The article is devoted to a new history and the current state of personnel management in public administration, i.e., to the serious modernization of the theory of bureaucracy and practical efforts to perfect it. A vast bibliographical analysis of special, mainly American, literature on the subject has been made and presented in the article. The literature of a special concern is the one that assesses the consequences of public administration reforms and the present performance of the American civil service. Comparisons are made with the performance of the analogous Russian system. The major vector of changes is a strive for annulling bureaucracy in the executive power, for searching its new model with limited functions and subordinate to the control of civil society, in particular, the increase of the human capital level in civil service by radical renewing its staff . The epoch of “Big Government” has come to an end. The process of reforming did not appear to be easy: its short-lived consequences had ups and downs, periodical corrections of the way chosen, but the general direction remained unchanged. Broadly, this process is of a considerable interest from the point of view of a general theory of state, since what is happening currently can be characterized as a search of a new type of state that matches better modern realities and demands.