Dismantling ‘Neutral Expertise’: The myth of apolitical advice in a relational polity

3/7/2023

The model of ‘politically neutral expertise’ remains a dominant ideal within public administration theory and practice. It imagines officials as technical advisors: offering facts, analysis, and rational assessments without political interference or bias. In this model, free and frank advice is valued for its neutrality. It is protected not because it is contested, but because it is presumed to be above contestation: an input grounded in expertise, detached from political values, and insulated from constitutional complexity. The model carries an enduring appeal. It promises a public service that serves any government impartially, delivers decisions based on evidence and reason, and maintains public trust through objectivity.

In theory, the model offers real strengths. Neutral expertise can act as a stabilising force within political systems. It provides ministers with advice untainted by partisanship. It offers a basis for consistent public administration even as political leadership changes. It reinforces ideals of merit-based appointment, evidence-informed decision-making, and procedural fairness. In settings where governance structures are relatively settled, where sovereignty is unified, and where contestation is primarily political rather than constitutional, the model provides a powerful logic for how advisory systems should function.

However, when placed against the constitutional whakapapa of governance in Aotearoa, the ‘neutral expertise’ model reveals fundamental limitations. It rests on assumptions about the nature of governance: stability, hierarchy, and apolitical administration that do not match the relational, contested, and plural realities that shape this polity. It imagines governance as a closed administrative order. In Aotearoa, governance has always been relational and negotiated: between the Crown and Māori, state structures and communities, and across fragmented authority networks.

The relational foundations established through Te Tiriti o Waitangi recognised multiple sites of authority and legitimacy. Sovereignty here was not a singular, settled command structure; it was and remains a field of ongoing constitutional negotiation. Advice offered within this environment cannot be purely technical. It must navigate plural authorities, contested obligations, and relational accountabilities that do not fit easily into the neutrality frame.

Moreover, the presentation of advice as ‘neutral’ can itself be a political act. When officials frame advice as objective, they often embed assumptions about legitimacy, authority, and policy direction without acknowledging them. Decisions about which facts to present, which risks to highlight, which options to foreground, and which perspectives to include are not neutral. They are constitutional acts that shape whose realities are recognised within governance and whose are marginalised.

In Aotearoa, advice that claims neutrality without engaging relationally with plural constitutional obligations risks replicating colonial patterns of exclusion. As Hirini Kaa (2019) and Aroha Harris (2004) demonstrate, bureaucratic practices that imagined themselves as apolitical often served to erase Māori political aspirations and relational governance realities. Neutrality, in practice, operated as a form of compression: narrowing the space for contestation and reinforcing settler-defined categories of legitimacy.

The limitations of the ‘neutral expertise’ model are also exposed by the dynamics of modern governance. As Bryan and Joyce (2007) observe, contemporary governance is characterised by pluralism, networked authority, and negotiated legitimacy. In such environments, advice cannot be simply technical. It must navigate relational complexities, engage with diverse sites of authority, and contribute to sustaining legitimacy through dialogue, not just technical correctness.

Street-level discretion, as Lipsky (1980) observed, further disrupts the neutrality myth. Officials at the operational frontlines constantly interpret, adapt, and negotiate policy meaning within relational spaces. They make judgments about fairness, legitimacy, and responsiveness that cannot be reduced to the technical application of rules. Advice that supports governance in these conditions must acknowledge these relational and discretionary realities, not retreat into the pretence of apolitical detachment.

Historical practice within Aotearoa’s governance system reinforces these critiques. Officials advising on Treaty settlements, conservation co-governance, Whānau Ora commissioning, and constitutional reform have consistently engaged with relational obligations that cannot be managed through neutral expertise. Practical advice in these spaces requires cultural competence, constitutional sensitivity, and relational judgment: not merely technical skill.

The codification of free and frank advice in the Public Service Act 2020 implicitly recognises these realities. It protects the ability of officials to offer contestable, relational, and courageous advice. But if free and frank advice is treated simply as technical neutrality, its constitutional role is misunderstood. Free and frank advice exists because governance in Aotearoa remains contested, relational, and plural. Advice must sustain that contestation, not suppress it through claims of neutrality.

The dangers of the ‘neutral expertise’ model lie not only in its descriptive inadequacy but in its practical effects. When officials are trained to believe that their role is purely technical, they risk ignoring relational obligations, marginalising plural authorities, and reinforcing settler-centric governance frames. They risk treating contested realities as administrative problems to be solved rather than constitutional relationships to be negotiated.

In sum, the ‘neutral expertise’ model captures a vital aspiration: that advice should not be distorted by partisanship or political expediency. But it fails to account for the constitutional demands of governance in Aotearoa. Advice here cannot be fully understood, much less practised, as a technical exercise detached from contestation. It is a relational practice: navigating contested authorities, sustaining negotiated legitimacy, and upholding the constitutional commitments established through Te Tiriti and continually reshaped through lived governance.

The limits of the ‘neutral expertise’ model reinforce the need to understand free and frank advice as more than a professional virtue. It is a constitutional necessity, rooted in the relational, contested whakapapa of governance itself.