Abstract
Ministerial advisors have become an essential aspect of executive branches worldwide, thus making the ministerial advisor office a potential route for young politicians aspiring to an expanding political class. The article studies which professions ministerial advisors migrate to following their ministerial careers, how ministerial advisors’ post-ministerial careers compare to their pre-ministerial careers, and if the variance in careers can be explained by the resources that ministerial advisors obtain while in government. Empirically, the article draws on a cohort of 139 ministerial advisors in Norwegian governments between 2001 and 2009; it covers positions in the political sphere and the public, private and voluntary occupational sectors over a period from each ministerial advisor’s youth to the end of 2017. The bibliographic data are combined with surveys and elite interviews. The results show that more than expanding the political class as a recruitment ground for future Members of the Parliament and ministers, ministerial advisor appointments serve as stepping-stones to careers outside of politics. Most ministerial advisors experience shifts between occupational sectors and upwards to higher positions. However, ministerial advisors’ attractiveness in the labour market is surprisingly unaffected by what they actually did in office; rather, it rests on resources such as insider knowledge and networks.
Highlights
According to some scholars and critical observers, a political class has emerged in established democracies
It remains unclear the extent to which MAs remain in politics or migrate to other arenas and whether service in high public office pays off career-wise
Regarding our first research question on which professions MAs migrate to following their ministerial careers, the results show a clear migration out of national politics, a smaller decrease in the share working in central government and increases in the shares working in the private and voluntary sectors
Summary
According to some scholars and critical observers, a political class has emerged in established democracies. The growth in the number of advisors suggests that these are positions for an expanding political class or stepping-stones for aspiring top politicians Such advisors and ministerial advisors (MAs) in particular, used to ‘live in the dark’ (Blick, 2004), but after 10–15 years of considerable scholarly attention, we know that MAs are a growing group of powerful actors at the core of executive government. They advise ministers, liaise across ministries and with parliament and oversee the bureaucracy’s policy implementation (Askim et al, 2017; Craft, 2015; Eichbaum and Shaw, 2010; Eymeri-Douzans et al, 2015; Hustedt et al, 2017). Little is known about what aspects of their work in the core of executive government make MAs attractive to outside employers (Hustedt et al, 2017; Wilson, 2016)
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