Political advisers in Portugal: Partisanship and loyalty in policy processes

Silva, Patrı́cia

doi:10.1111/padm.12309

Cited by 22 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…However, the source of their recruitment can also off er insights. For instance, in Portugal and France, the majority of ministerial advisers are recruited from the civil service, suggesting they have technical expertise and contacts within the administration (Silva 2017;Eymeri-Douzans et al 2015). In contrast, in Australia and Canada the majority of advisers are recruited from outside the administration, suggesting their recruitment could be more associated with personal-political criteria or through private sector or industry body expertise (Maley 2017;Craft 2016).…”

Section: Conceptualizing Ministerial Advisersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ministerial Advisers in Slovakia: Profiles and Career Paths, 2010 – 2020

Krajňák

Staroňová

Pickering

2020

NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy

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This study examines the transparency of the regulatory framework under which ministerial advisors exist within the politicized context of a Central and Eastern European perspective. We compare profiles and career paths of ministerial advisers under five different types of coalition governments and examine if variance across government types can be explained by type of party – established vs. new parties. Empirically, the article draws on a cohort of 162 ministerial advisers in Slovakia across five governments from 2010 to 2020. We arrive at multiple findings. Firstly, we suggest the limitation in the availability and reporting of data is an important finding as it highlights accountability gaps and lack of government transparency irrespective of the party in power. Secondly, within the low regulatory environment, ministers appoint multiple types of staff including both formal “visible” ministerial advisers and “invisible” ministerial agents that, if one could accurately measure, would likely demonstrate that the ministerial advisory system is more inflated than we currently present. The ad-hoc nature of the advisory system also creates fluctuations in the size of the ministerial adviser cohort across governments and across different ministries. This would also help to explain the next finding, which is that, contrary to the experience in many countries, the overall size of the advisor population does not grow, probably because executive politicians have other avenues of appointing advisory agents. Fourthly, the advisers have a fairly equal distribution of prior employment from both the public sector and the private sector, but we do see some evidence of more established political parties preferring to recruit from the public sector and newer parties preferring to recruit from the private sector. Lastly, the appointment process appears to be highly controlled by individual ministers, suggesting personal ties are essential (link between ministerial and advisor education) and party-political criteria are a low consideration. The research is conducted using a biographical approach in which freedom of information requests and open source data is scrapped and then triangulated via a dozen interviews with current and former advisers. It argues that regulation is weak, lacking public scrutiny, which provides loopholes for employing ministerial agents in informal ways that could create, at worst, the opportunity for corrupt behavior, or at least, lead to poor practices in good governance. Therefore, future research should focus on both the formal “visible” and informal “invisible” ways that ministers recruit their advisory agents, how their agents function, and whether existing regulatory measures create a transparent and accountable governance framework.

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Section: Conceptualizing Ministerial Advisersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ministerial Advisers in Slovakia: Profiles and Career Paths, 2010 – 2020

Krajňák

Staroňová

Pickering

2020

NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy

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“…Politically appointed staff have continuously accumulated responsibilities, relieving the workload of ministers, and sometimes, usurping or crowding out mandarins (Christiansen et al, 2016). Politically appointed staff contribute meaningfully to the policy process, while also complicating lines of accountability (Abbott and Cohen, 2014; Eichbaum and Shaw, 2008; Shaw and Eichbaum, 2014; Silva, 2017; Tiernan, 2007). Yet, politically appointed staff are a different type of actor from other elites: are their careers different?…”

Section: Politically Appointed Staff: Roles and Responsibilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Does What Work in a Ministerial Office: Politically Appointed Staff and the Descriptive Representation of Women in Australian Political Offices, 1979–2010

Taflaga

Kerby

2019

Political Studies

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Women are underrepresented within political institutions, which can (negatively) impact policy outcomes. We examine women’s descriptive representation as politically appointed staff within ministerial offices. Politically appointed staff are now institutionalised into the policy process, so who they are is important. To date, collecting systematic data on political staff has proved impossible. However, for the first time we demonstrate how to build a systematic data set of this previously unobservable population. We use Australian Ministerial Directories (telephone records) from 1979 to 2010 (a method that can notionally be replicated in advanced democratic jurisdictions), to examine political advising careers in a similar manner as elected political elites. We find that work in political offices is divided on gender lines: men undertake more policy work, begin and end their careers in higher status roles and experience greater career progression than women. We find evidence that this negatively impacts women’s representation and their later career paths into parliament.

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“…A few notable exceptions aside (Karlsen and Saglie, 2017; Webb and Fisher, 2003), party scholars have refrained from studying this notoriously elusive population (Webb and Keith, 2017; Webb and Kolodny, 2006). In fact, public administration scholars have noted that the party perspective is often missing from this discussion (Hustedt and Salomonsen, 2014; Silva, 2017). This article lifts the veil on this unelected but pivotal elite by analysing original survey data (N = 1009) collected among 14 Belgian and Dutch parties.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Professional activists? Party activism among political staffers in parliamentary democracies

Moens

2021

Party Politics

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Although the position of the party on the ground has been weakened by cartelization, grassroots activists remain an important recruitment pool for political professionals. Based on unique survey data collected among the staff of 14 Belgian and Dutch parties (N = 1009), this article offers an in-depth analysis of party activism among this under-researched population. Introducing a new supply and demand framework, I argue that staff recruitment is shaped by candidate preferences (supply) and party preferences (demand). The findings demonstrate that most political staffers are high-intensity activists with a strong commitment to their party. Moreover, the theoretical model accurately predicts that non-activists are more common among policy and communication experts, ministerial staff, and those working for ideologically moderate parties. These findings show that paid staffers do not necessarily widen the gap between parties and activists. They also raise normative questions about internal congruence within parties in coalition governments.

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Political advisers in Portugal: Partisanship and loyalty in policy processes

Cited by 22 publications

References 34 publications

Ministerial Advisers in Slovakia: Profiles and Career Paths, 2010 – 2020

Ministerial Advisers in Slovakia: Profiles and Career Paths, 2010 – 2020

Who Does What Work in a Ministerial Office: Politically Appointed Staff and the Descriptive Representation of Women in Australian Political Offices, 1979–2010

Professional activists? Party activism among political staffers in parliamentary democracies

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