Timeline for Are there developed countries where elected officials can easily terminate government workers?
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| Jan 18, 2023 at 12:53 | comment | added | sfxedit | @JonathanReez And that's why even the police in the US are unionised. Hire and fire for government bureaucracy makes no sense because the pays are low (compared to the private sector), the hours long and the only attraction is job stability and a bit of social prestige from the position. If you start applying fire at will to this sector, it will attract even lower quality of talent than before. Moreover, it will turn any democracy increasingly majoritarian and partisan. | |
| Jan 17, 2023 at 16:42 | comment | added | JonathanReez | @sfxedit not every action necessarily needs to be "fair" or "justified". Sending someone to prison or taking their property needs justification. Firing them shouldn't necessarily be fair, as that's how firing people works in the private sector in the US - anyone can be fired on the spot for any reason or no reason. | |
| Jan 17, 2023 at 16:17 | comment | added | sfxedit | @JonathanReez Thanks for the clarification. For the e.g. you cited, there must be a law / regulation / rule for it, right? Which implies the government action is defined (which means "a justified and fair procedure exist for any government action"). Even if a government action is not defined one can certainly approach the courts to ask them to make a ruling on whether the actions are constitutional / legal / valid or not and create a precedent. (Unless "executive privileges" means the executive is given more leeway by the judiciary is some of the grey areas that are undefined by law?) | |
| Jan 17, 2023 at 15:57 | comment | added | JonathanReez | @sfxedit as an example, the US President controls the classification status of every document (except nuclear secrets) and can go on TV at any time and share whatever top secret information they’d like. The judicial system cannot punish them or stop them from sharing such information. But the votes can punish the President or their party at the next election cycle, if they’d like. | |
| Jan 17, 2023 at 15:37 | comment | added | sfxedit | @JonathanReez Can you give some examples? And when you say they only have to justify to their voters, do you mean these privileges are beyond any judicial review too? | |
| Jan 17, 2023 at 2:10 | comment | added | ohwilleke♦ | I agree that most developed countries have civil service protections, but it certainly isn't obvious to me without examining them one by one that this is the case. Maybe Andorra or Luxembourg manages without them. I don't know but I don't think that "development" definitionally requires civil service protections, particularly if there is an institutional culture of fairness in hiring and firing by government officials. Businesses with employment at will often act in a justified and fair manner anyway. | |
| Jan 16, 2023 at 15:37 | comment | added | Hobbamok | Regarding point 2: The US here is in fact known for easily firing a lot of people with each government change because the level at which "bureaucrats" sit vs the (potentially) changing-with-each-election government people (mostly appointed, not elected) is far lower, so there is a far higher turnover and firing of government employees (which both appointed people and classical bureaucrats are) than in most western nations (western nations because I have no clue about a lot of other governments) | |
| Jan 16, 2023 at 14:30 | comment | added | JonathanReez | Being a "Developed" nation implies that a justified and fair procedure exist for any government action => I wouldn’t say any. There’s some degree of “executive privilege” in every nation where the elected officials can make decisions without being forced to justify their actions to anyone but the voters. The only question is what the scope of said privilege is. | |
| Jan 16, 2023 at 9:52 | history | edited | sfxedit | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Corrected typo; touched up grammar
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| S Jan 16, 2023 at 9:27 | history | suggested | Dezza | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Removed repeated section
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| Jan 16, 2023 at 9:13 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jan 16, 2023 at 9:27 | |||||
| Jan 16, 2023 at 5:36 | history | answered | sfxedit | CC BY-SA 4.0 |