Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 14th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview I. Working Group on Politico-Administrative Relations Author(s) Christophe Pelgrims Department of Town and Country Planning, Housing Policy and Immovable Heritage Brussel Belgium Marleen Brans Title An institutional perspective on personal advisors in Belgium. Political actors and the failure to change an institution during a critical juncture. File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract The Belgian politico-administrative system has a long tradition of personal advisors. Since the creation of Belgium in 1830, ministers are surrounded by advisors chosen by them. These personal advisors are institutionalized in ministerial cabinets (Ziller, 1993). Ministerial cabinets may be defined as a policy supportive body of the minister, composed of political and policy advisors on a temporary appointment. The minister appoints his/her staff members personally who consecutively remain outside the administrative hierarchy (Pelgrims, 2003). These advisors fulfil both political functions and policy functions (Brans et al, 2005). The combination of the different functions implies that ministerial cabinets are more than the combination of a minister’s private secretary, political advisors and spokesperson. The institutionalisation of personal advisors in ministerial cabinets carries distinct disadvantage for research. As institutions they are very well demarcated and defined, which offers opportunities to study them. They may therefore be interesting for comparative research on political systems in which advisers are less visible. As institutions that are hard to change in Selznick’s (1957) terms recalcitrant, they offer interesting cases for the application of institutional theory in general and of institutional change in particular. Striving for stability and continuity is considered as the core of an institution. Not only the ‘old’ institutionalism stress the difficulties to change institutions. In the different streams of neo-institutional theory, we find a focus on stability instead of change. The sociological variant argues that change is difficult, because institutions structure the way actors evaluate existing institutions and contemplate reform (Torfing, 2001). The historical institutionalism focuses on path dependency. Change comes from exogenous shocks and critical junctures (Thelen & Steinmo, 1995). Peters and Pierre (2005) in turn claim that the need to have political actors in disagreement with the prevailing policies of the institutions is crucial for change. Actor-centred institutionalism may be a way out of the inexplicability of historical and sociological institutionalism (Scharpf, 1997). This stream does not exclude the impact of institutions on individuals but focuses more on the relations between actors in changing institutions. Changing institutions creates arenas where different actors encounter. In February 2000, after a new government was formed. At the turn of millennium, the reduction of the size and role of ministerial cabinets and the reintegration of civil servants in the policy-making process had a firm place on the reform agenda of the Belgian government. The government plans launched in 2000 aimed to reduce the ministerial cabinets and integrate policy-formulation in the administrative apparatus. Five years after the intention to downsize cabinets nothing remained of this proposal. During negotiations between political actors, the proposal was totally undermined (Pelgrims, 2005). Budget and size of the cabinets show that they are even working on a revival. On the basis of actor-centred institutionalism, we conclude that the interaction between political actors is not only crucial for change, but also for re-inventing or even re-enforcing the logic of old institutions. In our paper we seek to describe and explain the failure to change an institution during a critical juncture and the subsequent re-enforcements of this institution.
