Political control and bureaucratic expertise: policy analysis by ministerial cabinet members

Abstract

While in many Western-European countries the ascent of special advisors is a relatively recent phenomenon, Belgium has long engaged ministerial cabinets as structural interfaces between politics and administration. Relatively large by international standards, ministerial cabinets consist of political advisors who as “an extension of their minister” put pressure on the civil servants in order to ensure political responsiveness. At the turn of the millennium, the reduction and revision of ministerial cabinets in favour of strengthening the administration’s role in policy formulation gained a place on the agenda. In several of the Belgian administrations, the policy analytical capacity has been strengthened, and the relations between the administration and ministerial cabinets improved in the direction of greater complementarity of roles. This chapter makes comparative literature on politico-administrative relations, and of survey material on the policy analytical roles of ministerial advisors and civil servants to analyse how bureaucratic policy expertise is balanced with political control. The analysis will point at the enduring functionality of ministerial cabinets in a polity characterized by fragile coalition government and partitocracy.