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The Foundation of Merit: Public Service in American Democracy. By Patricia Wallace Ingraham. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.170p. $45.00 cloth, $14.95 paper. As political science and public administration drifted apart, knowledge of the American federal public service became the province of the latter discipline and scarce among political scientists. Yet, the public service's character and quality significantly influence government's efficacy and responsiveness, fundamental concerns of political scientists. If they lack a grasp of the American public service, political scientists are ill-prepared to assess governmental performance.
Knowledge of the American public service is not easily gained. Federal personnel systems are an accretion of arcane regulations and practices accumulated over time. Occasional reforms promise clarity but are more likely to plaster new complexities over accumulated policies. How can one make sense of the public service? Patricia Wallace Ingraham's The Foundation of Merit helps answer that question.
A leading scholar of the American civil service, Ingraham brings ambitious aims to this small volume. The book surveys the values and political goals that shaped the development of the federal public service, examining changing personnel policies and detailing efforts at control by political executives. Ingraham also addresses the possibilities for reform in the public service to reflect a changing work force, changing citizen expectations, and changing public policy domains.
The Foundation of Merit is reminiscent of an earlier fine book on the public service, Frederick C. Mosher's (1968) Democracy and the Public Service. Like Mosher, Ingraham details the public service's development within the American political context. More effectively than Mosher did for his era, Ingraham explains the problems of the public service in light of the contemporary governmental context.
Ingraham's animating insight is that the problems...