It is probably a given that we all take public services as these institutions of government that actualize government intentions in the form of laws, policies, programs and projects. We however often pay less attention to how the appointment system or systems of public servants can have a bearing on the competency of the public service in any given country. Most modern democracies ordinarily have a combination of two appointment systems; career professionals whose appointment is based on merit and political appointees whose appointments is partisan and meant to serve political preferences of the appointing authority. These two systems are known to produce different levels or degrees of competence and the extent of the mix between values of the two will determine a dominance of any of two types of competencies that are conceptually linked to each of the systems. The merit system or career based appointment system is known to provide for what has often been referred to as neutral competence while the political partisan appointment system tends to result in responsive competence.
The intent of this piece is simply to argue for a public service that is as much as possible dominated by appointment system that is merit based and enlists career professional to dominate the policy expert roles and become drivers of policy initiatives in a country like Botswana. The reason for this view is that the neutral competency of public services is largely because public servants appointed through the merit based system often exhibit a number of what I will call necessary values, skills and reason for action. The first value or characteristic is that career professionals are guided by the application of their bureaucratic expertise often accumulated over sustained periods with a focus on their career path & skills and competencies required in the workforce. This expertise is channelled in an objective manner for the sole purpose of maximizing or obtaining the best possible outcomes for the public good.
Additional this expertise is in varied specialised areas that are required in the diverse and often large public service responsibilities.
Secondly, career public servants ordinarily possess a load of meaningful and vast experiences that have been accumulated over years of service to the public and the dynamism of the nature of work networks and relationships with individuals, groups and institutions of varied knowledge and experiences. This longstanding relationships with other institutional actors, creates a wealth of experience, wisdom and requisite skills and competencies that develops public management skills necessary for the character of a public servant. It is this developed and entrenched experiences and knowledge that makes a career public servant a necessary and honest broker when partisan and ideological considerations threaten the neutrality of the public service. This is critical because in the absence of this neutral broker the public can easily be subjected to policy initiatives that are inherently partisan and politically driven even if this are not in the interest of the public good.
Public services with political appointees results in responsive competence largely because the so appointed public servants, are often more apt to have their professional orientation coloured by the values and inclinations of the institutions responsible for their appointments even when such appointing institutions are deemed to be democratic and legally in line with their assigned duties. It has been observed that this coloured orientation often hurts performance in the public service because it has the tendency of negatively affecting morale in the public service, especially when political appointees take precedent and become the preferred policy advisors by political leaders. When this happens it affects the career path of the expert public officers who often sees their progression blocked by these political appointees and often results in shortened tenure for career civil servants.
Secondly, anytime political appointees become a common feature of a public service, it creates barriers to an effective recruitment system that usually seeks to target highly qualified professionals whose political inclination is not a desired factor in the performance of their public duties. This is made worse by the known practice that comes with political appointments and that is often experience, knowledge and qualifications in the post are not a pre-requisite. This suggests that in spite of the availability of qualified, experienced and competently skilled experts in the market, appointing authorities would often choose or appoints people with less experience and least qualifications. As they often say qualification for political appointments requires one to be political correct in thinking and values and these may have nothing to do with knowledge of the job.
In preaching the merit based appointments, I am not necessarily advocating for total disregard of political appointments for I so believe that if guided by the right principles; equal opportunity, desire to diligently serve the public interest and protect the virtues and values of a competent, reliable and morally upright public service, then political appointments can be used to compliment the merit based system, not to negate its values. The greatest imbalance has been that often political appointees are not only closer and have the ear of the political leadership, but they tend to also have the power and authority to make crucial decisions within the public service, including decisions that may conflict or disregard expert advice from the career professionals. This has been the reason some policies, programs and projects appear to be not in sync with what the average citizen would expect from his/her government.
In brief political appointments can be easily abused and used for the wrong reasons and political expediency is often not so virtue to be sought for and any time there is need for such it must be based on preserving the public good not partisan interests that only serves the political leaders. It tends to suffocate open discussion and engagement for seeking the optimal solutions because it can foster mistrust, cronyism and a culture of public servants spying on one another to please the political leadership. If this happens the space for neutral advice and objective rationality becomes too narrow and constrained for the expert to openly advice in the public interest.
