TITLE:
SpAds: Political Sherpas Bridging Minister and Civil Servant
AUTHORS:
Andrew P. Kakabadse, Nada Korac Kakabadse
KEYWORDS:
Special Political Advisers (SpAds), Secretary of State, Permanent Secre-tary, Bridging Function, Policy Delivery
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.10 No.2,
March
20,
2020
ABSTRACT: This paper examines how opinion-shaping political
and civil service stakeholders view the role and contribution of Special
Political Advisers (SpAds) within the Westminster system of government. The
literature only recently paid considered attention to this role, partly due to
the recent reforms that spawned the emergence of SpAds, but also because
political advisers still only represent a small population within the
government community. It is acknowledged that each country’s institutional and
administrative traditions greatly influence SpAds’ tasks; arrangements with the
UK being no exception. Recognising that SpAds take on the role of “temporary
civil servants” whose duties vary according to ministerial direction, the study
reported in this paper concludes that SpAds can make an invaluable contribution
to policy delivery by acting as a bridge between Secretary of State and
Permanent Secretary. The capability to bridge the tensions between ministerial
urgency to realise policy goals and civil servant realism to accurately assess
the “fracture points” to be overcome in the process of policy delivery is
reported as particularly valued by the public official. This paper concludes
that the SpAd’s relentless pursuit of the Minister’s agenda is distinctly
counterproductive for both Minister and civil servant, but adopting the
function of bridging across contrasting interests enhances policy delivery
effectiveness.