Politics and the administration 201another administrative dimension to add to the executive departments and
the independent regulatory commissions – the government corporations. Al-
though it is true that the United States avoided the nationalisation of private
industry that took place in Britain and elsewhere, the federal government
nevertheless become involved in conducting numerous activities that are
commercial or industrial in nature. For this purpose the government cor-
poration was chosen as the appropriate form to enable these activities to
be carried out according to the dictates of commercial or industrial needs.
It was intended in this way to give to those directing public enterprises the
same sort of freedom to act with the same flexibility that directors of private
enterprises enjoy. The best-known of these corporations is the Tennessee Val-
ley Authority; proposed by President Franklin Roosevelt and set up by Con-
gress in 1933, the TVA built dams, hydro-electric plants and later nuclear
power stations, supplying electricity to over 8 million people in the Tennes-
see Valley. Other public corporations include the Saint Lawrence Seaway De-
velopment Corporation, Amtrak, the rail network and the US Postal Service.
However, as with public corporations in Britain, the attempt to give the nec-
essary autonomy to government corporations to run their affairs along pure-
ly commercial lines has not been wholly successful. The corporations have
been subjected to increasing legislative and administrative supervision, and
the passage of the Government Corporation Control Act of 1945 integrated
them more closely into the normal machinery of the executive branch.
This then is the picture of the administrative machinery of American gov-
ernment. As we have seen, it is a complex organisation, which has grown in
a haphazard and sporadic fashion. The ‘Great Society’ programmes of Presi-
dent Johnson’s administration added new accretions to the system, and its
growth continues. The problem of coordination and control that this struc-
ture presents has increasingly been the subject of study by academic students
of government and administration, and by government commissions. Before
we turn, however, to their recommendations we must look at another aspect
of the administrative machine, the characteristics of the civil service.
The federal civil service
We have seen some of the structural problems that the development of ‘big
government’ has created in the United States. The same dilemmas are
reflected in the field of the personnel of the federal government. How far
should political considerations enter into the choice and promotion of those
who must run the government? Is efficient government best served by utilis-
ing the services only of neutral career civil servants or by politically com-
mitted people who will wholeheartedly dedicate themselves to presidential
policies? In the early years of the Union, President Washington attempted to
establish that ability should be the major criterion of appointment to office
under the federal government, provided that loyalty to the new Constitution
was ensured. Succeeding presidents, who like Washington were ‘aristocrats’,