Matariki Recommended Reading List 2026: Waiho mā te arero rātou e hahu ake

10/07/2026

Each year, as we move towards Matariki, I gather the seeds of knowledge I found most valuable in the previous year and offer them to others.

In 2021, I focused on good public sector governance, especially collaboration and anticipatory governance, because the authorising environment was struggling with its theory of public governance. In 2022, I gathered work on decolonising Anglo-American public institutions, to challenge the habit of “brown-cladding” advice instead of doing the more complex work of equity, cost–benefit and institutional analysis.

In 2023, I shared the research base behind a report on equity of access, outcomes, quality and process in vaccination uptake, with particular attention to the Te Ao Māori institutions that produced equity when the state appeared unwilling or unable to do so. In 2024, I walked readers through the long arc of public sector reform in Aotearoa, and last year I turned to administrative burden: the learning, compliance and psychological costs people face when they deal with the state.

This year, my focus is on politicisation. The best-known definition treats politicisation as the substitution of political criteria for merit-based criteria in the selection, retention, promotion, rewards and discipline of public servants (Peters & Pierre, 2004), and that definition explains why appointments, and chief executive appointments in particular, tend to attract the most public attention.

Westminster scholarship has since widened the lens beyond appointments. Scholars of the Aotearoa executive distinguish administrative politicisation, which works through ministerial advisers and the way advice reaches ministers, from the older concern with who gets appointed, and they ask whether advice is constrained procedurally, by controlling access to the minister, or substantively, by directing officials towards advice congruent with the minister’s preferences (Eichbaum & Shaw, 2008; Shaw, 2025).

The form I find most troubling is the quieter one, in which officials anticipate what a minister wants to hear and shape their advice before anyone has asked them to. It leaves no trace in an appointment record or a ministerial office, and it tends to show up instead as a gradual thinning of free and frank advice (Shaw, 2025).

That is also why politicisation sits so close to my doctoral research. The convention of free and frank advice depends on officials being able to tell ministers what they need to hear and on ministers being willing to receive it, and both conditions weaken as the line between serving the Government of the day and serving its political interests becomes harder to see.

This year’s reading list gathers the work that has helped me think about politicisation as a matter of institutional design and constitutional convention, and not only as a question of individual integrity. I have organised it into five groups: the foundations, the Westminster debate, ministerial advisers, the public service bargain, and responsiveness and its limits.

As the whakataukī suggests, we keep things alive by talking about them, and these texts help us talk about a part of the constitution that tends to work best when nobody has to mention it.

Foundations

Works that define politicisation and set out the relationship between politicians and public servants.

Aberbach, J. D., Putnam, R. D., & Rockman, B. A. (1981). Bureaucrats and politicians in Western democracies. Harvard University Press.

Hood, C., & Lodge, M. (2006). The politics of public service bargains: Reward, competency, loyalty—and blame. Oxford University Press.

Overeem, P. (2005). The value of the dichotomy: Politics, administration, and the political neutrality of administrators. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 27(2), 311–329.

Peters, B. G., & Pierre, J. (Eds.). (2004). Politicization of the civil service in comparative perspective: The quest for control. Routledge.

West, W. F. (2005). Neutral competence and political responsiveness: An uneasy relationship. Policy Studies Journal, 33(2), 147–160.

The Westminster debate

Works on whether the Westminster arrangement between ministers and a non-partisan public service is holding.

Aucoin, P. (2012). New political governance in Westminster systems: Impartial public administration and management performance at risk. Governance, 25(2), 177–199.

Boston, J. (2012). Reflections on New Political Governance in Westminster systems. Governance, 25(2), 201–207.

Craft, J., & Halligan, J. (2020). Advising governments in the Westminster tradition: Policy advisory systems in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Cambridge University Press.

Rhodes, R. A. W., Wanna, J., & Weller, P. (2009). Comparing Westminster. Oxford University Press.

Richards, D., & Smith, M. J. (2016). The Westminster model and the “indivisibility of the political and administrative elite”: A convenient myth whose time is up? Governance, 29(4), 499–516.

Ministerial advisers

Research on the third element in the executive, much of it from Aotearoa.

Eichbaum, C., & Shaw, R. (2007a). Ministerial advisers and the politics of policy-making: Bureaucratic permanence and popular control. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 66(4), 453–467.

Eichbaum, C., & Shaw, R. (2007b). Ministerial advisers, politicization and the retreat from Westminster: The case of New Zealand. Public Administration, 85(3), 609–640.

Eichbaum, C., & Shaw, R. (2008). Revisiting politicization: Political advisers and public servants in Westminster systems. Governance, 21(3), 337–363.

Eichbaum, C., & Shaw, R. (Eds.). (2010). Partisan appointees and public servants: An international analysis of the role of the political adviser. Edward Elgar.

Grube, D. C. (2023). Politics and politicisation: Bane or boon companion? In R. Shaw (Ed.), Handbook on ministerial and political advisers (pp. 352–364). Edward Elgar.

Shaw, R. (2025). The three-legged race: Public servants and political advisers in the policy process. In M. Howlett & I. Mukherjee (Eds.), Handbook of policy advice (pp. 222–232). Edward Elgar.

Shaw, R., & Eichbaum, C. (2020). Bubbling up or cascading down? Public servants, political advisers and politicization. Public Administration, 98(4), 840–855.

The public service bargain

Work on the implicit bargain between politicians and public servants over reward, competency, loyalty and blame.

Cole, R. (2022). Public service bargains and non-partisan ministerial advisors: Servants of two masters. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 88(3), 757–773.

Hood, C. (2000). Relationships between ministers, politicians and public servants: Public service bargains old and new. In B. G. Peters & D. J. Savoie (Eds.), Governance in the twenty-first century. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

James, C. (2002). So is the fundamental bargain in jeopardy? Policy Quarterly, 1(1), 32–35.

Lodge, M. (2009). Strained or broken? The future(s) of the public service bargain. Policy Quarterly, 5(1), 53–57.

Shaw, R., & Salomonsen, H. H. (2023). Public service bargains: Advisers in the executive ménage à trois. In R. Shaw (Ed.), Handbook on ministerial and political advisers (pp. 61–75). Edward Elgar.

Responsiveness and its limits

Studies of how much responsiveness a public service can offer before its advice loses its value.

Craft, J., & Howlett, M. (2013). The dual dynamics of policy advisory systems: The impact of externalization and politicization on policy advice. Policy and Society, 32(3), 187–197.

Hustedt, T., & Salomonsen, H. H. (2014). Ensuring political responsiveness: Politicization mechanisms in ministerial bureaucracies. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 80(4), 746–765.

Montpetit, E. (2011). Between detachment and responsiveness: Civil servants in Europe and North America. West European Politics, 34(6), 1250–1271.

Moynihan, D. P. (2025). Trump’s politicization of the civil service: Taking the unitary executive seriously. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 45(2), 233–237.

Mulgan, R. (2007). Truth in government and the politicization of public service advice. Public Administration, 85(3), 569–586.

Mulgan, R. (2008). How much responsiveness is too much or too little? Australian Journal of Public Administration, 67(3), 345–356.

Podger, A., & Kettl, D. F. (2024). How much damage can a politicized public service do? Lessons from Australia. Public Administration Review, 84(1), 160–172.