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Political advisors in Canada are comparatively numerous and highly differentiated in role. Based on a recent survey, this article examines how senior ministerial policy advisors, a subset of the political staff community, perceive their support for ministers and their relationships with public servants. It finds that they increase ministers' policy capacity, encourage greater responsiveness from public servants, and generally feel that they enjoy good relations with officials and respect their role. Since much depends on advisors' personal maturity, however, the paper endorses the Trudeau government's release of a code of conduct for ministerial-exempt staff as a means of embedding accountability more deeply within political staff culture. Au Canada, les conseillers politiques sont comparativement nombreux et ont des roles fortement differencies. Base sur un recent sondage, cet article examine la question des hauts conseillers politiques ministeriels, un sous-ensemble du personnel ministeriel, et la maniere dont ceux-ci percoivent leur soutien aux ministres et leurs relations avec les fonctionnaires. Selon l'article, les conseillers politiques permettent aux ministres d'accroitre leur capacite en matiere d'elaboration de politiques, promeuvent le developpement de la receptivite chez les fonctionnaires, et ils ont generalement l'impression d'entretenir de bonnes relations avec les dirigeants et de respecter leur role. Cependant, comme beaucoup de choses dependent de la maturite personnelle des conseillers, l'article soutient la publication par le gouvernement Trudeau d'un code de conduite pour le personnel ministeriel exonere, comme moyen d'ancrer l'imputabilite plus profondement dans la culture du personnel ministeriel., Introduction Ministerial political advisors are an important but understudied influence alongside the traditional bilateral relationship between ministers and professional career public servants across Westminster-style parliamentary systems. While a growing corpus [...]

Based on work by Moon and Sayers on the assignment of ministerial portfolios in Australia/ we use a new dataset on portfolio adoption across all ten Canadian provinces and the federal government from 1867-2012. This data set when analyzed shows four distinct patterns of portfolio adoption that point to key motivations behind the development of new portfolios. We show that much of the common wisdom fails to explain portfolio creation but that patterns of development may be better explained by a new typology. The work attempts to fill a gap in the understudied area of Canadian ministerial portfolios and comparative provincial politics. En se fondant sur le travail realise par Moon et Sayers sur l'affectation de portefeuilles ministeriels en Australie, nous utilisons un nouvel ensemble de donnees sur l'adoption de portefeuilles dans les dix provinces canadiennes et le gouvernement federal de 1867 a 2012. Apres analyse, cet ensemble de donnees montre quatre modeles distincts d'adoption de portefeuilles, qui indiquent les motivations cles derriere le developpement de nouveaux portefeuilles. Nous montrons que le sens commun ne parvient pas a expliquer la creation de portefeuilles, mais que des modeles de developpement pourraient etre mieux expliques par une nouvelle typologie. Le travail tente de combler une lacune dans le domaine insuffisamment explore des portefeuilles ministeriels canadiens et de la politique provinciale comparative., Introduction From time to time, issues emerge that demand large-scale government policy solutions. These solutions often take the form of governments creating new ministerial portfolios (we use 'portfolio' instead of [...]

Upon winning the 1996 election, John Howard became the first Australian prime minister to codify his understanding of individual ministerial responsibility by publishing A Guide on Key Elements of Ministerial Responsibility. This article examines how this ministerial code of conduct was applied to significant allegations of ministerial impropriety that occurred during the 1996-2007 Howard era, and highlights the relationship between the media, the Prime Minister's response and the ultimate outcome. It finds that Howard's early rigorous application of the Guide to allegations of conflicts of interest involved political pain and instigated its decline. Howard retreated, redefined ministerial responsibility as requiring deliberate wrongdoing and raised the threshold required for a minister's dismissal. His inability to firmly apply the Guide to instances of ministerial misconduct betrays the traditional view that ministers are responsible for their own actions. The contemporary practice is that ministers do not resign for departmental failures for which they are not personally responsible, irrespective of the gravity of that wrongdoing.

The 'turn to the market' by the Hawke Government (1983-91) began with the floating of the dollar and the de-regulation of the banks, and later involved the privatisation of government assets. Though presented as a coherent re-thinking of Labor ideology, an examination of the events leading to privatisation reveals an episodic process that was not inevitable. The genesis of the economic statement of May 1987, which first delineated 'asset sales' and signalled later privatisations, shows that individuals could act as 'policy entrepreneurs' and bring unexpected solutions to re-defined problems. Important was David Block, one of a unique cadre of policy advisers--the 'ministerial consultants' established in 1984 by the Labor government as part of its plan to control the public service, and all but abolished by John Howard in 1996. Though Block was not a typical consultant, his case shows how market-oriented ideas entered government through new channels at that time, and how a political 'reform' had consequences in the economy that were unintended by the early reformers. Ministerial consultants have received little attention hitherto but their case illuminates some of the dramatic policy shifts of the government and shows that a discourse (in this case about 'administrative reform') was reformulated to overturn old values about the role of government in the economy.

The doctrine of ministerial responsibility has three components: the collective responsibility of the cabinet; the individual responsibility of ministers; and the anonymity of the public servants. This paper examines one important exception to the doctrine of anonymity, the British accounting officers. These officers, normally the permanent secretaries (equivalent to deputy ministers), are responsible for the financial administration of departments and are held accountable for this by the Public Accounts Committee. A similar practice was proposed for Canada by the Lambert Commission but was rejected by the government, especially by the Privy Council Office. This paper argues that the PCO did not adequately represent the structure or importance of the British practice of assigning direct responsibility to accounting officers and in so doing has foreclosed serious consideration of an important area of reform to the machinery of government: identification of areas of government where public servants rather than ministers should hold responsibility and accountability. As a result, Canada has lagged behind other parliamentary democracies in moving into this important area of reform. At the same time, the theory that ministers should be responsible for administration has not led to effective accountability to Parliament in Canada. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

The immediate impact of the Scott report was slight because it had no conclusion and led to no ministerial or other resignations. Reasons for this inconclusiveness were examined, including conventions of the judicial process, the difficulty Scott had in defining the offences he was examining, the slipperiness of those offences as constitutional conventions and Scott's lack of grasp of administrative processes. Yet his report is a mine of information on problems of accountability in the area of government defence sales. It was atypical in that three departments pursuing four policies between them and with another department as policeman had a locus in the process. Given the nearly 100,000 licences being processed at one time, it was a large, complex and fragmented administrative activity which might easily have resulted in more mishaps than it did. Despite its special features the author argues that it does provide evidence of six areas of difficulty in government accountability which are also of (growing) relevance outside the area Scott surveyed: how one finds who is responsible for policy and policy change; how accountability is secured where confidentiality is justified for national security or other reasons; how one gets operational accountability for executive operations within departments; the accountability of junior to departmental ministers; of junior to more senior civil servants; and of civil servants to ministers.

The Scott report shows that the two most serious allegations made against ministers - that they conspired to sell lethal arms to Iraq in violation of government guidelines, and that they conspired to send innocent men to prison - are unfounded. The inquiry violated the Salmon guidelines for the conduct of tribunals and is further evidence that an informal tribunal of this type is less well-equipped to examine a matter causing nation-wide public concern and to secure justice to individuals, than a statutory tribunal appointed under the Act of 1921. Nevertheless, the Scott report raises three issues of fundamental constitutional importance - ministerial accountability to which the final section of the report is devoted, freedom of information which Sir Richard regards as a corollary of ministerial accountability, and the proper relationships between ministers and civil servants. Sir Richard believes that constitutionally improper things occurred during the period which his inquiry covers. The fact that no minister or civil servant paid any penalty casts doubt as to whether ministerial accountability is a genuine convention of the constitution or a convenient fiction enabling both ministers and officials to evade responsibility.

The Next Steps agencies preserve a long tradition as the latest manifestation of the arm's-length principle of ministerial control. During the major part of this century, the now almost defunct public corporations offered one of the best examples of the arm's-length principle at work, and the recorded experiences of participants can provide valuable lessons for the Next Steps agencies. This article employs the diaries of Barbara Castle during her period as Transport Minister from 1965-68 in order to examine how she apportioned her time. From the evidence, a model is constructed which suggests that political salience is of greater importance than official structures in determining ministerial behaviour. Arising from the case study and the model, the final section of the article attempts to identify Next Steps agencies which have an inherently high potential for political salience, and concludes that, in this category, direct ministerial control would be preferable to the arm's-length principle.

During the period September 1992 to January 1993 John Major's government was forced on the defensive over a series of incidents. First, in September Britain withdrew from the Exchange Rate [...]

There are some stories that come across an editor's desk that are so ridiculous one can only conclude that either the originators live in a parallel universe or the world [...]

In recent years, there have been numerous scholars who have taken the values and needs of democracy under consideration. Indeed, in political theory circles, the problems of democracy and self-governance [...]

The establishment of the posts of ministers of state and their assistants in Canada (by the 1970 Ministries and Ministers of State Act) has been a mixed blessing. The assistant officials are specifically assigned to various ministries to help the ministers carry out their duties. While the purpose was to enable the minister to have more control over policies and programs, as well as appointed officials, difficulties have arisen because often there has not been a clear hierarchical structure, and accountability has been hard to ascertain. It seems apparent that, if the idea is to work, changes must be made in the present system giving junior ministers more autonomy.

The task of being a financial minister requires a deep sense of intelligence and open mindedness in anticipating future problems. One of the most crucial part of the job, as performed efficiently by Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin, is deciding to which project a particular budget must be allocated.

Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin's decree on the new structure of the government, signed on Jan 10, 1994, divides the government into state committees, ministries, federal services and ordinary committees. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin played an important part in restructuring the government. First Deputy Prime Ministers will be Oleg Soskovets who will be responsible for 14 federal agencies and Yegor Gaidar who will be in charge of 13 federal agencies. Pres. Yeltsin will be in charge of television and radio service, foreign, defense and interior ministries.

Junior cabinet ministers tend to lead political lives of obscurity until they are noticed for their gaffs or resignations. Junior ministers are also frequently mocked and often complain they are kept in the dark, they cannot affect change since policy decisions are settled by senior Cabinet members. Junior ministers should be better prepared for top jobs. They should be given access to policy papers and used to give civil service committees political push.