Public employees in political firms: Part B. Civil service and militancy

Joseph Reid and Michael Kurth

Public Choice, 1989, vol. 60, issue 1, 54 pages

Abstract: We continue our explanation of the evolution of public employees' organization. Here we explain that evolution from patronage to civil service, now characterized by militancy, that occurred over the past century. Commonly, each transformation has been related only to some failing of its preceding form: patronage ended because of its corruption, civil service began because of its promise to stop corruption, and militancy spread because of the inadequacies of civil service. In contrast to these different explanations of each transformation of government employment, we offer the same explanation for each change (and for the preceding rise of patronage): the new organizational form more efficiently maximized the mixture of votes, power, and income that politicians seek. Thus, when homogenization of the electorate and cheap communications made political goods efficiently produced before consumption (such as parks and roads) more valuable, and let media rather than spoilsmen deliver communiques from politicians, spoilsmen evolved to civil servants. When militant labor actions became useful to protect local mandates from national mandates, politicians came to tolerate militant employees. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989

Date: 1989
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DOI: 10.1007/BF00124311

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