Greek political advisers and policy making

The aim of the present contribution is to examine the policy making role of Greek ministerial advisers. Given the lack of prior empirical work on the issue, the objective is to add the empirical examination of a new case in the literature. This is achieved by locating the Greek ministerial cabinet adviser phenomenon within the ministerial cabinet tradition, as well as putting forward a classification using typologies according to policy roles, policy advice activities based on the nature and dimension of advice, content of advice and finally the policy cycle. The contribution in hand was designed as a single country, small N, comparative study. Data was collected for the 2010 – 2013 period, using a mixed methods approach: a questionnaire survey on 28 advisers, semi-structured interviews with two Ministers and four senior civil servants, and document analysis. The argument put forward in the study is that Greek ministerial advisers form a case of agents active in a politicized advisory system, as found in ministerial cabinets. Based on the evidence in hand Greek ministerial advisers have been classified as coordinators, being predominantly generalists, with a main focus on management of the government program, providing “hot”, pure political and policy process advice, as well as short term crisis and fire-fighting advice. Greek ministerial advisers appear to be political without being overtly partisan. They are primarily managers focusing on policy steering rather than experts focusing on technical policy making. Moreover, they provide for vertical, within the Ministry’s departments, coordination, resorting to horizontal coordination mainly with advisers at other Ministries. Finally, they deal predominantly with the front end of policymaking, enjoying a high leverage in agenda setting and policy formulation. Greek ministerial advisers, though, are also highly active in the back end of the policy cycle in particular implementation and evaluation, reflecting both their project-management coordinator role, as well as the central role ministerial cabinets exercise in policy making.