Elections, Ideology, and Turnover in the U.S. Federal Government

Abstract

A defining feature of public sector employment in the United States is the regular change in elected leadership. We describe how these changes alter policy and disrupt civil servants’ influence over agency decisions, potentially shaping their career choices. Using data on careers from over three million federal employees in the United States from 1988 to 2011, we evaluate how administration changes influence turnover in a series of regression analyses. We find substantial stability in the civil service but also some pockets of responsiveness to political factors, particularly among career senior executives in agencies with views divergent from the president’s. A combination of factors, including transitions, policy priorities, and ideological differences, could increase turnover propensity for these employees by nearly one-third in some agencies over an administration’s first term. This has implications for understanding possible mechanisms linking politics and organizational capacity and for understanding how and for whom politics is influential in career decisions.