From Patronage To Proficiency In The Public Service An Inquiry Into Professional Qualification And Methods Of Recruitment In The Civil Service And The Municipal State PDF Download

Excerpt from From Patronage to Proficiency in the Public Service: An Inquiry Into Professional Qualification and Methods of Recruitment in the Civil Service and the Municipal Service The old saying that the success or failure of all institutions depends on the men who work them is a political platitude of the first water; but it is acquiring a new aspect of truth with the gradual evolution of modern political science from the old "art of government." For with this development success or failure comes to depend not only, as hitherto, on the spirit and character of the men who work the institutions, but also, to an ever-increasing extent, on their expert knowledge and professional qualifications. The progress of this transition is necessarily a slow one, and in our own day we shall see no more than its mere beginning; but still we can note that the most significant characteristic of the progressive development of State activity, public ownership and administrative regulation which has been one of the outstanding political features of the past century, is the alteration in the methods by which the greatly extended functions of government are carried out. In the old days, the whole sphere of government was in the hand of the amateur. Legislation was mainly the privileged affair of the leading members of a few wealthy landowning families, and administration entrusted to the tender mercies of their usually incompetent and corrupt satellites - younger sons, needy relatives and the lower strata of a nobleman's entourage. Those days are gone, so far as administration is concerned. Gone, too, are the days when the central government relied for its local execution on the benevolent despotism of the propertied Justice of the Peace. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.