Revisiting the Gospel: Appointed Political Staffs and Core Executive Policy Coordination

Abstract

This article argues appointed political staffs are important, yet understudied, mechanisms for core executive policy coordination. It suggests revisions to update core executive theory to better accommodate the increasingly systematic use of political staffs throughout core executives. An analytical framework for political staffs' core executive policy coordination is set out to specify important distinctions related to the type, and nature, of their likely policy coordination. The article concludes by returning to six established modes of executive politics to update them by integrating the policy coordination functions of political staffs in each variant.

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.…”

“…Political appointees have been theorized by drawing on existing literatures and theories within political science and public administration, such as public service bargains (De Visscher and Salomonsen 2013;Shaw and Eichbaum 2017), core executive studies (Shaw and Eichbaum 2014;Craft 2015), policy advisory systems (Craft and Howlett 2012;Craft 2013;Hustedt and Veit 2017), and principal-agent theory (Esselment et al 2014). The unique contribution made by political appointees in the core executive is that they are close political allies and confidants who can give ministers purely political advice about, for example, new policies and tactics to outmanoeuvre political opponents (Maley 2000;Connaughton 2010;Craft and Howlett 2012;LSE GV314 Group 2012;Shaw and Eichbaum 2014;Askim et al 2017).…”

Political-administrative relations: The role of political advisers

“…In addition, the literature on the countries derived from the Westminster tradition focuses on both advisers' positive input into the policymaking process (Shaw & Eichbaum, 2015;Yong & Hazell, 2014) and their controversial association with policy fiascos (Tiernan, 2007). A recent direction in this literature has been to broaden the focus of political adviser research to diverse traditions in Europe and beyond (Di Mascio & Natalini, 2013;Gouglas, 2015;Öhberg et al, 2017), coupled with attention to cognate literature on policy analysis/public administration models (Craft, 2015). Extending the analysis beyond the Westminster group of countries illustrates more examples of different institutional preferences, how advisers work with civil servants/politicians and what functions they undertake.…”

“…The former focuses on issues of political-administrative relations and the introduction of public adviser bargains (PABs) (Shaw & Eichbaum, 2016). Core executive studies enable a view of advisers' inputs to the functioning of executive government (Craft, 2015;Shaw & Eichbaum, 2015). A focus on functions, particularly in the context of the economic crisis, expands the discussion beyond the normative considerations of political-administrative relations and in turn encompasses different types of relationships across the executive.…”

Les cabinets ministériels au Québec : pouvoirs et paradoxes

“…D’autres travaux visent aussi à illustrer la croissance de la taille et de l’influence des cabinets ministériels sur les politiques publiques (Wilson et ) et à renouveler les théories associées à la coordination au sein du pouvoir exécutif. Ces recherches ont pour objectif d’analyser l’évolution structurelle des rapports de pouvoir et le rôle accru que joueraient les cabinets ministériels (Craft ; Rhodes ). C’est dans cette même perspective que nous situons notre contribution.…”