Control Yuan President Wang Chien-shien’s (王建煊) recent remark that civil servants are “idiots” sparked debate from various quarters. I cannot say I agree with him.
In fact, I would have to say that they are very intelligent people. If they weren’t, how would they be able to pass the stringent civil service examinations? And how could they survive in a difficult, rigid, inefficient environment for their entire working lives, working for senior managers who they are not supposed to question?
Let’s look at the statistics. The acceptance rate for the civil service examinations last year was a mere 1.18 percent — it is obviously very difficult to get in. Also, since 1997, there has been a trend for those who are accepted to be better educated. Well over 90 percent have a university degree or higher, and a growing number hold a masters’ degree, or even a doctoral degree.
With these high standards and low acceptance rates, the current civil service examinations are evidently every bit as exacting as the old imperial examinations. You’re not going to get in unless you’re either really intelligent or a fountain of knowledge. It seems slightly strange, then, to say these people are idiots.
I also imagine their jobs are incredibly demanding. Civil servants have a lot of issues to deal with on a daily basis and, what’s more, they have to make sure that everything they do is to the letter of the law: There is no room for error.
They have to mediate between different government departments and iron out any mutual differences or sticking points that arise. Finally, they need to deal with requests from their superiors and have their work constantly appraised. You would surely need to have a very high emotional quotient (EQ) to do this. Otherwise, you would just leave.
Our civil servants are blessed with high IQs and EQs, and yet Wang still chose to describe them as idiots. There are two possible explanations for this: Either he considers the majority of civil servants his intellectual inferiors, or the system they work in is ineffectual and weighed down by policies and measures that are hard to justify.
I think it would be safe to discount the first explanation, given the things Wang has said and done in the past. The second is more probable.
We have all this talent joining the ranks of the civil service every year, and yet the government constantly falls short of public expectations. The root of the problem must lie in the rigidity of the system and excessive bureaucracy. The point is not that the civil servants were originally stupid; it is that the civil service system in Taiwan makes them so.
Civil servants devote themselves to executing government policy and upholding the law. The problem is that the laws that government departments are asked to abide by are inflexible and overly complex, and quite often contradict each other. Something that would be simple in a private company gets bogged down in government institutions and is handled in a totally ineffectual manner.
The other thing civil servants do is exactly what they’re told. The majority of senior managers are all talk and precious little action. They worked their way up through the ranks of the same system and are a product of it. Government departments have their own “special” appraisal system. If individual civil servants want to work their way up, they had best not challenge their superiors.
The senior managers call the shots in the appraisals. If you act too smart, or have too many ideas, you are likely to tread on people’s toes, and that is unlikely to help your chances for promotion. Over time this means that you will become passive, coming to accept that “the boss is always right” and doing what your superiors say without question.
Before you know it you are a puppet. How can you avoid being dumbed down in such an environment?
If Wang feels the need to call civil servants a bunch of idiots, he might want to think about justifying the existence of the Control Yuan, overhaul governmental departments and make senior managers pull their weight. Maybe then our civil servants will be able to fully realize their potential.
Hsu Yu-fang is an associate professor and chairman of the Chinese Department at National Dong Hwa University.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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