Transformations in Elite Recruitment Structures of the American Administrative State

美国行政国家精英招募结构的变革

• 批准号: 0321561
• 负责人: William McAllister
• 金额: $ 14.64万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-07-01 至 2005-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0321561&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Transformations; Elite; Recruitment; Structures; American

The administrative organizations of the American government are important sites for making and implementing policy. Those at the top of these organizations have major responsibility not only for determining and implementing policy but for guiding the organizational development of government. Recruitment processes determine who occupies these positions and hence their quality and behavior. Thus, how such people are recruited affects the democratic legitimacy and competency of the American government. The purpose of this study is to identify the recruitment structure for elite administrative positions and to describe transformations in those structures over time. The study is motivated by an apparent paradox. Elite research suggests recruitment to these positions is relatively unstructured, politically permeable and tumultuous, producing people with uncertainly relevant skills and little identification with the state. However, research on the development of the organizational capacity of the American state suggests that these structures become coherent, ordered and impermeable, producing people with appropriate skills and identification with the state. To examine this paradox, study does three things. First, it uses theory on the development of the organizational capacity of the state to generate sets of propositions about the kinds of patterns and changes in those patterns that should be expected. Second, it collects unique information on the timing and sequence of diverse aspects of the careers of administrative elites from 1850 to 1998. Third, it uses optimal matching (OM) to analyze the data. This technique allows study to use the timing and sequence of individual careers to discover the recruitment structures hypothesized to generate individual careers. Two contributions are highlighted here. First, the study poses a paradox at the intersection of research fields not usually brought together, and then uses a new analytic technique and unique data to try to resolve the paradox. In so doing, it promotes the development of research in both elite recruitment and state-building. For elite recruitment, the study provides a theoretical frame within which to think about historical changes in recruitment. Further, the research advances concept specification and measurement precision for recruitment research and provides new evidence regarding some of the classic issues in the field. The study contributes to state-building research by examining what has seemed to be an exception to the pattern of growth and transformation in the organizational capacity of the state and, thus, suggests a focus on elite position for research in American state-building. By analyzing such a long time period in organizations across the state, the study greatly expands the time frame and sites of research on American state-building. Concomitantly, optimal matching provides a nuanced picture of recruitment changes. This will help better understand the meaning of transformations for developing the organizational capacity of the state. The study also seeks to add to the field of American Political Development (APD) the combined benefits of historical narrative, quantitative methodologies and individual-level data. Studies in APD commonly use qualitative methods to pursue macro-historical and theoretical questions. This study also seeks to address these questions, but by using quantitative, individual-level behavioral data. It thus builds quantitatively based, historically grounded macro-level arguments out of the micro events of individual lives. This is not common in studies of macro-political change. This project has the potential to contribute to broader societal goals by enhancing understanding of leadership. Th quality and character of leadership in American government are public and academic concerns. These have been explicit issues for the government for at least 70 years, (e.g., the 1930's Brownlow Commission, the post-war Hoover Commissions and the Volker Commission in 1990). This research brings a new perspective to them and could shed light on improving leadership.

美国政府的行政机构是制定和实施政策的重要场所。这些组织的高层不仅对政策的制定和实施负有主要责任，而且对政府的组织发展负有主要责任。招聘过程决定了谁担任这些职位，从而决定了他们的素质和行为。因此，如何招募这些人影响到美国政府的民主合法性和能力。本研究的目的是确定精英行政职位的招聘结构，并描述这些结构随时间的变化。这项研究的动机是一个明显的悖论。精英研究表明，这些职位的招聘相对没有组织，政治渗透性强，而且动荡不安，产生的人具有不确定的相关技能，对国家几乎没有认同感。然而，对美国国家组织能力发展的研究表明，这些结构变得连贯、有序和不可渗透，产生了具有适当技能和对国家认同的人。为了检验这个悖论，研究做了三件事。首先，它运用关于国家组织能力发展的理论来产生一系列关于各种模式的命题，以及这些模式中应该预期的变化。其次，它收集了1850年至1998年行政精英职业生涯各个方面的时间和顺序的独特信息。第三，采用最优匹配（OM）对数据进行分析。这种技术允许研究使用个人职业生涯的时间和顺序来发现假设产生个人职业生涯的招聘结构。这里强调了两项贡献。首先，本研究在不同研究领域的交叉点提出了一个悖论，然后使用新的分析技术和独特的数据试图解决这个悖论。在这样做的过程中，它促进了精英招募和国家建设方面的研究发展。对于精英招聘，本研究提供了一个思考招聘历史变迁的理论框架。进一步提出了招聘研究的概念规范和测量精度，并为该领域的一些经典问题提供了新的证据。这项研究对国家建设研究做出了贡献，它考察了国家组织能力增长和转变模式中的一个例外，因此，建议在美国国家建设研究中关注精英地位。通过对整个州的组织进行如此长时间的分析，本研究极大地扩展了美国国家建设研究的时间框架和地点。同时，最优匹配提供了招聘变化的微妙图景。这将有助于更好地理解变革对于发展国家组织能力的意义。该研究还试图为美国政治发展（APD）领域增加历史叙述、定量方法和个人层面数据的综合效益。APD研究通常使用定性方法来追求宏观历史和理论问题。这项研究也试图解决这些问题，但通过使用定量的，个人层面的行为数据。因此，它从个人生活的微观事件中建立了以数量为基础、以历史为基础的宏观层面的论点。这在宏观政治变化的研究中并不常见。这个项目有可能通过加强对领导力的理解来促进更广泛的社会目标。美国政府领导人的素质和性格是公众和学术界关注的问题。至少70年来，这些都是政府明确的问题（例如，20世纪30年代的布朗洛委员会，战后的胡佛委员会和1990年的沃尔克委员会）。这项研究为他们带来了一个新的视角，并可能有助于提高领导力。