ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three areas in which the tension between change and stability exists in the executive branch–programs, budgets, and people. The separation-of-powers system gives Congress, and especially the key authorizing and appropriating subcommittees and committees, both a stake and a share in the administrative agencies of the executive branch. Even the much ballyhooed Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 met with some congressional resistance, especially since the relevant committees in both chambers were tilted a bit toward members with districts abutting Washington. The Bill Clinton administration, hungry for issues that would make it less vulnerable to charges that it was building up the federal bureaucracy through its program proposals, found the idea of reinventing government attractive. The existence of a civil service is designed to institutionalize the personnel system, thus making it difficult for any particular set of political leaders to radically alter administrative personnel exclusively to their own tastes.
