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The growing body of literature on digital governance, and policy advisory systems, often neglects the perspective of elected decision makers. What types of policy advice do ministers need in the digital governance era? Is digitization of government and policymaking reshaping supply and demand dynamics, the content of policy advice, or how advice is used within the policy process? This article borrows existing theoretical frames on digital governance to examine these and other questions from the perspective of ministers. The digital governance era will undoubtedly introduce novel disruptions and dilemmas, but it will also intensify longstanding tensions inherent in advisory work linked to questions of influence, capacity, and how well advisory systems adapt to serve ministers. We use information processing dynamics, policy entrepreneurship, and control and coordination to ground analysis of ministers' advisory demand in the digital governance era. We highlight unique considerations that apply to ministers as well as reflection on their place within the broader context of advisory work. We employ vignettes from the perspective of ministers throughout the article as a useful way to personalize the digital era disruptions and dilemmas particular to ministers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical examinations of partisan advisers detail significant differences in their policy work, influence, and their patterns of interactions with other policy actors. This raises important implications for their potential contributions to policy failure avoidance. Using recent qualitative data from elite interviews in Canada, this study finds that advisers' policy work contributes to political policy failure avoidance as policy is developed. The findings help unpack the types and nature of policy-based resource exchanges that advisers undertake, through advisory and non-advisory forms of policy work, that strengthen political control and manage policy perceptions by other actors during policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing corpus of empirical findings suggests that appointed partisan advisers are established and influential policy actors within the executive. Their policy work has long attracted concerted attention with respect to issues of accountability and politicization. Less attention however has been cast to concept and theory building, to link empirical findings with extant policy theory. This article presents careful analysis of the leading conceptual approaches to the study of these policy workers. It offers a critique of these approaches but suggests they share common logic and identify common attributes that can usefully be synthesized into a new framework. A framework is then advanced through the elaboration of four key concepts: buffering, bridging, moving, and shaping to focus on the substantive and procedural nature of partisan advisers' policy work. Combined with additional criteria, these are used to develop two subsidiary frameworks focusing on partisan advisers' policy advisory and policy process participation. The study of these actors is argued to not only benefit from improved linkages with policy theory, but that policy theory itself may be improved through focused study of these unique, politically appointed, policy workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appointed political staffs were featured in the initial elaboration of the 'policy advisory systems' (PAS) model yet have received considerably less attention than other components. This article revisits the PAS model and argues that political staffs engage in important procedural advisory activities masked by the PAS focus on location and control. The principle contention being that political staffs influence within advisory systems may also be a product of their procedural brokerage of other sources of policy advice. The article advances a conceptual framework to understand political staffs brokerage as 'bridging'. Setting out 'positive' and 'negative' forms that can be arrayed along 'administrative-technical' and 'partisan-political' types. A Canadian sub-national case study is examined using the framework revealing variance in the type and nature of bridging based on institutional location of political staffs and the specific brokerage tasks they undertake. First minister's office bridging is found to be considerably more limited than that undertaken by minister's office political staffs, particularly in relation to the bridging of exogenous sources of policy advice. The framework and empirical findings enrich the policy advisory systems literature by demonstrating the importance of coupling spatial considerations with attention to the actual tasks of advisory system members. Additionally, highlighting the importance of procedural policy advisory brokerage as a source of influence within advisory systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]