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UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Abstract

Conservatives have made reforming the civil service a top priority, and this was exemplified by former President Donald Trump’s open opposition to job protections that federal civil servants enjoy. President Trump and others who advance a unitary executive theory, pledged to reshape the civil service by amassing appointment, disciplinary and removal powers in the president, although this would make a patronage system more feasible. To this end, President Trump issued an executive order that exposed many career federal civil service workers to a spoils system. This came on the heels of other executive orders that reduced existing workplace protections for career workers. Public condemnation of this move was swift because it was regarded as a departure from longstanding merit rules that have been reaffirmed and expanded over time. Since 1883, the United States has evolved an expert, professional and competent civil service, resulting in a reasonably efficient bureaucracy free of political influence. But that could all change if the executive branch could treat career civil servants as at-will employees, and disregard workplace laws, norms, ethics, and hierarchies. This article describes the evolution of merit rules for federal civil servants, and the shift away from a spoils system. It then uses the experience of civil servants in Puerto Rico to show what a patronage system could look like in the federal government, and the policy, service, and economic impacts it will likely have. The article traces Puerto Rico’s patronage mill to its Spanish colonial roots and shows how this system flourishes despite constitutional and statutory rules prohibiting it. The article details a formal patronage apparatus unlike anything ever seen in the federal government, that is codified in internal political party regulations and implemented by public agency heads and party supporters. These regulations require the educating of public sector workers in electoral matters, mobilizing them to support political campaigns, and using them as enforcers of a politically driven civil service bureaucracy. The article shows that despite the existence of merit rules and the widespread condemnation of political discrimination and associated corruption, patron- age flourishes because political elites benefit from a spoils system, and there are no incentives for reform. The two main political parties of Puerto Rico support and promote patronage and have no incentives to internalize the costs of poor policies, corruption, and inefficiencies stemming from patron- age. The Puerto Rico experience demonstrates how a mature patronage sys- tem can become a cultural norm alongside constitutional and statutory merit rules, with very destructive effects on governance and society. Its resurgence in the federal workplace therefore needs to be guarded against, as is its re- moval from Puerto Rican society. To this end, the article offers an account- ability proposal to address patronage in Puerto Rico.

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