In an empirical investigation of this subject, McGrath (2013) found that state-level
politicians in the United States were willing to act on their preferences for “radical”
civil service reform (characterized by the decentralization of the personnel management
system) only when their political party held a majority of the seats in the state
legislature. He found further that their probability of success in moving a reform
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forward depended on the size of their majority (McGrath, 2013); that is, reforms were
more likely to be enacted when the size of the majority was larger. When the majority
was small or thin, members of the majority party were more cautious as they realized
that a switch in majority control could mean that their opponents could overturn any
reform passed or might even benefit from the reform if they became the majority.
Importantly, McGrath (2013) found also that the propensity for reform was tempered
by the strength of public employee unions and by the proportion of seats in the legislature
held by Democrats. The period of time covered by McGrath’s study was from
1996 to 2005. In short, reform during this period was more likely to occur in states
where Republicans were in control politically, where their majority in the state legislature
was significant, and where public employee unions were weak. The fact that
reform was more probable when Republicans were in control is not surprising as the
agenda fits well with a conservative political ideology, as noted above, and conservatives
may be interested in reining in public bureaucracies that are perceived as sympathetic
to liberal Democratic objectives