Needed: A Government Reform League for the 21st Century
“Left” Frederick Burr Opper, 1881
In 1881, reformers in civil society organized a movement whose legacy still shapes how American government operates—for better and worse—to this day: the National Civil Service Reform League. George William Curtis, Dorman Eaton, and other civic leaders in the League’s vanguard had long documented and decried the abuses of the spoils system and pushed to reform it. Rather than government jobs going to loyalists of victorious political parties, the reformers held that a merit-based civil service was key to democracy working effectively. This was especially true for a modernizing nation struggling to regulate an industrializing economy, integrate a more diverse and urbanizing society, and cope with political polarization.
Curtis and Eaton had already served inside the federal government on fledgling reform efforts, only to leave in frustration over spotty political support and limited progress. The cartoon above, depicting civil service reform as a crying baby left on a wintry doorstep by President Rutherford B. Hayes for his successor, James A. Garfield, mocks these dynamics.
A shocking event suddenly positioned the reformers to have more influence working from the outside-in. On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed office-seeker. Garfield died from his wounds on September 19. In the interregnum, spurred on by public outrage, Curtis, Eaton and their colleagues formed the League, galvanizing activists and reformers in state and local chapters across the country.
Congress took note of the League’s organizing, pamphleteering, and advocacy. Senator George H. Pendleton of Ohio introduced a major civil service reform bill largely drafted by Eaton. Congress subsequently passed the landmark Pendleton Act, and President Chester A. Arthur signed it into law on January 16, 1883. The law initially covered roughly 10% of the 130,000 civilians who then worked for the federal government. But it was a solid foothold.
While Curtis stayed at the helm of the League, Eaton went on to serve as the chairman of the newly empowered U.S. Civil Service Commission. At all levels of American government, the National Civil Service Reform League’s catalytic push began to gain traction. Among its champions were up-and-coming League members and future presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Over time, federal policymakers expanded and updated the Pendleton Act’s provisions. Today, they cover most of the 2.9 million civilians in the federal workforce.
While the transformation took decades at the federal level, and longer in many states and localities (as Chicagoans can attest), the merit system gradually supplanted the spoils system nationwide. Due to the League’s leadership, Americans have generally come to enjoy more professional, competent, and impartial administration of public policy at all levels of government.
The Work Before Us Now
We once again face bewildering disruptions in our economy and society accompanied by rapid technological changes and accelerating polarization. We too are expecting more and better responses from our beleaguered governing institutions than they seem able to deliver. What needs to happen to enable these institutions to make and administer laws in ways that address our current quandaries?
Part of the work involves updating and fine tuning our civil service system, resetting some of the trade-offs that accompanied earlier reform efforts. Perhaps you have on occasion been frustrated by organizational inertia or narrow-minded rule-following among bureaucrats at the local DMV, or at, say, the CDC or FDA. That greater remove from political pressure and influence can lead to impassive inaction, ossified routines, and insulated incompetence is a less salutary and unanticipated consequence of civil service reform. How can we spread the leadership, calculated risk-taking, accountability, learning culture, and customer service ethos that distinguish high-performing public agencies across more of our government?
Along similar lines, reforms meant to stabilize the public workforce, enabling the development of competence and expertise, can also cut it off from vital sources of renewal and know-how. Reform advocates point out that only 7% of federal government employees are under the age of 30, compared with 20% of the private sector workforce. 35% of federal employees will be eligible for retirement by 2024. In the federal information technology workforce, there are 19 employees over the age of 50 for each one under the age of 30. Nowadays, if you encourage young people, especially those with marketable technology or technical skills, to consider government service, you are typically met with quizzical looks, shaking heads, or outright guffaws. How do we restore the luster of public service? How do we attract, recruit, retain, and develop the government workforce we need for the future?
Not all the work ahead involves adjusting prior reforms. Government has become an immensely larger and more complicated undertaking. When the Pendleton Act passed, the federal government did little more than collect tariffs, deliver mail, and garrison the western frontier. The scope, scale, complexity, and interdependency of what we now ask the government to do on our behalf have all expanded by orders of magnitude. So too have the resulting challenges of coordination and integration within and between the federal, state, and local levels of government. Not only administrators but also lawmakers face herculean tasks of synthesis and streamlining. How can we help them make and administer laws and respond to emergencies in ways that ease rather than compound the rapidly accumulating complications? How do we equip our lawmakers and administrators with the knowledge and technical insight they need to do their jobs well and cut through the kudzu of our “kludgeocracy?”
Unfortunately, too many leaders and organizations in civil society have come to take government capacity for granted. We focus instead on shaping and energizing more inputs to that capacity via policy advocacy, community organizing, voter engagement, the media environment, and electoral reforms. The institutional capacity to make and administer laws in the public interest? That strikes most of us as the job of government, not civil society, to make happen.
This view is shortsighted. Not only can civil society actors help shore up and enhance the capacity of our governing institutions, we must do so for democracy in America to survive and flourish. Reform-minded leaders and institutionalists inside government—and there are plenty—cannot bring about these changes on their own. They need the support of external allies. We should endeavor to foster as much of a positive sea-change in the governing institutions of our time as members of the National Civil Service Reform League did in theirs. If we do not, and our governing institutions continue to falter, public confidence in and the capacity of these institutions will spiral downward together in an accelerating doom loop.
How can we reverse this pattern? The good news is that a diverse array of think tankers, policy advocates, technical assistance providers, and scholars have already joined the fight to bolster our governing institutions. They are making a necessary but as of yet insufficient contribution through their work. The bad news is that philanthropy continues to be a missing link. With a few notable exceptions, funders have been no-shows when it comes to strengthening governing institutions. Let me elaborate on these observations, then conclude with recommendations for funders seeking to step up and do their part.
Civil Society is Responding
The civil society actors now responding to our present challenges are not doing so within the boundaries of one organization or network but in a wide-ranging and self-organizing pattern. Consider, for example, the work of the policy advocates, practitioners, and scholars from across the ideological spectrum participating in the Fix Congress cohort. A scan of the hearings of the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress demonstrates how much its members have been relying on the cohort to advance their work. The Select Committee is something of a unicorn on Capitol Hill. Its scrupulously bipartisan proceedings, consensus-backed recommendations, practical agenda for institutional reform, and steady focus on implementation run counter to the standard narratives of a polarized, grandstanding, institutional-slashing, do-nothing Congress. But there it is, working away and making progress behind the scenes. The Fix Congress participants are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with committee members, informing their deliberations, serving as their sounding board, and helping others appreciate the importance of their work.
Additional nonprofits are stepping up to help legislators do better work at the federal and state levels. The Project on Government Oversight, the Lugar Center, and the Levin Center have been advising members and training congressional staff on how to conduct more effective and bipartisan oversight. The Levin Center is now rolling out resources and capacity-building assistance to support state legislators seeking to do likewise. Meanwhile, the Millennial Action Project has established bipartisan future caucuses of younger lawmakers in Congress and 30+ statehouses, helping them build networks and develop policy agendas they can pursue together.
When it comes to improving the federal executive branch, the Partnership for Public Service has been an indispensable organization for more than two decades. The Partnership highlights examples of excellence, innovation, and leadership among federal civil servants through its annual Service to America or Sammies awards. Its recurring assessments of federal employee engagement, organizational culture, and leadership (or the lack thereof) across agencies generate information that administration and cabinet leaders closely track and use. The Partnership conducts ongoing research to better understand and advance improvements in executive branch performance. Finally, it trains and coaches established and rising leaders throughout the federal workforce.
Multiple nonprofits work at all levels of government to build administrative capacity and results-driven implementation through the provision of technical assistance and training. This work is especially important in state and local agencies, where administrative resources and capabilities can be spotty. The Pew Trusts’ Results First Initiative has for a decade been an important resource for multiple states seeking to implement evidence-based policies. Results for America, the Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab, and Third Sector have likewise teamed up with state and local government officials to help them identify and implement evidence-based solutions. Via their own growing teams and the public servants they are supporting, these nonprofits are steadily increasing the number of well-trained and dedicated people tackling our most vexing social problems.
Along similar lines, Code for America marshals technical assistance and resources to help government agencies harness technology and improve the delivery and citizen experience of public services. Drawing on their technological acumen and experience, Code for America has also articulated a vision of human-centered government that illuminates an appealing path forward in the digital age.
Another crucial line of work is inspiring and attracting talented people to serve in our governing institutions. This has been a longstanding emphasis of the Volcker Alliance, with its core belief that, “public service is a high calling, and it is critical to engage our most thoughtful and accomplished citizens in service to the public good.” The TechTalent Project has a similar but sharper focus on helping government at all levels recruit public servants with the technological skills agencies need to carry out their missions. TechCongress is working toward this same goal via fellowship programs that bring technologists into the first branch of the federal government. Their efforts are already paying off, as demonstrated by the growing sophistication of congressional hearings and legislative activities on technology issues.
The past few years have also seen promising developments in the realm of ideas. One is even attracting a popular audience. Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball, The Blind Side, and The Big Short has written two books depicting governing institutions and leaders at their best and worst: The Fifth Risk and The Premonition. Perhaps one or both of these books could become popular movies too!
Some recent and more wonky studies have articulated helpful perspectives from unlikely vantage points. Brink Lindsey of the libertarian-ish Niskanen Center has written a compelling white paper entitled “State Capacity: What Is It, How We Lost It, and How to Get It Back.” The paper will be the first in a series of salvos from Niskanen on this topic. Meanwhile, liberal-ish Yale historian Paul Sabin has written a constructively critical assessment of public interest activism: Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism. Ezra Klein echoed elements of this critique in a recent New York Times column, concluding that “Democrats spend too much time and energy imagining the policies that a capable government could execute and not nearly enough time imagining how to make a government capable of executing them. It is not only markets that have failed.” Encountering stalwart right of center defenses of state capacity, and self-aware left of center critiques of how progressive activists have undermined it, is a refreshing change from the standard ideological recitations.
One pressing need is for more academic research and engagement on these practical topics. The American Political Science Association recently did a masterful job in pulling together a task force on congressional reform whose work had a concrete impact. Composed of a diverse set of leading scholars and think tankers, the task force developed a summary synthesis of their recommendations that fed directly into the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a partnership between Vanderbilt and the University of Virginia, is another stellar example. It has developed a powerful research and data-driven framework that equips interested legislators and their staff with guiding principles and approaches for advancing their legislative agendas.
Alas, practical research on public administration and how to lead, organize, and develop civil servants and improve the delivery of public services seems to have fallen out of favor in many universities, precisely when more insight is needed. Two notable exceptions are The Better Government Lab at Georgetown and The People Lab at UC Berkeley. These labs have made practical impressions on the President’s Management Agenda developed by the Biden Administration and the innovative Learning Agenda that accompanies it.
No doubt I have overlooked other worthy efforts in this quick survey. My intention has been to highlight the range of promising initiatives underway. I am not suggesting that these entrepreneurial actors have collectively attained the breadth and depth of coverage needed. Indeed, many could substantially expand and improve their impact with increased funding. We turn to that challenge now.
Philanthropy is the Missing Link
Candid’s comprehensive database on Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy shows that U.S. foundations have devoted $14.7 billion to democracy-related causes and grantees since 2011. However, during that period, foundations have allocated only $478 million—a mere 3% of the total—to improving the capacity and performance of legislative and executive branches of our government. Moreover, this imbalance within the democracy field does not account for all the advocacy foundations support in other domains, from the environment and education to economic policy and racial justice. Philanthropic funders are skimping on investing in the capacity and performance of our faltering governing institutions, even as they attempt to push more and higher-octane policy inputs through them. This is a recipe for failure.
To be sure, there are some notable exceptions. Bloomberg Philanthropies has invested heavily to support innovation in mayoral offices and administrative capacity at the municipal level. The Hewlett Foundation and the Democracy Fund have made a point of building governing capacity in Congress and now in the executive branch at the federal level. And the White House just announced multiple funders are helping support more effective and equitable distribution of federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding to state and local governments. Unfortunately, these and a few other pattern-breaking funders serve as proof of the rule. In aggregate, philanthropy presumes that helping improve the capacity and performance of governing institutions is not its job.
There are understandable if flawed reasons for this. Government resources dwarf those of philanthropy, so it is counter-intuitive for funders to see the need for their sector to invest in the wherewithal of a much bigger one. But this overlooks the barriers to government executives and legislators investing scarce time and money in building the capacity of the institutions in which they serve. In the absence of ideas, advocacy, and material support from outside the government, officials are inclined to neglect or even abuse the health of the institutions for which they are responsible. Indeed, left to their own devices, many elected and appointed executive branch officials rail against “government bureaucracy,” as if they were not in charge of it. Likewise, lawmakers can find it advantageous to run against the legislatures in which they serve, and to cut funding for their essential activities in penny-wise, pound-foolish ways.
The increasingly polarized nature of philanthropy also reduces funders’ support for institutional innovation and development. The growing number of funders who are primarily interested in pushing our society and economy to the right or the left are ambivalent about governing institutions.They support branches of government when the “right” party controls them, and oppose them when the “wrong” party does. But this is an instrumental rather than an institutional stance. It is also an undemocratic approach to funding democracy. Instead of bolstering institutions so whomever the voters elect can put them to better use, polarized philanthropy overrides the electorate, hitting the gas or brakes depending on the funders’ preferences.
We should note that many of the NGO leaders and staff whose work is described in the preceding section also have personal leanings or affiliations with one party or another. However, they recognize that building up governing institutions in a politically divided country means working with people across the ideological spectrum to realize shared and longer term goals. In their day jobs, they find ways to modulate their partisanship so they can work for the broader good. More funders need to assume this responsible outlook.
Where Do We Go From Here?
So what would philanthropy that took governing institutions seriously and invested in their capacity look like? Here are five steps that far-sighted funders should take:
1. Strike a better balance between support for inputs to government and the “throughputs” of government, i.e., the capacity and performance of our legislative and executive branches. The balance doesn’t need to be evenly divided. But unless philanthropic support for governing institutions at the federal, state, and local level is substantially increased, funders’ extensive investment in inputs is going to face sharply diminishing returns. A reasonable initial target would be a 3x increase in the proportion of funding dedicated to legislative and executive branch performance in the democracy field. Tripling this proportion would take us to approximately 10% of the total annual foundation funding for U.S. democracy. From there, we could build!
2. Invest steadily and patiently, regardless of which party controls which institutions. Financial investors perpetually struggle to time the stock market. So too will philanthropic funders if they try to surge or scale back support for the improvement of governing institutions depending on who controls them. They should invest for the long haul, behind good ideas and promising nonprofit organizations and networks. Institutional development and change in government takes time – decades even. The push for civil service reform took a century to come to fruition at all levels of government. We can’t presume that the complex tasks now at hand will be wrapped up within the confines of one or two electoral cycles.
3. Underwrite ideas, research, and development alongside ongoing reform work and operational activities. The task of institutional reform and development in government has steadily become much more complex. It requires grappling with the ongoing thickening of the institutional and policy environment within and between levels of government. And it is occurring amidst accelerating technological changes and the social and economic dislocations that come with them. These are daunting challenges that will require fresh thinking, experimentation, and the development of new approaches to sort out the way forward. Philanthropy is uniquely positioned to support discovery and innovation in the academic and policy realms, and to underwrite the requisite links between them. Funders will need to do so for our governing institutions to fully enter and then flourish in the 21st century.
4. Recognize that the revitalization of our governing institutions will ultimately depend on talented members of rising generations of Americans serving in them. We need younger, more diverse, and tech-savvy public servants. Beginning with the original civil service reform movement up through the 1960s, talented young people were drawn to public service. We need to restore its luster and appeal for those at the outset of their careers, and for those who could bring mission-critical technical expertise to government. Reform of outdated laws, regulations, and organizational cultures that make it hard to recruit, retain, and develop public servants will help, to be sure. So will talent pipelines and professional development programs to inspire and guide people into public service, and to help them learn and grow as their careers develop.
5. Build up infrastructure and networks in the government reform field, linking and supporting grantees demonstrating a knack for collaboration. Earlier generations of institutional reformers solved problems of coordination by establishing the National Civil Service Reform League. We are not in position nor would we want to establish one national entity at this time–especially given the fruitful diversity in perspectives and work that characterizes the field today. But that is all the more reason funders need to support entities that provide shared infrastructure and public goods other organizations, leaders, and researchers can utilize. Funders can help link different groups so the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. They also need to identify those with the inclination and ability to collaborate constructively and fund them so they can do so at the necessary scale.
No doubt other steps could be helpful for funders to take—please suggest them in the comments below. The key point is we need a profound set of changes, and much more ample philanthropy to help bring them about. The stakes are high, and the payoff would be profound. The generations of Americans who pushed from outside the government for reform within it under the auspices of the National Civil Service Reform League rose to the occasion in their day. As a result, we have enjoyed more effective government than we otherwise would have over the ensuing years. We also have the benefit of their example, which highlights the extent to which leaders, advocates, researchers and philanthropists in civil society can improve governing institutions in our democracy. Now more than ever, we need to live up to their legacy. It is time to join forces in a new government reform league for the 21st century.
