Still friends? Revisiting New Zealand public servants’ perceptions of ministerial advisers

Abstract

Ten years ago, political advisers–or ministerial advisers as they are known in Aotearoa New Zealand–were a relatively recent arrival on the stage of executive government. They attracted some attention but empirical insights were thin on the ground. In 2006 Political Science published the first systematic research on public servants’ perceptions of the actions, activities and impacts of their partisan counterparts. That work concluded that relations between permanent and political advisers were, in the main, in cordial good health: certainly there were areas of tension but on balance the protagonists were more akin to allies rather than enemies. But more than a decade has passed and a reassessment of the state of relations between the respective cadrés is well overdue. This article compares those earlier findings with new data on officials’ perceptions of ministerial advisers collected in 2017, and assesses whether or not the relationship between public servants and political appointees can still reasonably be characterised as one of amity.