History Of The Federal Civil Service 1789 To The Present

The call to "reinvent government"—to reform the government bureaucracy of the United States—resonates as loudly from elected officials as from the public. Examining the political and economic forces that have shaped the American civil service system from its beginnings in 1883 through today, the authors of this volume explain why, despite attempts at an overhaul, significant change in the bureaucracy remains a formidable challenge.

A description of the jobs in a labor force, an "occupational" description of it, is an abstraction for describing the flow of concrete work that goes through one or more employing organizations; the flow of work proba bly changes at a higher speed than the system for abstracting a descrip tion of its occupations and jobs. A career system is an abstraction for describing the flow of workers through a system of occupations or jobs, and thus is doubly removed from the flow of work. The federal civil service, however, ties many of the incentives and much of the authority to the flow of work through the abstractions of its career system, and still more of them through its system of job descriptions. The same dependence of the connection between reward and performance on abstractions about jobs and careers characterizes most white-collar work in large organizations. The system of abstractions from the flow of work of the federal civil service, described here by Thomas A. DiPrete, is an institution, a set of valued social practices created in a long and complex historical process. The system is widely imitated, especially in American state and local governments, but also in the white-collar parts of many large private corporations and nonprofit organizations and to some degree by gov ernments abroad. DiPrete has done us a great service in studying the historical origins of this system of abstractions, especially of the career abstractions.

The Second Edition of this renowned treasure trove of information about the most important laws and treaties enacted by the U.S. Congress now deepens its historical coverage and examines an entire decade of new legislation. Landmark Legislation 1774-2012 includes additional acts and treaties chosen for their historical significance or their precedential importance for later areas of major federal legislative activity in the over 200 years since the convocation of the Continental Congress. Brand new chapters expand coverage to include the last five numbered Congresses (10 years of activity from 2003-2012), which has seen landmark legislation in the areas of health insurance and health care reform; financial regulatory reform; fiscal stimulus and the Temporary Asset Relief Program; federal support for stem cell research; reform of federal financial support for public schools and higher education; and much more. Features & Benefits: Each chapter covers one of the numbered Congresses with a historical essay, followed by the major acts of that Congress arranged in chronological order of passage – with each act summarized. A Finder’s Guide summarizes all of the acts and treaties into approximately 40 separate topical policy areas. The work’s extensive bibliography has been expanded and updated. This one-volume resource is a must-have for any public or academic library, especially those with strong American history or political science collections.