Journal Articles
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Item Revisiting politicization: Political advisers and public servants in Westminster systems(Wiley Periodicals, 2008) Eichbaum C; Shaw RHIn recent times much has been made of the threat some argue is posed by political advisers to the impartiality of the Westminster civil service. Drawing on survey of senior New Zealand civil servants, this article examines the degree to which political advisers are perceived as a threat to civil service neutrality and describes the form taken by that threat as variously perceived. On the evidence reported, it is suggested that traditional understandings of "politicization" need to be reconceptualized if they are to fully account for the nature of the relationship between political and civil service advisers. To existing conceptions of politicization, therefore, the article proposes adding another: "administrative politicization," allowing for different gradations of politicization to be identified, and enabling a nuanced assessment of the nature and extent of a risk to civil service neutrality that, the data suggest, is not as great as is sometimes alleged. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Item Ministerial advisers, politicization and the retreat from Westminster: The case of New Zealand(Blackwell, 2007) Eichbaum C; Shaw RHPolitical advisers are an established third element in a number of Westminster-styled jurisdictions, as they are in New Zealand's institution of executive government. In this paper we report the initial findings of a research project focusing on the role and accountabilities of ministerial advisers in New Zealand. We locate these findings in the context of a growing body of international and comparative research on the role and accountabilities of non civil- or public-service advisers within political executives and comment on the extent to which the findings affirm or refute the view that the 'third element' constitutes a threat to the continued application of Westminster principles and practices in New Zealand's system of government - once described as more Westminster than Westminster. In doing so, we highlight deficiencies in standard conceptions of politicization and argue that there is a need to more clearly differentiate between its procedural and substantive dimensions. © 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.