Zimmerman, Joseph EAuthor InformationView Profile. Public Administration Review; Washington Vol. 57, Iss. 6, (Nov/Dec 1997): 534-542.
What is the relationship between the minister, who has legal responsibility for a department, and the secretary, the permanent principal officer, in a parliamentary system? Joseph F Zimmerman reviewed the literature and interviewed sitting and retired secretaries and former ministers in the Republic of Ireland. Employing four models, the author examines the legal and informal relationships that exist between a minister and a secretary and the political culture within which they operate. The changing roles of the secretary and the impact of the Top-Level Appointments Committee are analyzed with particular emphasis on the policy advice role of the secretary. The author concludes that the policy advice role has declined; the secretary is primarily a coordinator of the activities of the various divisions within the department, and a cooperation model explains the relationship between a minister and a secretary.
In Ireland, the cabinet minister has sole responsibility for a department and works through a cabinet secretary who has longer tenure and is more like a senior career official in the United States. The evolution of the relationship between the Irish secretary and the minister may help illuminate the relationship between political appointees and career officials more broadly. At the least, examination of the Irish situation should provide some fresh questions for research.
Four Models
Four major models have been developed to explain the relationship between the political head of a department in a parliamentary system and the top career civil servant (the secretary or permanent secretary). These models possess varying degrees of explanatory value and can be employed to examine the relationship between a United States cabinet secretary and the top career departmental civil servant.
The traditional Westminister constitutional model is based upon the "corporation sole" doctrine, which establishes the minister as a juristic person with sole and complete responsibility for a department. In other words, the 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 the most effective manner the government's program as directed by the minister. Cooperation of civil servants with the 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 that they have been directed by the minister to initiate a named action or transmit a reply to a communication sent to the minister. The civil servants, according to this model, hold only one opinion on any given subject-the ministers opinion.
This model is similar to the politics-administration dichotomy model in the United States, which traces its origins to an article written by Woodrow Wilson (1887). This model was also employed by early advocates of the council-manager form of municipal government who described the city council as the policymaker and the city manager as the implementor of the council's policies (Childs, 1965, 5-6).
The adversarial model posits that the minister and the secretary are rivals and that the secretary is always attempting to control the minister by manipulation (Benn, 1980. This model suggest that the de jure authority of a minister is limited in the real world of the department because of the experience and information advantages of senior civil servants. Operating in the department under severe time constraints because of other pressing duties, a minister normally is highly dependent upon the 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 the fluid relationship between ministers and officials in the United Kingdom. Ministers and officials, according to the model, do not always agree with each other, but they cooperate with each other to achieve common departmental goals. Ministers need the expertise and information possessed by civil servants, who in turn need the political support of the minister to achieve their defined departmental goals. This model bears similarities to the Lindblom (1953, 3) mutual adjustment or self-regulating model that extends Adam Smith's invisible hand from the economic market to the political sphere and suggests "that people can coordinate with each other...without rules that fully describe their relations to each other." Lindblom (I(il) added that "the decision makers themselves provide a great deal of coordination by their attention to each other."
The empire building model posits that bureaucrats seek to expand the number of departmental programs and employees in order to increase the bureaucrats' prestige and power position. In consequence, departmental officials must cultivate the full support of their respective ministers if they are to achieve their objectives. These models can be employed to help explain the relationships between the political head and the career civil servant head of a department in various nations. It is important to recognize, of course, the major constitutional, political, and structural differences between a presidential system such as the United States and the Irish situation. Comparisons may also be affected by the variety of reforms that have recently occurred in several parliamentary nations.
Several major changes in the British system occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The closed entry system for higher civil service posts was replaced by an open system, and a number of functions were "hived off" from the departments and assigned to new executive agencies headed by ministerially selected chief executives. A majority of all civil servants today work in such agencies (Pyper, 1995, 35, 38). Reviewing these developments, Pyper concluded:
What seemed to be emerging out of the old unitary body was a federation still bound together through the links between parent departments and agencies and by the remaining adherence to civil service standards and norms, but with the potential for distinctive modes of behaviour and organisation to develop within the individual entities of the federal model (1995, 78).
In New Zealand, departments are relatively small, with the principal purpose of providing "policy advice and corporate services." Attached to them are executive agencies responsible for service delivery (Byrne,1995, 56).
The head of a New Zealand department no longer has tenure in office, but serves as a chief executive under provisions of a fixedterm contract with the minister. The chief executive is responsible to the minister for the achievement of contractual goals (Boyle, 1995, 19-20). The State Sector Act of 1988 devolved greater authority to chief executives to manage their respective departments. The New Zealand changes appear to be a move in the direction of the politics-administration dichotomy model as administrative management of departments is separated from policy making and strategic management.
What is the relationship between the minister, who has legal responsibility for a department, and the secretary, the permanent principal officer, in a parliamentary system? Joseph F Zimmerman reviewed the literature and interviewed sitting and retired secretaries and former ministers in the Republic of Ireland. Employing four models, the author examines the legal and informal relationships that exist between a minister and a secretary and the political culture within which they operate. The changing roles of the secretary and the impact of the Top-Level Appointments Committee are analyzed with particular emphasis on the policy advice role of the secretary. The author concludes that the policy advice role has declined; the secretary is primarily a coordinator of the activities of the various divisions within the department, and a cooperation model explains the relationship between a minister and a secretary.
In Ireland, the cabinet minister has sole responsibility for a department and works through a cabinet secretary who has longer tenure and is more like a senior career official in the United States. The evolution of the relationship between the Irish secretary and the minister may help illuminate the relationship between political appointees and career officials more broadly. At the least, examination of the Irish situation should provide some fresh questions for research.
Four Models
Four major models have been developed to explain the relationship between the political head of a department in a parliamentary system and the top career civil servant (the secretary or permanent secretary). These models possess varying degrees of explanatory value and can be employed to examine the relationship between a United States cabinet secretary and the top career departmental civil servant.
The traditional Westminister constitutional model is based upon the "corporation sole" doctrine, which establishes the minister as a juristic person with sole and complete responsibility for a department. In other words, the 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 the most effective manner the government's program as directed by the minister. Cooperation of civil servants with the 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 that they have been directed by the minister to initiate a named action or transmit a reply to a communication sent to the minister. The civil servants, according to this model, hold only one opinion on any given subject-the ministers opinion.
This model is similar to the politics-administration dichotomy model in the United States, which traces its origins to an article written by Woodrow Wilson (1887). This model was also employed by early advocates of the council-manager form of municipal government who described the city council as the policymaker and the city manager as the implementor of the council's policies (Childs, 1965, 5-6).
The adversarial model posits that the minister and the secretary are rivals and that the secretary is always attempting to control the minister by manipulation (Benn, 1980. This model suggest that the de jure authority of a minister is limited in the real world of the department because of the experience and information advantages of senior civil servants. Operating in the department under severe time constraints because of other pressing duties, a minister normally is highly dependent upon the 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 the fluid relationship between ministers and officials in the United Kingdom. Ministers and officials, according to the model, do not always agree with each other, but they cooperate with each other to achieve common departmental goals. Ministers need the expertise and information possessed by civil servants, who in turn need the political support of the minister to achieve their defined departmental goals. This model bears similarities to the Lindblom (1953, 3) mutual adjustment or self-regulating model that extends Adam Smith's invisible hand from the economic market to the political sphere and suggests "that people can coordinate with each other...without rules that fully describe their relations to each other." Lindblom (I(il) added that "the decision makers themselves provide a great deal of coordination by their attention to each other."
The empire building model posits that bureaucrats seek to expand the number of departmental programs and employees in order to increase the bureaucrats' prestige and power position. In consequence, departmental officials must cultivate the full support of their respective ministers if they are to achieve their objectives. These models can be employed to help explain the relationships between the political head and the career civil servant head of a department in various nations. It is important to recognize, of course, the major constitutional, political, and structural differences between a presidential system such as the United States and the Irish situation. Comparisons may also be affected by the variety of reforms that have recently occurred in several parliamentary nations.
Several major changes in the British system occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The closed entry system for higher civil service posts was replaced by an open system, and a number of functions were "hived off" from the departments and assigned to new executive agencies headed by ministerially selected chief executives. A majority of all civil servants today work in such agencies (Pyper, 1995, 35, 38). Reviewing these developments, Pyper concluded:
What seemed to be emerging out of the old unitary body was a federation still bound together through the links between parent departments and agencies and by the remaining adherence to civil service standards and norms, but with the potential for distinctive modes of behaviour and organisation to develop within the individual entities of the federal model (1995, 78).
In New Zealand, departments are relatively small, with the principal purpose of providing "policy advice and corporate services." Attached to them are executive agencies responsible for service delivery (Byrne,1995, 56).
The head of a New Zealand department no longer has tenure in office, but serves as a chief executive under provisions of a fixedterm contract with the minister. The chief executive is responsible to the minister for the achievement of contractual goals (Boyle, 1995, 19-20). The State Sector Act of 1988 devolved greater authority to chief executives to manage their respective departments. The New Zealand changes appear to be a move in the direction of the politics-administration dichotomy model as administrative management of departments is separated from policy making and strategic management.
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