Civil service rules governing the selection and motivation of bureaucrats are among the defining institutions of modern democracies. Although this is an active area of reform in the US and elsewhere, economic analyses of the issue are virtually nonexistent. This paper provides the first welfare evaluation of civil service reform. It describes the effect of reform on the interaction of politicians, voters, and bureaucrats, and shows that society often faces trade-offs between improving the bureaucracy or improving the performance of politicians. My results characterize the conditions under which merit-based recruitment and civil service protections such as tenure can improve welfare.