summer
1983 (179-196)
@
1983
Royal Institute of Public Administration
180 F.
F.
RIDLEY
servants of the political masters of the day.’ There
is
also the notion that public
administration conducts
its
affairs in a special way, whether because
it
is
circumscribed by administrative law or, as in Britain, because it
is
seen as a
quasi-political art different from the managerial practices of business. Whatever
the reasons, the classical bureaucracy
is
a closed system. Though it recruits at
different levels,
it
does
so
early in life and excludes the competition
of
mid-career
entrants. Since career prospects depend on internal promotion, career
distinctiveness may be considered an essential element of a career service.
CAREER
SYSTEMS
AND
JOB
SYSTEMS
One must start by noting that the above assumptions are not universal in the
democratic states of the western world. There is an alternative model, just as
firmly established. We may distinguish between public services which are
career-based and those which are job-based. In the former, officials are recruited
to the service on the basis
of
generalized qualifications at the start of their working
lives and usually pursue their entire careers within it: there
is
internal promotion
without competition from outside. In the alternative model, officials are recruited
to specific posts on the basis of job-related qualifications. Though they generally
enjoy security of tenure (and are in this sense described as ‘career officials’ in the
US,
to distinguish them from political appointees whose posts may be terminated
at will), their career prospects are limited by the fact that promotion may involve
competition with outsiders.
Job-staffing has been the traditional American model since the spoils system
was abolished for most posts in the
‘1880s.
Although this reform was sometimes
described as the Americanization of a British institution because of the application
of the merit principle to appointments, its purpose was quite different. Jobs are
evaluated and classified into horizontal grades (levels of responsibility and
difficulty of work) and vertical occupations (subject expertise). Individuals are
appointed to vacancies on the basis of post-related qualifications. Most actually
spend their working lives within the service (though there are also a good number
of ’in-and-outers’) and are eligible for promotion along ‘ladders’
of
various length
without the formaiity of new tests; but movement
still
depends largely on one’s
own initiative and one may still have
to
compete against outsiders.
Similar systems are found in Europe, especially in the smaller democracies. In
the Netherlands, in Norway, Sweden and Finland, and in Switzerland, for
example, officials are not recruited to the
civil
service as such but are appointed to
specific vacancies that arise. These are filled on the basis of job specifications by
more or less open competition. Internal candidates must often compete against
1
For
the European background this article draws
on
a series of papers, including one on Britain by the
present author, to be published in the
Revue
Francaise
d’Administration
Publique(Summer
1983).
The
topics treated here are barely mentioned
in
the comparative administration textbooks we have, apart
from
Brian
Chapman’s classic The
Profession
of
Government (Allen
&
Unwin,
1959)
and Charles
Debbasch’s
Sc;enceAdministrative(Dalloz,
1976).
This is partly because ‘institutional’ studies are out of
favour.
It
is surprising, however, that while the
social
and educational background of civil service
entrants has been extensively studied, there are no parallel studies of promotion. Although information
is less accessible than on recruitment,
it
is
surely more important to know who gets to the top
of
the
system and why rather than who gets into
it.
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