Remaking the Civil Service: Governance, Politics, and Performance

Harvard HKS

How do government jobs work? How should they work? This course focuses on those questions.For generations, the basic structure of public employment in the United States attracted little attention. That has now changed. Debates rage over hiring, firing, unionization, and the balance between political control and nonpartisan administration.This course examines how American governments structure and manage their workforces. We will study the emergence of the modern civil service, its…