Political appointees in executive government: Exploring and explaining roles using a large‐N survey in Norway

Abstract

Political appointees in executive government have received increased scholarly attention in recent years. However, few studies have covered non-Westminster systems, and apart from classifications that systemize variation in assignments, theorizing about appointees has been limited. Using large-N survey data, the article finds three distinct roles among political appointees in Norway: 'stand in', 'media advisor' and 'political coordinator'. The article then combines insights from research on political appointees with insights from core executive studies (CES) to explain why political appointees perform one role or another. The empirical results support the notion that roles of appointees within the core executive depend on where they sit, supporting the asymmetric power model within CES. The results also show that appointees' roles within the executive depend on their personal experience, supporting the notion of a resource exchange between ministers and their appointees in the mould of the resource-dependency perspective within CES.

Bureaucratic dilemmas: Civil servants between political responsiveness and normative constraints

“…However, by including the normative constraints on civil servants' provision of advice, we have highlighted the complex relationship between responsive and neutral competence. Based on several country studies of the close involvement of civil servants in policy making and provision of political advice, we expect very similar results for Britain (Page & Jenkins, ; Rhodes, ), France (Eymeri‐Douzans, Bioy, & Mouton, ; Suleiman, ), Germany (Mayntz & Derlien, ; Veit & Scholz, ), the Netherlands ('t Hart & Wille, ), Norway (Askim, Karlsen, & Kolltveit, ; Christensen et al, ), and Sweden (Premfors & Sundström, ).…”

The spy who loved me? Cross‐partisans in the core executive

“…The results from this first systematic in‐depth study of cross‐partisans in the core executive speak directly to coalition government scholarship and to research on ministerial advisers. Regarding the latter, by focusing on CPAs, this study expands the set of roles commonly attributed to political appointees by ministerial advisory scholarship (Connaughton , p. 352; Eichbaum and Shaw ; Askim et al ); it continues what Craft calls the process of updating the core executive ‘gospel’ to broaden the ‘initial membership’ (Craft , p. 64). From a core executive perspective (Elgie ; Shaw ), CPAs can be useful political resources to help ministers achieve their goals.…”

“…They are not part of the cabinet, but serve as ministers’ stand‐ins and are generally important actors in executive government. Political advisers are formally appointed by the Prime Minister's Office, and should be at the personal disposal of the minister; they tend to be relatively young and have limited or no executive powers (Askim et al , ).…”

Technocratic recentralization in the French health care system: A critical evaluation

“…Expert control is no longer limited to physicians but shared with centrally appointed bureaucrats (three representatives of the state sit at the RHA board of directors and each of them has three voting bulletins) and powerful management controllers. Representatives of the Social Security form the largest group within the board of the Regional Health Agency and double up as “political coordinator.” These high‐level bureaucrats capitalize on novel management tools such as prospective hospital payment, performance management tools (eg, patient volume targets, benchmarking, guidelines, and penalties for hospitals and premiums for physicians who participate in public prevention programs), agreements defining activity volume and financing needs, and novel activity‐based accounting mechanism such as DRGs to align public providers on private care providers and restore fiscal discipline. Out of the 50 billion dollars in savings pledged by the government Hollande in its 2014‐2017 economic stabilization program, 10 billion were expected to come from the health sector…”