When the State Becomes an Interest Group

Documenting the failure of the Civil Service Act to create an a-political, professional bureaucracy. The problem is that one party wants to expand the government and the other wants to contract it. The employees are not disinterested parties to this conflict. The old spoils system might well have performed better, as Glenn Reynolds suggests. At least in that case their political masters would have direct responsibility and therefore an incentive to keep them under control.

How Federal Workers Became Obama’s Private Army