1. Political Advisers and the Civil
Service
Faculty of Law
University of Zagreb
17 September 2012

2. Questions of a political advisory system
• Why should there be one?
• What should it comprise?
• Advisory system within broader relationships?
• What are the implications for the civil service and
public policy?
• Issues: accountability, responsibility, governance
– Can politicians handle role of principal with agents?
– Effectiveness of different approaches to relationships?
– Need to balance institutions of government?

3. Bases of government
Political Basis
• Roots in democratic theory
• Values: Political responsiveness, Accountability
through elected representatives
• Egs: Electoral responsiveness, Open government
Bureaucratic Basis
• Origins in organisational theories
• Values: Maximise efficiency, Effectiveness, Economy
• Egs: Hierarchy, Functional specialisation, Merit

4. Four Images
• Image 1: Policy/Administration
politicians make decisions, civil servants administer them
• Image 2: Facts/Interests
politicians & civil servants participate in policy; distinctive
contributions
• Image 3: Energy/Equilibrium
politicians articulate diffuse interests;
civil servants mediate focused interests of organised
clienteles
• Image 4: Pure hybrid
bureaucratisation of politics & politicisation of bureaucracy
Aberbach, Putnam and Rockman 1981

5. Relationships in Anglo-Saxon systems
• Administrative tradition Anglo-Saxon
• Conception of relationship between political
executive and civil service
• One end of spectrum compared to other traditions
• Provides a range of experiences over time with
political advisers based on different country size,
scale of advisory system, & connections with
other aspects of political-bureaucratic relationship

6. Why political advisors?
Origins of political advisers
• Frustration with implementation of party policy
• Suspicion of civil service from a party unused to
government
• Control as an end in itself (democratic government
should be in charge)
Subsequent justification for increases in advisers
• Policy complexity
• Ministerial workload

7. What should it look like?
• Problems with comparisons because of:
– Ministerial staff versus advisers
– Political operatives versus policy experts
– Prime ministerial versus ministers’ staff
• Roles:
– Expert
– Political/party and Inter-party
– Policy
– Media
– (Strategic)

8. Advisors in Anglo-Saxon systems
Ministers’ Prime Total
offices Minister’s
Office
Australia 420 50 470* (2007)
Canada 431 93 524 (2007)
New Zealand 58 (2008)
United Kingdom 48 20 68** (2007)
* Since reduced. **Increased to 56 and 23 in 2012.

9. Patterns of change
• Oscillations (over 30 or more years)
– General pattern is for ascendancy of political
executive and public responses when it
oversteps the limits of acceptable behaviour
– Corrective measures follow until new pressures
• Trends over long term
– Increase in advisers (despite short-term
fluctuations with different governments)

10. Impact on civil service
• Redistribution of power involves both expanding
ministerial resources and reducing the role of
the public service
• Loss of roles, permanency and centrality
• Challenges for impartiality
• In Australia, 35 per cent of SES and EL staff in direct
contact with a minister and/or advisers experienced
challenges ‘in balancing the need to be apolitical, impartial
and professional; to be responsive to the government; and
to be openly accountable’ in their dealings (APSC 2011).

11. Experiences with advisory systems
Continuing problems with operation of systems:
• United Kingdom:
– ‘executive powers’ allowing special advisers in PM’s
office to give instructions to civil servants
– focus on individual cases – advisers crossing line in
2012
• Australia:
– celebrated cases eg children overboard
– junior political operatives
• Canada:
– part of a broader syndrome of partisanship (Aucoin’s
new political governance)

12. Guidelines for ministerial advisers
• Few OECD countries have guidelines
• Australian Code of Conduct for Ministerial Staff (also UK
Code of Conduct for Special Advisers)
– ministerial staff do not have the power to direct APS employees
in their own right and that APS employees are not subject to
their direction
– executive decisions are the preserve of Ministers and public
servants and not ministerial staff acting in their own right
• Effect of codes on behaviour?

13. Head of Australian public service on advisers
• ‘The doctrine of ministerial responsibility has contributed to the
rise of advisers and lies at the heart of uncertainty about their
role… In seeking to track so many matters through advisers it is
possible that ministers find themselves accepting a very broad
view of ministerial responsibility, a view at odds with the reach
of all the other mechanisms established by the parliament to
hold the administration accountable’ (Moran 2011).
• Not subject parliamentary committees or other oversight
bodies. ‘Mechanisms for holding advisers accountable are
murky’.
• Moran’s (2011) exhortations to ‘strive for the right balance in the
exercise of executive power, and clarify ministerial
responsibility’. The implication is that the behaviour of advisers
(or the ‘teenagers’) has not been contained, despite the code of
contact.

14. Partisanship in government: options
Political advisers and one of the following:
• non-partisan civil service
• spoils system
• partisan civil service
• politically appointed senior civil service
How much partisanship is required to
govern and to manage delivery of
services?

15. Challenges & issues
• Resilience of the system of government?
– Importance of an administrative tradition that
provides bedrock/core principles and values
– Institutional balance
• Problem of transition between governments
– Point at which change of directions occurs
– Issues of civil service ownership and desire to
implement policy
– Allaying suspicion about allegiance of civil service
– Impatience of new governments

16. Political executive’s options in relation to
civil service: range of levers
• Political advisers – expand resources of
minister’s office
• Political appointments to senior civil service
• External sources of advice
– think tanks, consultants etc
• Use of task forces etc with external appointments
• Reform civil service
• Performance management of senior civil service
– top-down (performance agreements with heads)

17. Effect of advisory system?
• Do advisers expand the realm of advice and
contribute to contestability and robust policy?
• Do they have a funneling effect that narrows
options to an ideological agenda rather than
‘reality testing’
• How is the demand for advisers justified?

18. Conclusion
• Positive:
– Advisers serve useful purposes, particularly
with party and partisan matters, specialised
expertise, & mobilisation of action
– Institutionalised part of government
• Negative:
– Continue to be contentious and source of
debate and instability
– Lack of governance of advisory system
• Continuing issues:
– Transparency, accountability and justification
– Implications for system of government