Patterns of control
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The expansion of public services, as well as the development of permanent civil service career structures, raised fears that civil services were becoming autonomous powers in their own right, no longer subject to the traditional forms of control. This view is associated with the sociologists Max Weber, who criticized the bureaucracy of imperial Germany, and Robert Michels, who formulated the “iron law of oligarchy.” Michels’s law suggested that every organization with a permanent staff produces an oligarchy running the organization according to the interests and values of the bureaucratic group. In addition, the growing complexity of modern government has greatly augmented the informal power of senior civil servants who act as advisers to ministers. This is particularly the case in countries (usually the more democratic ones) where ministries frequently change hands.
In the 19th century civil services were normally restricted to maintaining law and order and minor economic regulations such as those concerning weights and measures and factory laws. The subordination of civil servants to their political masters and their political masters’ responsibility to the courts and legislatures seemed to provide an adequate safeguard against arbitrary administrative actions. But in some countries, notably Germany, France, and Austria, civil services became endowed with much greater authority, operating as part of the police power. This caused concern because civil servants were exempt from normal legal processes when performing their official functions. In response, special administrative courts were set up to which private citizens or corporations could appeal against administrative acts. Jurisdiction was limited, however, and redress was frequently slow. The courts themselves remained specialized institutions of the executive rather than normal parts of the judiciary.
Sweden provided a marked contrast. Before the constitution of 1809 the executive power had been absolute. Afterward, not only did it become subject to control by the legislature, but this control also was reinforced by the creation of a special post of ombudsman (see administrative law: The ombudsman).
World War I brought increased governmental activity almost everywhere. The area in which administrative discretion could be exercised grew; civil servants became as much adjudicators as administrators, and their influence upon economic life increased. By World War II the state had become, even in many conservative countries, an economic regulator, an industrial producer of overwhelming importance, and a conciliator between competing interests. In all of these matters civil servants were the effective agents of the state.
Responses to civil service power
In the United States, Congress created an institution to counter the threatened increase in civil service power. As far back as the late 19th century Congress, when legislating for new areas of government, assigned powers to agencies or commissions, specifying their powers, competence, and composition and freeing them from direct presidential control. In this way large areas of government escaped the control of the executive branch of government, including the federal civil service. These independent regulatory agencies have covered major economic fields and have included the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This policy has laid Congress open to the charge that it has created a headless fourth branch of government, but it has successfully prevented the emergence of a monolithic federal civil service.
To counter charges that the U.S. civil service was encroaching on the powers of the judiciary, the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 laid down detailed provisions to safeguard citizens’ rights where the administration had powers of adjudication. These rights included the right to ample previous notice of proceedings, the right to submit evidence, the right to have independent hearing officers (to the exclusion of investigating or prosecuting officers), and the right to a decision based solely on testimony and papers actually entered in the proceedings.
Other democratic countries have been concerned about the growing powers of the civil service and about whether traditional forms of judicial and ministerial control are adequate. Many European countries have modeled their instruments of administrative jurisdiction and jurisprudence on the French Conseil d’État. In the United Kingdom the creation of a special administrative jurisdiction of this kind has been opposed by both parliamentary and judicial opinion, but it was because of mounting criticism of civil service immunity from detailed control that Parliament created the special office of parliamentary commissioner, or ombudsman. Public access to the office is by way of a member of Parliament, and the commissioner is excluded from inquiring into matters of policy, local government authorities, or lower judicial bodies.
Civil servants and communism
Special problems of control arose in communist countries, where the main preoccupation of the regime, which was under the direct control of the Communist Party, had been to ensure the civil service’s continual loyalty. Impartiality and objectivity in the administrative machine’s dealings with the public were not of such high priority as in pluralist societies. A body of administrative procedure was built up, but this was always subordinated to the directives of the party leadership. Communist countries also had to establish new ways of judging performance, since the state monopoly of political power and means of production ensured that traditional incentives and yardsticks could not be applied.
Yet in their own way, communist countries had elaborate controls. In the Soviet Union all ministries had a special section staffed by, and responsible to, operatives from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This section provided security control over the ordinary civil servants, and its personnel were not part of that ministry’s official structure. The Communist Party maintained further control through the party apparatus, and it closely supervised senior appointments.
Communist planning, financial, and personnel controls of a technical kind resembled those in democratic countries, but in the Soviet Union there were two additional special supervisory agencies. The Commission of State Control was responsible for vigilance over state property and administration. Its departments paralleled the different branches of state administration and maintained audits of their work. Its officers had the right of access to all administrative records and could issue directives to other institutions. They had powers to prosecute civil servants for criminal offenses, and they could apply a formidable range of disciplinary measures to civil servants, either by direct action or through the responsible minister.
The second agency of control arose because of the difficulty of reconciling disputes between production units and their controlling ministries in an economy that lacked the traditional forms of market discipline and could not rely upon an enforceable law of contract. A special system of compulsory arbitration operated through the State Arbitration Tribunal (known as Gosarbitrazh) under the Council of Ministers and through arbitration tribunals responsible to the councils of ministers in each of the republics. It settled all disputes concerning contracts, quality of goods, and other property disputes between various state enterprises. The system was staffed by civil servants charged with enforcing “contractual and plan discipline,” but it was supported by technical experts qualified in economic and industrial matters.
Brian Chapman Edward C. Page