Abstract

This study examines the transparency of the regulatory framework under which ministerial advisors exist within the politicized context of a Central and Eastern European perspective. We compare profiles and career paths of ministerial advisers under five different types of coalition governments and examine if variance across government types can be explained by type of party – established vs. new parties. Empirically, the article draws on a cohort of 162 ministerial advisers in Slovakia across five governments from 2010 to 2020. We arrive at multiple findings. Firstly, we suggest the limitation in the availability and reporting of data is an important finding as it highlights accountability gaps and lack of government transparency irrespective of the party in power. Secondly, within the low regulatory environment, ministers appoint multiple types of staff including both formal “visible” ministerial advisers and “invisible” ministerial agents that, if one could accurately measure, would likely demonstrate that the ministerial advisory system is more inflated than we currently present. The ad-hoc nature of the advisory system also creates fluctuations in the size of the ministerial adviser cohort across governments and across different ministries. This would also help to explain the next finding, which is that, contrary to the experience in many countries, the overall size of the advisor population does not grow, probably because executive politicians have other avenues of appointing advisory agents. Fourthly, the advisers have a fairly equal distribution of prior employment from both the public sector and the private sector, but we do see some evidence of more established political parties preferring to recruit from the public sector and newer parties preferring to recruit from the private sector. Lastly, the appointment process appears to be highly controlled by individual ministers, suggesting personal ties are essential (link between ministerial and advisor education) and party-political criteria are a low consideration. The research is conducted using a biographical approach in which freedom of information requests and open source data is scrapped and then triangulated via a dozen interviews with current and former advisers. It argues that regulation is weak, lacking public scrutiny, which provides loopholes for employing ministerial agents in informal ways that could create, at worst, the opportunity for corrupt behavior, or at least, lead to poor practices in good governance. Therefore, future research should focus on both the formal “visible” and informal “invisible” ways that ministers recruit their advisory agents, how their agents function, and whether existing regulatory measures create a transparent and accountable governance framework.

中文翻译：

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斯洛伐克的部长级顾问：概况和职业发展道路，2010年– 2020年

摘要

这项研究考察了中欧和东欧政治化背景下部长级顾问存在的监管框架的透明度。我们比较了五种不同类型的联合政府下的部长级顾问的概况和职业道路，并检查了是否可以用政党类型（既有政党还是新政党）来解释政府类型之间的差异。从经验上讲，本文借鉴了2010年至2020年在五个政府中斯洛伐克的162名部长级顾问的队列。我们得出了多个结论。首先，我们建议限制数据的可用性和报告是一个重要发现，因为它突出了问责制的差距和政府透明度的不足，而与执政党无关。其次，在低监管环境下，部长们任命多个包括正式的“有形”部长级顾问和“无形”部长级代理在内的各类人员，如果可以准确地衡量，可能会表明，部长级咨询系统比我们目前的存在更加虚张声势。该特设咨询系统的性质也会在政府之间以及不同部委之间造成部长级顾问队伍规模的波动。这也将有助于解释下一个发现，即与许多国家的经验相反，顾问人口的总体规模并未增长，这可能是因为行政政治人物还有其他任命顾问的途径。第四，顾问从公共部门和私营部门获得的先前就业分配相当均等，但我们确实看到一些证据表明，更成熟的政党倾向于从公共部门招募，而新政党则倾向于从私营部门招募。 。最后，任命过程似乎受到各个部长的严格控制，暗示人际关系是必不可少的（部长级教育与顾问教育之间的联系），而政党政治标准则不被考虑。这项研究是使用传记方法进行的，其中信息自由和开源数据的自由被废弃，然后通过与现任和前任顾问的十多次访谈进行三角剖分。它辩称，监管薄弱，缺乏公众监督，这为以非正式方式聘用部长级人员提供了漏洞，这在最坏的情况下可能创造腐败行为的机会，或者至少导致良好治理的不良做法。因此，未来的研究应着重于部长招募顾问的正式“有形”和非正式“无形”方式，代理的功能，