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<jats:p> With the nature, scope, and pace of public sector contracting accelerating significantly during the Bush administration, and with the Obama administration promising to curb the contracting excesses of its predecessors, it is useful to take stock and ponder the consequences of this movement to date for human resource management. This article puts public sector contracting and its effects in a larger historical, political, and democratic context by (a) reviewing the American propensity for market-based solutions (including contracting) to government problems, a disposition rooted in American exceptionalist values; (b) chronicling how that predisposition has manifested itself in four successive and now overlapping expansions of contracting (from products, to services, to core governmental functions, to human resource management functions); and (c) showing how these developments have had significant consequences not only for the future of the public service but also for the values associated with democratic constitutionalism in the United States. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This normative article examines the contemporary record of pay-for-performance plans in the federal government.These programs, extending back nearly two generations, have consistently malfunctioned. Nonetheless, the state of the field today is one of continued attempts to use the technique despite agency history and research data that document its problematic nature. Based on scholarly literature, news media reports, and interview data, the analysis assesses the practical experience, policy findings, and political realities of this compensation method. The discussion raises questions about rational decision-making models and suggests that belief in performance pay is akin to an urban legend. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article focuses on the George W. Bush administration’s failed effort to impose radical personnel reforms on the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. We use an analytical framework suggesting three overlapping primary reasons for reform: (a) technical concerns, (b) ideological beliefs, and (c) a desire by the executive to enhance political control. The results of our analysis show that, whereas motivations for the Bush reforms were mixed, changes advocated by the administration were largely politically and ideologically motivated. As a result, they met stiff resistance from stakeholders, particularly federal employee unions and their supporters in Congress, and the reforms were ultimately scuttled. One lesson from this experience is that reformers should avoid radical changes to personnel systems based largely on ideological and political preferences. Reforms that are more incremental in nature and grounded more firmly on technical matters related to the implementation of core personnel functions will, in our view, be more likely to succeed. Yet a conundrum exists: if presidential scholars are correct, even these types of reforms may be held hostage by proposals that reflect the views of partisans unwilling to compromise in what appears to be an enduring era of polarized politics in Washington. </jats:p>

<jats:p> As the Obama administration pieces together its own civil service reform program, it may find solutions to key reform challenges in an oft-overlooked Bush administration human resource management initiative in the national security arena. While press and scholarly attention focused largely on the administration’s reform efforts at the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, discussed at length in the article by Kellough, Nigro, and Brewer in this symposium, the development of a common personnel framework across the U.S. Intelligence Community went relatively unnoticed. The author argues that human resource management changes made pursuant to the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 provide a potential model for the Obama administration as it addresses three key reform challenges that have long plagued policymakers: replacing the General Schedule with a modernized approach to compensation and classification, achieving a balance between uniformity at the executive branch level and flexibility at the agency level, and reconfiguring the Senior Executive Service. </jats:p>