The Changing Roles of the Irish Department Secretary

Abstract

In Ireland, cabinet minister has responsibility for a department and works through a cabinet secretary who has longer tenure and is more like a senior career official in United States. The evolution of relationship between Irish secretary and minister may help illuminate relationship between political appointees and career officials more broadly. At least, examination of Irish situation should provide some fresh questions for research. Four Models Four major models have been developed to explain relationship between political head of a department in a parliamentary system and top career civil servant (the secretary or permanent secretary). These models possess varying degrees of explanatory value and can be employed to examine relationship between a United States cabinet secretary and top career departmental civil servant. The traditional Westminister constitutional model is based upon corporation sole doctrine, which establishes minister as a Juristic person with and complete responsibility for a department. In other words, permanent civil service possesses no powers and is a neutral bureaucracy. Its members are anonymous and dedicated to serving with complete loyalty their respective ministers by implementing fully and in most effective manner government's program as directed by minister. Cooperation of civil servants with minister is assumed as is cooperation of civil servants with their respective cabinet secretaries. Formally, civil servants in a parliamentary system write in official communications they have been directed by minister to Initiate a named action or transmit a reply to a communication. sent to minister. The civil servants, according to this model, hold only one opinion on any given subject--the minister's opinion. This model is similar to politics-administration dichotomy model in United States, which traces its origins to an article written by Woodrow Wilson (1887). This model was also employed by early advocates of council-manager form of municipal government who described city council as policymaker and city manager as implementor of council's policies (Childs, 1965, 5-6). The adversarial model posits minister and secretary are rivals and secretary is always attempting to control minister by manipulation (Benn, 1980. This model suggest de jute authority of a minister is limited in real world of department because of experience and information advantages of senior civil servants. Operating in department under severe time constraints because of other pressing duties, a minister normally is highly dependent upon advice of senior civil servants. In consequence, a minister may accept their views uncritically and in effect become their puppet. The cooperation and bargaining model was developed by Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky (1981) to explain fluid relationship between ministers and officials in United Kingdom. Ministers and officials, according to model, do not always agree with each other, but they cooperate with each other to achieve common departmental goals. Ministers need expertise and information possessed by civil servants, who in turn need political support of minister to achieve their defined departmental goals. This model bears similarities to Lindblom (1953, 3) mutual adjustment or self-regulating model extends Adam Smith's invisible hand from economic market to political sphere and suggests that people can coordinate with each other...without rules fully describe their relations to each other. Lindblom (161) added the decision makers themselves provide a great deal of coordination by their attention to each other. The empire building model posits bureaucrats seek to expand number of departmental programs and employees in order to increase bureaucrats' prestige and power position. …