At the pleasure of the crown: The politics of bureaucratic appointments, by Christopher Cooper. University of British Colombia Press, Vancouver. 2020. 133 pp. $32.95 (paperback)
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Author | Erik‐Jan Dorp |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12772 |
BOOK REVIEW
At the pleasure of the crown: The politics of
bureaucratic appointments
Christopher Cooper
University of British Colombia Press, Vancouver. 2020. 133 pp. $32.95 (paperback)
“A pink slip and running shoes,”is what Brian Mulroney had to offer to bureaucrats who got in his way. Prime Minis-
ters, in Canada and in many (Westminster) countries, are keen on their prerogative to hire and fire civil servants.
Even in countries where the PM does not have such powers, the urge for reform or to bend the civil service to their
liking is always around the corner. In the Netherlands, Pim Fortuyn portended that, if he would be elected prime
minister, he would outsource the government's bureaucracy to private consultants.
This urge is unpacked by Christopher Cooper in “Atthepleasureofthecrown:Thepoliticsofbureau-
cratic appointments.”Empirically set in Canada's provincial government, this book provides a theoretical
contribution to the topic of political appointments in the civil service's apex, supported by quantitative and
qualitative data.
Bureaucratic appointments are traditionally seen as a means of control for political officeholders. By giving
the top job to loyal people, they have a lever to control government organizations. This view is known as “the
quest for control”—as coined by Peters and Pierre (2004). Cooper contends that the quest for control is not a
sufficient explanation for the politics of bureaucratic appointments and proposes a “fuller”alternative (p. 9). His
study suggests that the influence of politics on administrative turnover is aimed at the “professional qualities
that governments try to cultivate among these senior officials”(p. 8). So, the politics of bureaucratic appoint-
ments do not refer to “how much control”politicians have, but to the “type of behaviour that governments are
seeking to control”in that specific time and policy window (p. 8). This need for civil servants who “get things
done”and “think like us”and will successfully implement a desired policy agenda could be dubbed “the quest
for competence.”
The first chapter is a primer on current explanations of bureaucratic turnover. It presents the “quest for
control”perspective, introduces some of the underlying theoretical debates such as principal-agent theory,
and nudges the reader to some of the explanatory variables in the following chapters. In contrast, chapter 2
draws on the public service bargains framework by Hood and Lodge (2006) and outlines three modi vivendi
of politicians and public servants: the spoils bargain (until 1940s), the Schafferian bargain (1940–1 980), and
the managerial bargain (from 1980 on). The following chapters each provide cumulative empirical testing of
the book's argument. First using descriptive statistics (ch. 3) which show a big increase in administrative turn-
over, and increasingly with regression models testing alternative explanations such as the election of a new
premier and change in party (ch. 4). The causal mechanism between politician's desire for competence,
rather than loyalty, and bureaucratic appointments is corroborated in chapter 5, by means of qualitative
secondary data.
This book is demonstrably based on extensive and impressive data. The quantitative data include all provincial
deputy minister appointments, the highest ranking official in Canadian provincial government (n=16,511) over
almost a century (1920–2013). This unique approach has considerable merit, displaying the structural patterns in
Received: 20 July 2021 Accepted: 23 July 2021
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12772
Public Admin. 2021;99:873–875. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 873
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