So I don't understand why a President has >1000 appointments to make. It's like the whole government changes every 8 (or 4) years. Massively inefficient.
Agreed. In the UK about 80 members of Parliament get Ministerial jobs at various levels from gofer to Secretary of State and everyone else stays in their job and follows orders from the new Ministers.
I would have thought that a major reform within Biden's grasp as President would be to move most of the current political appointment jobs over to permanent civil service roles, including all but a very few Ambassador roles. But he probably won't do it because there is too much political capital invested in the current system of "jobs for the boys".
As long as you have competent Ministers and civil servants who operate within prescribed standards there is no "transfer of power" from having permanent civil servants. In fact, the lack of a four yearly major disruption to the system means that the policies of a new administration can be put in place more quickly than spending months getting people in place and then spending even longer getting those people up to speed with how things work and how it is possible to change them.
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Exactly. Our system is modeled on yours, obviously, although the two have drifted over time. The basic premise that makes this all work is that everyone is a "civil servant", i.e. they are there to do the job of making things happen, not to decide what should happen. If a new government takes a radically different approach to things, the civil service will make those things happen. Or high level people will resign, usually very vocally, like our former head of Statistics Canada.
Of course our PMs don't have the handicap of a legislative body that can be diametrically opposed to them. They either have a majority, in which case they are fine until the next election, or they have a minority, which means they have to be a bit more conciliatory to keep at least one other party happy. It amazes me that the US government works as well as it does, given the way it is set up. Of course it must be a lot easier when the incoming President is cooperative with the outgoing President. ;-/