Journal Articles
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915
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Item A third force?: Ministerial advisers in the Executive(New Zealand Institute of Public Administration, 2003) Eichbaum C; Shaw RH; Eichbaum, C; Shaw, RHItem Item Minding the minister? Ministerial advisers in New Zealand government(Royal Society of New Zealand, 2007) Eichbaum C; Shaw RHItem ’Meaning just what I choose it mean – neither more nor less’: The search for governance in Political Science(SAGE Publications, 2013-12) Shaw RHIn recent years, governance has become perhaps the dominant heuristic through which the structuring and exercise of political power is made sense of in political science and its subfields. Only rarely, however, do scholars pause to interrogate either the meaning of the term or the epistemological purposes for which it is deployed. In that context, this article reflects on the state of political science research on governance in Aotearoa New Zealand. It reviews the international literature on governance and proposes a framework for categorising the relevant New Zealand scholarship. The characteristics of that literature are assessed, and the article concludes with a critical appraisal of the possibilities and potential pitfalls for research on governance in Aotearoa New Zealand.Item Ministers, minders and the core executive: Why ministers appoint political advisers in Westminster contexts(Oxford University Press, 2014-07) Shaw RH; Eichbaum CPolitical advisers are now an established feature of the executive branch of government in the community of Westminster nations. However, there have been few attempts to establish why ministers appoint political staff, and even fewer that are empirically grounded in politicians' own experiences and reflections. The purposes of this article are to (i) establish ministers' motives for appointing political advisers, (ii) to theorise those motives through the lens of core executive studies and (iii) to assess the degree to which findings in one empirical setting enjoy wider applicability. Drawing on data from New Zealand, we find evidence that recourse to political advisers is one response to the multiple demands made of ministers in the context of contemporary governance; while that imperative has wider application, we also find that ministers' requirements are structured by personal and institutional variables which are contextually specific.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 Enemy or ally? Senior officials' perceptions of ministerial advisers before and after MMP(Victoria University of Wellington, 2006) Eichbaum C; Shaw RHThere is now a well-established literature on the various second-order effects of the adoption of proportional representation in New Zealand. One feature of the contemporary executive landscape, however, remains substantially under-researched. This article reports on research regarding ministerial advisers in New Zealand Cabinet ministers' offices. More specifically, it compares senior public servants' current attitudes towards ministerial advisers with pre-MMP speculation regarding the possible future influence of such advisers. The article concludes that while there are concerns about the possible long-term influence of political advisers, for the majority of senior officials working relationships with ministerial advisers are positive and productive.Item Ministerial advisers and the politics of policy-making: Bureaucratic permanence and popular control(Blackwell, 2007) Eichbaum C; Shaw RHThe advent of ministerial advisers of the partisan variety - a third element interposing itself into Westminster's bilateral monopoly - has been acknowledged as a significant development in a number of jurisdictions. While there are commonalities across contexts, the New Zealand experience provides an opportunity to explore the extent to which the advent of ministerial advisers is consistent with rational choice accounts of relations between political and administrative actors in executive government. Public administration reform in New Zealand since the mid 1980s - and in particular machinery of government design - was quite explicitly informed by rational choice accounts, and normative Public Choice in particular. This article reflects on the role of ministerial advisers in the policy-making process and, on the basis of assessments by a variety of political and policy actors, examines the extent to which the institutional and relational aspects of executive government are indeed consistent with rational choice accounts of the 'politics of policy-making'. The reader is offered a new perspective through which to view the advent, and the contribution of ministerial advisers to policy-making in executive government. © 2007 The Authors Journal compilation © 2007 National Council of the Institute of Public Administration Australia.Item Why we should all be nicer to ministerial advisers(2005) Eichbaum C; Shaw RHItem Politics and administration: Some reflections on the 'Setchell Affair' (or boundary riding in the purple zone)(Institute of Public Administration New Zealand, 2008) Eichbaum C; Shaw RH