Lateral entry into the Foreign Service: times have changed.

Abstract

Examined is a feature of the personnel management system of the United States Foreign Service. Lateral entry, the absorption of individuals into the professional diplomatic corps at other than the bottom grade, is traced from Its origin with the very beginnings at the professionalization of the career service to the present day. Considered by the elite career system of the Foreign Service to be a threat to the career principle, lateral entry as a recruiting method has been consistently resisted in application. Support for this opposition has been found in constituent groups in Congress, the executive branch, and the private sector. Proponents have hailed the measure as a much needed expansion tool and as a method of infusing new blood and new ideas into a career system perceived as having turned stagnant and thus ineffective through conservatism and ingrowth. The decades following World War II witnessed three periods in which massive attempts were made to expand the size and capabilities of the Foreign Service through integration into the system of auxiliary career systems in the foreign affairs community. In the long term the results of these efforts have been brought into question. Lateral entry as a reform proposal has been directed toward the organizational structure. It now appears that the problem with the Department of State and the Foreign Service is not fully organizational but in great part one of lack of viable role. The decade of the 1980s has brought changes in the philosophy of management toward the basic problems of foreign affairs management. Lateral entry has been de-emphasized anJ may well be on its way out as a technique, together with attempts at a unified foreign affairs personnel system.