composed solely of career or political executives but rather a mix (albeit a lopsided one) of both. The establishment of the SES marked a reversal of the trend away from the politicization noted by Mosher (1968) a decade earlier.
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Prior to the CSRA there was no coherent executive personnel system across the executive branch or even within agencies. In many cases Congress made the decisions about number, placement, and pay for federal executives. Congressional influence in the process led some careerists to see the Congress as their principal patron. Thus, their loyalties rested more in Congress or its subcommittees than in their agency head. In addition, the political appointees who headed the agencies had very limited power to reassign careerists internally, as rank-in-the-position made it difficult for them to move personnel to match changed agency priorities (Marzotto et al. 1985, 114).
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The Senior Executive Service was designed to correct what were considered the worst flaws of the civil service system. When it was established there was a top limit of 10,777 positions allocated to the agencies and filled by them on request to the Office of Personnel Management. It is now composed of nearly 7,000 senior officials, approximately 90 percent of whom are career civil servants. The rest are noncareer political appointees.
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In essence, "the SES encompasses the real managers of the American bureaucracy. Its members work at the strategic interstices of politics and administration-just below the president and his top political appointees." They are, for example: assistant and associate administrators, deputy assistant secretaries, directors of various government centers, research directors, and office and division chiefs of nearly every executive agency of the federal government (Huddleston 1987, 28-29).
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The organizing principle of the SES was the forging of a
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 | | unified, integrated higher civil service from the traditionally disparate shards of senior departmental administration. . . . the SES was to be America's answer to Europe's superbureaucratsa general civilian officer corps, staffed by highly trained and broadly experienced men and women who could be shifted from assignment to assignment as the needs of government required. . . . the vigorous, competent, and spirited bureaucracy that democratic government requires. (Ibid., 29)
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The SES has several key features. It makes performance a central principle; removes its members from traditional civil service protections; bases rank in the person rather than in the position; features enhanced
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