Still friends? Revisiting New Zealand public servants’ perceptions of ministerial advisers

ABSTRACT

Ten years ago, political advisers – or ministerial advisers as they are known in Aotearoa New Zealand – were a relatively recent arrival on the stage of executive government. They attracted some attention but empirical insights were thin on the ground. In 2006 Political Science published the first systematic research on public servants’ perceptions of the actions, activities and impacts of their partisan counterparts. That work concluded that relations between permanent and political advisers were, in the main, in cordial good health: certainly there were areas of tension but on balance the protagonists were more akin to allies rather than enemies. But more than a decade has passed and a reassessment of the state of relations between the respective cadrés is well overdue. This article compares those earlier findings with new data on officials’ perceptions of ministerial advisers collected in 2017, and assesses whether or not the relationship between public servants and political appointees can still reasonably be characterised as one of amity.

KEYWORDS:

• Public service
• ministerial advisers
• politicisation
• Westminster
• Wellington

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the generous assistance of the New Zealand Institute of Public Administration in undertaking this research, and to thank the two anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See a 2010 Report by the Office of the Auditor General for an analysis of the division of labour typically found in the office of a new minister of the Crown (https://www.oag.govt.nz/2010/ministerial-spending/part2.html).

2. In 2005 Senior Private Secretaries were typically members of a cohort of permanent staff who were available to support ministers irrespective of the political complexion of the government. It is now common for ministers to appoint from beyond the departmental pool, including staff with whom they may have worked when in opposition.

3. A total of 640 respondents provided completed questionnaires. Given that this was an on-line survey we were conscious of the trade-off between length and response rate and so some items included in the 2005 instrument were not repeated. Frequency tables for all items together with all of the open-text responses are available at: https://ipanz.org.nz/Attachment?Action=DownloadandAttachment_id=150185. Both the sample and response rates permit a robust analysis of the data, although the absence of an accurate sampling frame for the wider population of civil servants constrains the use of inferential statistical analysis. In this article we focus on basic descriptive measures and respondents’ textual comments.

4. We did not ask this specific question in 2005.

5. In September 2017 (many years after the path had been taken by other Westminster nations) the State Services Commissioner issued New Zealand’s first code of conduct for ministerial staff. While it requires ministerial advisers to ‘respect the duty of independent government agencies to provide free and frank advice and carry out their duties free from inappropriate influence’, it is less detailed and prescriptive than other countries’ codes.

6. A Scopus word search using various combinations of the terms ‘functional politicisation’ and ‘zealand’ produced no relevant results; neither did an index search of major publications in public administration, public management and political science. Boston et al. (1996, p. 322; see also Martin 1991) contains a rare reference to the phenomenon, identifying ‘another dimension of the “politicisation” argument [which] is that although “responsiveness” is a reasonable expectation for ministers to have of officials, this could be translated into “the minister is always right”’. They offer no view on the prevalence or otherwise of functional politicisation.

7. Responses (n = 158) were coded into seven categories (functional politicisation, formal politicisation, substantive administrative politicisation, procedural administration politicisation, positive contribution from advisers, role/capabilities of ministers and accountability/regulation/training issues). Some 44 (or 18.8%) of 233 discrete responses (accounting for 27.8% of all 158 cases) referred to what we coded as functional politicisation.

8. In 2005 this item was a forced choice (Yes/No), with 55.8% responding in the affirmative, 18% in negative and the balance undecided/unsure.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Shaw

Richard Shaw is Professor of Politics in the Politics Programme, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand. With Chris Eichbaum he is co-editor of 'Ministers, Minders and Mandarins' and 'Partisan Appointees and Public Servants' (both with Edward Elgar). His work on ministerial advisers has been published in Public Administration, Governance, Public Management Review and other leading journals.

Dr Chris Eichbaum

Chris Eichbaum is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington New Zealand, and a Senior Associate of the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University. With Richard Shaw, he is co-editor of 'Ministers, Minders and Mandarins' and 'Partisan Appointees and Public Servants' (both with Edward Elgar). His work, often on ministerial advisers, has been published in leading journals such as Governance, Public Administration, Parliamentary Affairs and elsewhere.