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Political Appointees and the Competence of Federal Program Management

College of William & Mary

David E. Lewis

Princeton University

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.

Key Words: public administration • political appointees • Senior Executive Service (SES) • government management • Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) • executive branch

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