Abstract
A growing corpus of empirical findings suggests that appointed partisan advisers are established and influential policy actors within the executive. Their policy work has long attracted concerted attention with respect to issues of accountability and politicization. Less attention however has been cast to concept and theory building, to link empirical findings with extant policy theory. This article presents careful analysis of the leading conceptual approaches to the study of these policy workers. It offers a critique of these approaches but suggests they share common logic and identify common attributes that can usefully be synthesized into a new framework. A framework is then advanced through the elaboration of four key concepts: buffering, bridging, moving, and shaping to focus on the substantive and procedural nature of partisan advisers’ policy work. Combined with additional criteria, these are used to develop two subsidiary frameworks focusing on partisan advisers’ policy advisory and policy process participation. The study of these actors is argued to not only benefit from improved linkages with policy theory, but that policy theory itself may be improved through focused study of these unique, politically appointed, policy workers.
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Notes
The very nomenclature used in the study of these policy actors draws attention to their diverse functions as executive policy workers. Eichbaum and Shaw (2007a, b, 2008) in their excellent studies use the term ‘ministerial advisers’ but later use the term ‘political staff’(2010) in their introduction to their international comparative volume. Maley (2000, 2011) employs the term ministerial partisan advisers in her studies of these actors in Australia. Gains and Stoker (2011) among others working in the U.K. context use the term ministerial ‘special advisers.’ Still others use the term ‘political advisers’ (Zussman 2009; OECD 2007). This study uses the term ‘partisan advisers’ to define remunerated political appointees, with officially acknowledged policy functions, who are employed by and work within the office of an elected official. That is, it excludes other types of political appointees whose primary functions are not policy related (i.e., civil servants, or minister’s clerical or logistical staff, communications staff) or who do not work in the office of an elected official. The term ‘partisan’ is used to distinguish between policy workers including public service actors that may engage in ‘policy-politics’ but are precluded from engaging in ‘partisan-politics’ related to policy (Kernaghan 1986; Overeem 2005).
Following Ostrom’s (1999: 39–40) well-known categorization a framework identifies relevant concepts and assists with the organization of analysis and theoretical comparison.
It should be noted that Baccigalupo (1973) provided similar archetypes over thirty years ago in a pioneering study on the role and functions of ‘chiefs of staffs’ in a Canadian sub-national case. He set out three possible configurations of ‘écran’ (akin to Zussman’s ‘gatekeeper’ model), ‘braintrust’ (akin to Zussman’s collaborative model), and ‘staff spécialisé’ (akin to the triangulated model).
Zussman does point out that in the majority of cases where the collaborative model is practiced advisers have no official authority over their public service counterparts (Zussman 2009, p. 14).
Zussman also provides a fourth and final ‘hybrids and outliers’ category to which various configurations that do not neatly fit the aforementioned categories or blended versions can be placed.
Those working from a policy design approach would, however, see these two as linked. Thus, representing another strand of policy theory that has yet to fully explore what function partisan advisors may play in design activities or spaces (Howlett 2011).
This type of arrangement has existed already with a 1997 UK Order in Council (see Article 1 of the civil Service (amendment) Order in Council 1997) providing three first minister’s office special advisers with the delegated authority to issue instructions to any Whitehall public service officials.
While Maley’s path-breaking work was classified as a ‘roles’-based approach, it should be noted that she also included direct reference to the ‘agenda setting role’ and Kingdon’s (1995) multiple streams approach. Given that the other four roles in her typology are not explicitly linked to policy process theory it is classified in the ‘roles-based’ category.
See Dep 3/4673 Cabinet Office April 1996.
The distinction is with respect to policy advisory activity occurring during formal policy development as opposed to during a range of other potential conjunctures, or policy or governance activities. That is, policy advice conceived of as occurring during policy formulation (Halligan 1998) as opposed to a range of policy advisory activity that may be occurring related to issues, events, or policy that has already been implemented. The latter is analytically distinct and represented by buffering and bridging activity, while moving and shaping may include substantive and procedural policy advisory activity they would relate to policy formally in development and restricted to the policy actors with the requisite authority and resources to engage in that work (Sidney 2007).
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Craft, J. Conceptualizing the policy work of partisan advisers. Policy Sci 48, 135–158 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-015-9212-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-015-9212-2