Work

Political Appointees and the Competence of Federal Program Management

Year: 2005
Type: article
Abstract: In this article, we use the Bush administration’s management grades to analyze whether programs administered by senior executives are better managed than those administered by political appointees requiring Senate confirmation. We explain the administration’s management grading scheme and how it can be informative for evaluating comparative management quality. We explain why senior-executive-run programs should be better managed than appointee-run programs and test our claim with data on 234 federal programs. We find that political-appointee-run programs earn systematically lower grades in most management areas. We conclude that a systematic review of the proper role of political appointees in federal program management should be considered.
Language: English
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2157861934
FWCI: 6.124
Cites: 28
Cited by: 94
Related to: 10