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There is no unifying theory to guide the study of partisan political staff. The literature suggests staffers may be variously mechanisms for resolving principal-agent problems, extensions of centralized political control or spoils given as rewards inside the core executive. Annual Public Accounts data, available only since 2007, offer a promising new addition to the debate over federal exempt staffs. This paper presents descriptive and linear regression results on staffing expenditures for five years of federal data in Canada. Using the construct of "revealed preference," predictors of variance in ministerial spending on staffing may provide new, objective information on their function in Canadian government. Results of this study demonstrate that quantitative methods can be applied to the study of political staff and may be a helpful addition as the field continues to develop, test and refine theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian federal cabinet stands out among Westminster parliamentary democracies because of the large number of first-time ministers who are appointed to cabinet without any previous parliamentary or political experience. Several explanations have been put forward to account for this peculiarity but no attempt has been made to examine how Canadian prime ministers overcome the information deficit associated with appointing ministers with no experience. How can prime ministers be confident that they are making the right choice? This paper explores the subject by estimating the survival functions of ministerial turnover for potential, but not yet appointed, cabinet ministers were they to survive to a defined political benchmark; these survival rates are included in a logit model of Canadian ministerial appointment following four general elections (1957, 1979, 1984 and 2006) in which the prime minister was tasked with appointing a cabinet with ministerial neophytes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]