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Abstract
Political advisers are attracting increasing attention in Westminster jurisdictions. Typically, scholars focus on the corrosive impact they allegedly have on elements of Westminster convention and practice. We argue that a concern with accountability detracts from other important matters, including understanding and theorising ministerial advisers' roles. In this article we address these issues using primary data from a survey of ministerial advisers in New Zealand. We draw on Maley's typology to classify advisers' activities according to the contribution they make to executive government policy-making. We then theorise these activities through the lens of the core executive. We conclude that ministerial advisers are increasingly important actors in governing environments characterised by complex resource dependencies, modes of operation that are as often relational as they are hierarchical, and bargaining relationships that are often positive and not zero-sum in nature.
Acknowledgements
We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this article. We also acknowledge the support we have received from the Marsden Fund, administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand, and thank the former New Zealand State Services Commissioner, Dr Mark Prebble; Jeanette Schollum of the State Services Commission; Bruce Anderson and Helen Coffey of the Leadership Development Centre; and Michelle Brokenshire of Executive Government Support.
Notes
1Recent exceptions include Connaughton (Citation2010) and Maley (2011). See Eichbaum and Shaw (Citation2010) for a comparative analysis of the contribution political staff make to the policy process.
2The ministerial advisers' survey is part of a multi-year research project, the fieldwork for which also entails surveys of ministers and officials (limited data from which are also reported here).
3See vol. 89 no. 1 of Public Administration and, in particular, Elgie (Citation2011) for reviews of the core concepts.
4While Maley focuses on the horizontal dimension, she acknowledges advisers' importance in the vertical dimension. She suggests three policy roles for advisers in this context: generating policy ideas, policy development and policy implementation (2000, 455). Maley also notes three roles for advisers in engaging with departments and, more particularly, in asserting a measure of enhanced responsiveness: supervising, orienting and mobilising (2010, 102).
5Clearly this will depend on the style adopted by the prime minister of the day. Our data were collected in the context of a government in which not only was the prime minister a dominant policy and political actor, but also one in which there was reasonably close oversight of ministerial activities and performance on the part of the prime minister and her senior political staff. There is a sense that ministers in the present National Party-led government enjoy a greater degree of latitude than was formerly the case. These observations support the case that while core executive power dynamics may well be contingent and personal, they also have a structural dimension (Elgie Citation2011, 69). The contrast between the Clark (1999–2008) and Key (2008–11) governments is instructive here, with the former using ‘ministerial’ staff as a means of prime ministerial coordination.
6Similarly, Maley has recently noted that in Australia ‘[a]dvisers to line ministers were usually in constant consultation with their ministers, acting only as agents, and deals were done only with their minister's agreement. In this sense the advisers expanded their minister's ability to communicate with colleagues, gather information and work through decisions’ (2011, 18).