The Missing Element: Examining the Loyalty‐Competence Nexus in Presidential Appointments

Drawing on principal-agent models of political control of the bureaucracy, scholars have posited that the appointment power is one of the president's most valuable tools for influencing the burgeoning administrative state. In these principal-agent models, the principals--or presidents--can overcome problems of information asymmetry and shirking by invoking costly monitoring techniques. Or presidents can place loyal agents--appointees--in key bureaucratic posts. Appointees who share and actively promote the president's political philosophy can both signal a president's political intent and advance presidential goals at the bureaucratic level. Appointees have the ability to alter agencies' organizational structures, transfer recalcitrant civil servants to less influential positions, and redirect the allocation of resources or effort within agencies. Reflecting this emphasis of loyalty in contrast to competence, Moe (1985a) recommends that presidents should seek "responsive competence" rather "neutral competence" (Heclo 1975), while Moe (1982; 1985b) and Wood and Waterman (1994) find that the appointment of loyalists to a number of federal regulatory agencies altered agency outputs in the president's preferred policy direction. Other scholars, journalists, and political pundits also assume that the appointment of loyalists advances presidential policy and argue that presidents have consistently promoted loyalty over competence when making appointments (e.g., Baker 2014; Moynihan and Roberts 2010). And more generally, Aberbach and Rockman (2000) note that appointing loyalists to key administration positions is but one aspect in a broader trend toward the politicization of the bureaucracy involving a variety of other techniques promoting presidential influence (e.g., control of budgets, administrative reform; see also Waterman 1989; Durant 1992; Durant and Warber 2001). Yet despite all of this impressive work, there is a theoretically important missing element in these studies. Empirically speaking, what distinguishes a loyal appointee from a competent one? Or, to phrase the question differently, what distinct--and observable--characteristics comprise loyalty and competence? This is an important question for scholars, as some appointee background characteristics, particularly prior experience in Washington, have been cited as evidence of both loyalty and competence (see Nathan 1975; Hess 1976). It is also important for presidents and their personnel teams, as they seek to first evaluate and then select appointees from the hundreds of thousands of available applicants. To address this missing element and better differentiate loyalty from competence, we analyze a unique data set of 3,366 resumes of individuals appointed by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama across 51 different federal institutions, including departments, commissions, and government corporations. The resumes describe the background characteristics of each appointee, from their education and training to their work and political experience. We also examine four types of appointments: presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed (PAS), the focus of most previous studies of presidential appointments, including the work of Krause and O'Connell (2011), (1) and three sets of appointments that do not require Senate confirmation (2) Schedule C (SC); (3) Senior Executive Service (SES), and (4) most Executive Office of the President appointments (PA, presidentially appointed but not requiring Senate confirmation). Our analysis of these generalizable and comprehensive data leads to more precise definitions of loyalty and competence. Literature Review A number of studies, many of them principal-agent models, conclude that presidents can successfully employ their appointment power to effectively control the bureaucracy (see Moe 1982; 1985a; 1985b; Stewart and Cromartie 1982; Menzel 1983; Wood 1990; Wood and Waterman 1991; 1993; 1994; Wood and Anderson 1993). …