COORDINATION

Canada’s senior ministry officials have a significant and effective role in preparing cabinet meetings. All issues are reviewed, filtered or settled by senior ministry officials before going to cabinet.

Senior ministry officials prepare cabinet meetings. A large-scale political science investigation of the internal politics and practices of the cabinet and ministries emphasizes that ministers are dependent on senior officials and senior officials are dependent on ministers. One expression of this mutual dependence and the trust and confidence that follows in its wake was, according to the same investigation, that ministers do not necessary pay much attention to all matters but trust in the collaborative preparatory work that is done in the ministries on a civil servant level and is operationalized in the reports prepared by the servants. This work extends to practically all cabinet agenda items: indeed, senior ministry officials prepare effectively cabinet meetings.

Cabinet meetings (in France, the Council of Ministers chaired by the president) are prepared by the secretary-general of the President’s Office and by the secretary-general of the Prime Minister’s Office. These two secretaries are usually very senior civil servants who have extensive knowledge and experience of public administration and enjoy the confidence of the president and of the prime minister. Both men are considered as being more powerful than line ministers as they benefit indirectly from the legal and political delegation of their respective heads. Their importance can be judged from the fact that several former secretaries-general of the president have become ministers or even prime minister. The whole preparation of the meetings is made by high civil servants but obviously under the strict guidance of the prime minister.

Senior civil servants and political appointees play an important role in preparing cabinet meetings. This follows fixed procedures and matters that are not appropriately prepared would not be presented to the cabinet. This includes documentation which alerts cabinet ministers to the essentials of the proposal to allow cabinet meetings to focus on strategic issues and not get distracted by details of routine business. Most issues on the agenda have been prepared in good time before the meeting.

Again, the Cabinet is legally required to rule on a large number of issues in its role as the last instance of appeal. This work is well prepared and done swiftly. The Cabinet tends to have specific meetings devoted to strategic discussions; the traditional Thursday lunch meetings with the Cabinet where there is no formal agenda but where policy and strategy are discussed more openly have been considered very important in this respect.

The federal government deliberates behind closed doors, and minutes of these meetings are not public. A leading expert on government decision processes has estimated that “(i)n most of the 3,000 decision-making processes, either the preliminary procedure or the co-reporting procedure leads to an agreement” (Klöti 2007: 161). The preliminary procedure consists of interministerial consultations at the level of the federal departments. After the departments have been consulted, the co-reporting procedure begins. “The Federal Chancellery takes the first step by submitting the proposal of the ministry in charge to all other ministries. Ministries that are particularly concerned are invited to submit a report, while all other ministries may express opinions as well” (Klöti 2007: 161). A process of discussion and coordination ensues, designed to eliminate all or most differences before the Federal Council meets.

While ministries are barely involved in preparing cabinet meetings, each minister has a team of close collaborators and advisors (cabinet ministériel or cellule stratégique) who prepare the projects, which are first submitted to the minister, and then to the Council of Ministers. For a range of decisions, responsibilities are shared among several ministers. In that case, the ministers’ teams must coordinate their actions (intercabinet meetings) before being able to submit a proposal that will receive the approval of each minister. Only at that stage, can the proposal be submitted to the Council.

Denmark does not have a tradition of political appointees or junior ministers. The ministries’ top civil servants are always career civil servants. There is a long tradition for relatively smooth cooperation between the minister and his top civil servants, headed by the permanent undersecretary (departementschef). In the 1990s, Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen started appointing media consultants from outside, and since then this practice has been accepted. The liberal-conservative government that followed continued the practice.

Since appointments of top civil servants are based on merit, these officials are usually quite capable. They also tend to be loyal, even if their own political convictions might not correspond fully to those of the minister. Some permanent under-secretaries have built up an impressive knowledge base and expertise as well as understanding of the political game. They see it as a central part of their job to protect the minister.

The cabinet agenda is drawn up by the chancellor’s office, and all proposals ready for decision are prepared and reviewed by senior ministry officials. Most disputes are ironed out prior to cabinet meetings in the weekly meetings of the state secretaries. The new coalition’s governing style does not differ significantly from its predecessor’s. Therefore, cabinet meetings are well organized and prepared in advance, but there is no room for strategic planning or strategic policy debate in the cabinet itself. Policies are negotiated by the coalition committee, which is the most important (though informal) decision-making body.

Senior ministry officials play a major role in inter-ministerial coordination. For one thing, they are in charge of clearing issues with other line ministries during the drafting process. For another, before being submitted to cabinet, all draft bills are discussed at regular meetings of the state secretaries. The role of senior ministry officials is further aggravated by the powerful Interministerial Coordination Committee for European Affairs (Európai Koordinációs Tárcaközi Bizottság, EKTB) set up in 2006. This committee brings together senior ministry officials from various ministries and meets once a week to prepare Hungary’s positions in EU decision-making.

Almost all preparation of cabinet meetings is done by the ministers, in cooperation with senior officials of each ministry. However, there is a tradition for senior officials within the ministries to assume that role alone. Ministers also consult with one another before cabinet meetings.

The material discussed at cabinet meetings is thoroughly prepared by ministry officials. The culture of communication between senior civil servants and ministers has not changed in any notable manner over the past two years.

Senior officials play a very important role in the preparation of cabinet meetings. Appointed for life and generally remaining in the same ministry, senior officials represent continuity and over time they form an informal network with their peers from other ministries. Their power is also based on the fact that ministers are usually in charge of more than one portfolio and must rely on a trusted advisor, especially in small ministries that may not be their main focus or central to political debate. Senior officials heading such departments have a certain degree of autonomy.
Before the cabinet meeting, there is often a preparation meeting held at the senior official level.

The cabinet process is overseen by the cabinet office on the basis of clear guidelines. Departmental chief executives typically meet with ministers prior to cabinet meetings to discuss the agenda and clarify matters. In addition, from 2009 new senior officials’ committees have been established to support cabinet committee chairs.

Most day-to-day government business is handled by senior ministry officials, who prepare most items for cabinet meetings in an effective way. However, as mentioned above, the cabinet plays a relatively small role in the political process, as all important issues are discussed bilaterally between the Blue House and the relevant ministry.

Senior ministry officials (the Spanish junior ministers, known as secretaries of state, and leading civil servants in the 17 ministries, known as undersecretaries) effectively prepare the cabinet meetings. They meet every Wednesday in a preparatory committee (the so-called Comisión General de Subsecretarios y Secretarios de Estado), two days before the weekly Friday Council of Ministers meeting. All issues arrive in time to be reviewed and filtered first by this committee. The government office, directed by a minister who is also the first deputy prime minister, chairs the meetings of this preparatory committee in which all draft bills, all appointments and any other ministerial proposals are discussed and scheduled as a part of the cabinet agenda. The government office also collects and circulates all relevant documents for the cabinet meeting among line ministers.
A provisional agenda (known as the “black index”) is published a week before the cabinet meeting. On Tuesday mornings, senior PM’s Private Office officials assess the relative importance of agenda items on the black index and identify where there are likely to be divergent positions. Thus, the Wednesday meetings of the preparatory committee perform an important gatekeeping function in returning problematic proposals to the appropriate line ministry and forwarding the remaining proposals to the cabinet (now classified into two indexes: the green index, which covers ongoing administrative matters, and the red index, for issues which are more political either by nature or because a lack of ministerial consensus). Nevertheless, although the senior ministry officials effectively filter out and settle almost all issues, allowing the cabinet to focus on strategic policy debates, the truth is that important political discussions in the Spanish cabinet are rare.

Preparing cabinet meetings is the primary task of the senior bureaucrats, including the undersecretaries, deputy undersecretaries, general directors and so on. Undersecretaries are under the command of the relevant minister and his or her aide, and execute ministerial services on behalf of the minister and in accordance with his or her directives and orders. Although this is a political position, it tends to be assigned by merit and with an eye to careers. There are also deputy undersecretaries in the ministries who may help their superiors in conducting ministerial affairs.

Under the leadership of the cabinet secretary (who is also the head of the home civil service), the Cabinet Secretariat prepares cabinet meetings in close consultation with the prime minister, who gives directions and decides upon the agenda. There is a Cabinet Office board that oversees the organization, as well as several groups (such as the domestic policy group, several intelligence-related groups, an IT-focused group and the communications group) that provide specialized services for the preparation of cabinet meetings. The top officials in each ministry (known as permanent undersecretaries in the UK) also constitute a key network, members of which regularly meet formally and informally.

Central White House-based actors may include in central decision-making processes senior officials (i.e., career and non-career civil servants) from the 15 departments. This is particularly true for foreign affairs and international economic policy.

Much of the more minor government business (such as statutory appointments and routine decision-making) is dealt with outside cabinet by the relevant public servants and junior ministers, and the decisions tabled as an addendum to cabinet papers. They are rarely, if ever, raised for discussion, though the opportunity exists for cabinet members to do so. Public servants, led by the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, are responsible, in consultation with the prime minister, for drawing up cabinet agendas. Confidentiality of cabinet meetings and their preparation means it is not possible to determine the precise proportion of agenda items that are prepared by senior public servants. However, public servants clearly play an important role in the development of many policy proposals and also filter out or settle many issues.

Full cabinet meetings, and thus senior officials themselves, have not played a central role in core government decision-making. However, ministries are normally involved in the preparation of cabinet meetings. Depending on the ministry, officials can be involved deeply or relatively less so in the preparation of these meetings.

A very significant role in the preparation of cabinet meetings is performed by a government office undersecretary and by senior ministry officials. The so-called pre-council (pre-consiglio), a meeting of senior officials from all the ministries and the PMO, chaired by the abovementioned undersecretary, meets a few days before every Council of Ministers meeting. Its role is to filter out most of the problems before the cabinet meets. The pre-council meeting also separates issues with a high degree of consensus from those with little or no consensus. These latter issues are typically sent back to the ministries originating them. The role of this body is more bureaucratic than political. Political questions arising at this stage will be dealt by other bodies, such as a meeting of the leaders or deputy leaders of the coalition parties.

According to the constitution, relations between ministers and top-level civil servants depend on the doctrine of ministerial responsibility towards parliament. Parliamentarians, instead of expanding their own professional staffing (as is done, for example in the United States), use the media to profile themselves as individuals acting to monitor the executive. This leads to avalanches of parliamentary questions and inquiries that annoy ministers and departments as “incidentalism” and hamper good governance and strategic focus. Under intensified public scrutiny, ministers have responded by narrowing ministerial responsibility from general risk accountability for all ministerial activities to accountability by guilt, which effectively shifts responsibility to their bureaucratic staffs. In addition, the 2006 and 2010 elections politicians and taxpayers together demanded a reduction in the number of civil servants of approximately 13,000 in the next years. All this has undermined the traditional relations of loyalty and trust between (deputy) ministers and top-level officers. The former have broken the monopoly held by senior staff on advice and information by relying increasingly on outside sources at an estimated cost of €1.2 billion in 2007 – 2008. Top-level officers have responded with risk-averse and defensive behavior (e.g., keep your minister out of trouble but keep your head down) and by placing more effort and energy in professionally driven organizational communication and process management. The upshot is that ministerial compartmentalization in preparing cabinet meetings has probably been exacerbated. Senior officers’ primary task is to serve one’s “own” minister and civil servants’ role in preparing cabinet meetings increasingly falls to the senior officers that directly serve the prime minister as advising counsels (raadsadviseurs). Of course, these advising counsels have dense networks of informal contacts with the senior staff of other departments. Thus, the senior staff’s performance in preparing cabinet meetings depends largely on the quality of information flow and discussion taking place in the informal networks.

Senior ministry officials play a substantial role in interministerial coordination. All meetings of the Council of Ministers, the Polish cabinet, are prepared by the Council of Ministers’ Permanent Committee which comprises deputy ministers from the ministries and is chaired by Michal Boni, a minister close to Prime Minister Tusk. A second important body staffed with senior ministry officials is the European Committee of the Council of Ministers, a body which focuses on developing Poland’s positions in EU decision-making.

Senior officials’ role in preparing cabinet meetings depends on the president and to a lesser extent on the ministers of the day. Since cabinet ministers do not generally have independent political weight and the career civil service does not extend as high as in many European systems, there is no hard and fast distinction between officials and ministers. The preparation of cabinet meetings appears to be largely a matter for the presidential office, but the president also organizes his own agenda.

Since the mid-1980s, cabinet meetings have been prepared in advance by senior ministry officials, either junior ministers (secretaries of state) or director-generals (the top position within the ministries), depending on the issue. Both of these roles are typically filled by politically appointees. In our interviews on the topic of foreign and defense policy, it seemed clear that senior ministry officials are heavily involved. In the SGI 2009 report, we noted that a great number of issues are settled and decided within the ministries themselves, with the Council of Ministers meetings serving to rubber-stamp decisions. While this situation remains largely unchanged, the minority status of the new Sócrates government means that ministers have less latitude for decision, given the possibility that measures will not be approved in parliament.

Senior ministry officials are heavily involved in the interministerial coordination process. They take care of the coordination at the drafting stage. In addition, there is a special reconciliation procedure involving senior civil servants in the event of conflicts among ministers.

There are two levels of ministry officials who might – depending on the specific minister’s style – influence cabinet matters. The first are political appointees, in the form of the minister’s secretariat, who are entrusted by the minister and usually have some position in the minister’s party. The second are senior civil servants with particular expertise of use to the minister. The degree of influence among these officials varies.
Many, if not most, of the issues to be discussed in cabinet are usually prepared by senior ministry officials, which gives them at least some kind of influence over policy.

Senior ministry officials are generally a crucial link in collecting and discussing comments on proposed legislation. They thereby play a coordinating role between various parts of government, with advisory committees and with outside interests that may be consulted in the preparation of legislation. However, their formal role is poorly defined, and they do not meet on a regular basis to prepare the agenda of cabinet meetings.

The administrative vice-ministers meeting has traditionally been the most important government committee in the preparation of cabinet meetings. It was composed of the heads of the civil services of the various ministries. It has always been a matter of some dispute whether this council simply set the agenda for cabinet meetings in a formal sense, performing tasks such as preparing documents, or whether it played a more ambitious gate-keeping role determining which issues were taken up in cabinet meetings and in which manner. However, as part of the new DPJ-led government’s drive to downgrade the role of senior bureaucrats, the vice-ministers meetings were abolished. As pledged by the DPJ in the 2009 election campaign, 100 members of parliament have now been assigned to government ministries (up from 70 under LDP rule). Time will tell how the working relationships between senior ministry personnel and these new political nominees, who often lack expertise or experience in their new field of responsibility, will evolve, or whether the political appointees will ultimately develop direct influence and even a guiding role in shaping cabinet-level decision-making. There are bound to be differences from ministry to ministry.

The role of senior ministry officials is circumscribed not only in the preparation of cabinet meetings, but also in the preparation of draft bills belonging to their own ministry’s area of competence. The role of such officials is limited to voicing objections to government policy on the grounds of legal or technical constraints (e.g., a lack of personnel or other resources necessary for implementing a new law). Instead of senior ministry officials, cabinet ministers and the prime minister rely on political appointees (party cadres, academics and other experts) who come and go with each ministerial reshuffling and government turnover.
In other words, the PMO is exclusively staffed by political appointees, with the same holding true of the General Secretariat of the Government, which has the function of preparing cabinet meetings. Appointees to this secretariat tend to be pro-government lawyers and academics who offer their expertise to the cabinet, but do not really participate in policy-making. Their role is to coordinate and prepare cabinet meetings by attending to any legal aspect of the cabinet’s activities and taking care of administrative details.