ADMINISTRATIVE POLITICIZATION OR CONTESTABILITY? HOW POLITICAL ADVISERS AFFECT NEUTRAL COMPETENCE IN POLICY PROCESSES
| Author | PETER MUNK CHRISTIANSEN,PATRIK ÖHBERG,BIRGITTA NIKLASSON |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12253 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12253
ADMINISTRATIVE POLITICIZATION OR
CONTESTABILITY? HOW POLITICAL ADVISERS AFFECT
NEUTRAL COMPETENCE IN POLICY PROCESSES
PATRIK ÖHBERG, PETER MUNK CHRISTIANSEN AND BIRGITTA NIKLASSON
There is limited empirical research on the extent to which politicized recruitment of ministerial
advisers affects the quality of the policy process. In this article we take a novel step by looking at
two possible consequences of increased political recruitment for the policy process: administrative
politicization and contestability. We deploy a Most Similar Systems comparison of Denmark and
Sweden and include survey answers from 657 civil servants in managerial positions. We nd that
political recruitment of top civil servants, such as Swedish state secretaries, restricts the access of
the civil service to the minister, but it does not substantially politicize the policy process. Danish
civil servants perceive themselves as more contested by the relatively few Danish political advisers
than their Swedish colleagues. Our results imply that the organization of political advice is a crucial
factor for politicization and contestability
INTRODUCTION
The neutral competence that once seemed to provide administrative agencies with a distinctive capacity to
illuminate the dark corners of policy issues now competes with a ‘thousand points’ of expert light generated
in all sectors of American government and society.(Rourke 1992, p. 540)
This opening quote by the political scientist Francis Rourke illustrates the potential chal-
lenge that the growing number of ministerial advisers pose to civil servants’ role in the
policy process. Being a pivotal one of those ‘thousand points of expert light’ that now
ght to inuence government policies, politically recruited staff that work for ministers
at government ofces (here referred to as political advisers) may contribute to crowding
out the neutral competence that civil servants are supposed to provide. A major concern
has been that political advisers politicize the policy process excessively. The greater in
number and the closer they are to the ministers, the more they may diminish the role of
the permanent civil service and the professional competence they represent (Rourke 1992;
James 2007, p. 9; Eichbaum and Shaw 2008, p. 338; LSE GV314 Group 2012; Garsten et al.
2015, pp. 218–25; Maley 2015). This may, in turn, undermine the legitimacy of the public
administration, since the existence of a professional and impartial civil service is seen as
a guarantee of fair and equal treatment of government institutions (Derlien 2003; Peters
and Pierre 2004).
However, there is limited empirical research on the extent to which increased politi-
cized recruitment of ministerial advisers affects the quality of the policy process. Previous
research has mainly focused on the extent to which the recruitment of ministerial advisers
is politicized or not (Weller 1989; Campbell and Wilson 1995; Mulgan 1998; Dahlström
et al. 2012; Christensen et al. 2014). Not many have studied how this development affects
the neutral and professional competence applied during the policy process. Chris Eich-
baum and Richard Shaw (2008, p. 339) thus state that ‘Orthodox understandings [of
Patrik Öhberg and Birgitta Niklasson are at the Department of Political Science, Gothenburg University,Sweden. Peter
Munk Christiansen is at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University,Denmark.
Public Administration Vol.95, No. 1, 2017 (269–285)
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
270 PATRIK ÖHBERG ET AL.
politicization] are of limited use in both describing and assessing the threat to civil service
neutrality, which some see in the advent and conduct of political advisers.’
Evidence in some studies points to a small or negligent move towards more politiciza-
tion (see Ehn et al. 2003; James 2007; Mulgan 2007; Eichbaum and Shaw 2008), but we know
little about possible moderators to this relationship, for example the hierarchical positions
of political advisers. Politicized recruitment can take many forms (Lewis 2008); in some
contexts, political advisers serve mainly as the ministers’ personal factotum, whose inter-
actions with the rest of the ministerial staff are fairly limited. In other cases, governments
appoint state secretaries (here referredto as political appointees) who are not only political
advisers to the minister, but who are also in charge of running the ministries. The ques-
tion is to what extent these different forms of politicized recruitment politicize the policy
process and, if so, how. This is something we examine in this article. Our contribution is
therefore threefold.
First, we apply Eichbaum and Shaw’s (2008) theoretical framework of administrative
politicization outside the Westminster context and thereby answer their call to ‘enrich
our understanding of the milieu and practices of political advisers’ (Shaw and Eichbaum
2015a, p. 73; cf. also Hustedt and Salomonsen 2014; Connaughton 2015). Administrative
politicization refers to political advisers’ intervention in the relationship between a minis-
ter and the permanent civil service with the effect that the latter’s effort to provide frank
and fearless advice to the former is disturbed or obstructed (Eichbaum and Shaw 2008,
p. 343). Our study thus provides a rst empirical test of the relevance of this new concept
outside New Zeeland.
Second, we test the applicability of administrative politicization in comparison to
the concepts of contestability and thickening of government. Contestability was also
introduced into the literature on politicization by Eichbaum and Shaw (2008). The notion
of contestability has been used by scholars that examine cohesion between elite groups
(see e.g. Bottomore 1964; Parry 1969). We relate contestability to the tensions that may
arise between civil servants and political advisers/appointees out of competition for
access to the minister. Political advisers can in this view be seen as a thickening of
government (cf. Light 1995). The literatures on contestability and thickening of govern-
ment can help us to partly understand the consequences of increasing politicization of
ministerial advice.
Third, we carry out a Most Similar Systems (MSS) study between Denmark and
Sweden. These countries are similar in many respects, but differ noticeably in their orga-
nization of ministerial advice, with Denmark being notably less politicized with regard to
the recruitment of political advisers as well as state secretaries. Hence, our research design
contributes systematic comparative data to a new wave of research on political advisers
(Shaw and Eichbaum 2015b) and allows for an analysis of how the degree and kind of
politicized recruitment matter for the level of administrative politicization, something
that, to our knowledge, has not been studied previously. We do so by asking the civil
servants themselves in a survey about their working conditions and experiences of the
policy processes.
The rest of the article is organized as follows: rst, we briey review the concept of
politicization. Then follow two sections in which we give an account of the research on
how politicized recruitment and contestability may affectthe perceived presence of neutral
competence in the policy process. In the next step, we specify our three research questions
and describe the research design and data. The article concludes with an empirical analysis
and a discussion of the results.
Public Administration Vol.95, No. 1, 2017 (269–285)
© 2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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