Politicians, political advisers and the vocabulary of public service bargains: Speaking in tongues?

Abstract

Recent research on political advisers is characterized by an expansion beyond Westminster and clearer connections with proximate literatures. This article speaks to the second of these features by applying the Public Service Bargain (PSB) lens to minister/political adviser relationships in new ways. Extant PSB analyses either position political advisers as an independent variable influencing the core bargain between ministers and senior officials, or face difficulties when viewing advisers through existing perspectives developed to explain deals between politicians and public servants. Consequently, the nature of 'the bargain applying to political advisers' (Hood and Lodge 2006, p. 128) remains unclear. This article addresses that lacuna by deploying the reward, competence and loyalty dimensions of PSBs to specify the broad terms of the political adviser bargain, and considers the theoretical and empirical implications of such compacts.

Political control of coordination? The roles of ministerial advisers in government coordination in Denmark and Sweden

“…Regarding future research on advisers, the article demonstrates, first, that their coordinating role can be fruitfully investigated from the perspective of government coordination theory. In line with the call for a ‘second wave’ of research on advisers that seeks to advance theorizing of advisers' roles and functions in government (Shaw and Eichbaum ), this indicates the relevance of departing from established theories rather than developing specific theories for explaining the roles and functions of advisers, their behaviour and their respective relationships to their ministers (for a similar point of view, see Shaw and Eichbaum , ).…”

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

“…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).…”

Ministers, Minders and Mandarins

“…There has, however, been a concerted push in recent times from scholars across jurisdictions to theorize empirical specifics using material drawn from beyond the field. Advisers have been conceived as policy workers (Craft 2015(Craft , 2016; their place in policy advisory systems has been analysed (Craft and Halligan 2016;Di Mascio and Natalini 2013;Silva 2017); they have found their way into perennial debates in public administration including those apropos politicization (Hustedt and Salomonsen 2014;Öhberg et al 2016) and public service bargains (De Visscher and Salomonsen 2012;Shaw and Eichbaum 2017); and there are new analyses of the historical trajectories of advisers' institutional environments (Di Mascio and Natalini 2016;Maley 2017).…”