Principal-agent models can justify political management of career officials, while at the same time predicting challenges to it, in part reflecting the different ideological goals of careerists and political appointees. Indeed, the “administrative presidency” strategies Ronald Reagan pursued anticipated and heightened such conflict through attempts to “politicize” the federal executive. Such strategies may help account for the findings of Aberbach and Rockman that the political views of the permanent bureaucracy moved to the right from 1986-1987 to 1991-1992. We extend their work, using data from mail surveys sent to senior careerists in 1987-1988 and 1993-1994 to test propositions about the responsiveness of senior careerists to political principals and the relationships between careerists and appointees. The findings underscore not only the importance of agency mission in explaining senior civil servants’ relations with appointees, but also the flexibility in managing agencies available to appointees that careerists’ overall centrism and professional norms appear to provide.
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