Undergraduate Origin as a Factor in Elite Recruitment and Mobility

HE MOST conspicuous example of a non-military closed personnel system in the administrative elite at the federal level is the Foreign Service, which in addition to controlling the administration of diplomacy in the United States also plays an important role in the foreign policy-making process within the State Department. Recruitment and promotion of members of this elite have been among the most persistent problems in the conduct of American diplomacy. Prior to 1924 the functions required by American involvement abroad were dichotomized into consular and diplomatic duties and these were carried on by separate personnel systems: the Consular Corps, which had been since the early part of the century a merit system characterized by selection on ability, promotion through ranks and tenure during good behavior, and the Diplomatic Corps, which did not have an adequate career system; officers were theoretically chosen on merit but the pay was so low that only men with independent means could afford to accept appointments as secretaries and the top positions were filled by political appointees. Generally this meant that the Corps was staffed by people from socially prominent or wealthy families who were attracted to diplomatic position by prestige considerations inherent in diplomacy?. Sixty-three per cent, for example, of all diplomatic officers in 1924 were graduates of Harvard-Princeton-Yale.2 Since the diplomatic duties were more directly related to the policy-making process than consular duties, the Diplomatic Corps was the more powerful of the two groups. But the small recruiting base of the Diplomatic Corps did not supply enough new members of sufficient quality to perform the function assumed by the Corps or to resist attacks on the Corps from the Consular Corps or by political and interest elites.3 As a result of this failure, the Diplomatic Corps was forced to give up its separate personnel system and to shift its recruiting base from one based on wealth, social position, and political influence to one based on merit. This change found expression in the Rogers Act which merged the Diplomatic Service and the Consular Corps into a single Foreign Service based on the selection of young officers through a rigorous examination both written and oral their promotion in competition with their peers and the selection of the best as ambassadors.4

Administration (probate law) · Diplomacy · Economics · Economy · Elite · Foreign policy · Political science · Politics · Presidency · Prestige · Promotion (chess) · Service (business) · Australian History and Society · Law · Public Administration · Scottish History and National Identity · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact

• Behavioural Research in Public Administration

  Open Access•Ross Curnow•Australian Journal of Public…•1969

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