In a democracy every few years a new bunch of people get to run the country. The advantages in bringing fresh ideas, fighting corruption, and truly representing the diverse views of people are clear and compelling. (Those of us who live in democracies should be grateful). That said, a challenge occurs that people who weren’t running things — indeed may not be on speaking terms with those previously running the country — are now in charge. Are they always well prepared for the responsibility? Of course not. How then can we go about improving management in politics?
Who Runs The Country?
Jennifer Lees-Marshment’s recent paper looks at political advisers. These are not traditional civil servants. They don’t stay in their posts and gain experience under different political leaders and parties. Instead, these are people hired because they represent the views of the political leader who happens to be in power. Such advisers can be at a number of levels. The chief of staff to a prime minister is often a political adviser, as are the immediate support for ministers and your local member of parliament. (Lees-Marshment’s work focused on the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand but I’d venture to say lessons apply elsewhere too).
Political advisers are a fundamental part of government. They are distinct from traditional civil or public servants because rather than being politically neutral and permanent, they work on political and partisan matters to support political actors and organizations and have a temporary position.
Jennifer Lees-Marshment, (2025)
Ever Changing Power
Being a political adviser is a challenging career. Your influence on the world comes and goes depending upon election results. You might feel that you were just getting to understand what you are doing and suddenly your party loses the election. All that experience is lost as you (almost certainly) leave with your political patron. New people come in who may well not have done anything similar. Just as they get to grips with the problems that are likely to go too.
It is more chaotic than just changes occurring when party control changes. Prime ministers like to shuffle around their ministers. (Honestly, why? I just found Keir Starmer’s 2025 reshuffle puzzling). Imagine you are an adviser and have a good relationship with your minister. They suddenly move jobs, and you might move with them or even lose your job, especially if you don’t have a good relationship with the incoming minister. If you move with your minister, you start again, trying to understand a new role in a department you know nothing about, but that is better than finding yourself jobless. Being a political adviser is in many ways a tough life and seems designed to take talented people and expose them to just enough different tasks to find what they fail at.
Challenges In A World Where We Often Disagree
One problem with improving management in politics is that different groups might have different ideas of what is better. How much we should listen to experts is a hotly debated topic. Maybe the world would be better if political advisers learned to respect expert advice about how to do their jobs, but not all will even want to learn that lesson. As such, developing a standard set of skills political advisors should have is really hard and seems like it has never been tried.
The lack of support for political advisers makes a challenging job even harder. You take a bunch of people who may sometimes be chosen for loyalty to the minister rather than their specific skills, put them in a stressful environment with long hours and media scrutiny, and then don’t train them on what they should be doing. It isn’t surprising that things go wrong. Even if you avoid some of the worst problems you see in workplaces, e.g., harassment, burnout, and favoritism, you end up with countries being run in a pretty amateur way.
Research On The Problem
Lees-Marshment takes a positive approach to understanding the problem. She interviewed large number of political advisers to find out examples of what can be done better. The point wasn’t to uncover whether minister XYZ was evil. (I’m sure some are but most aren’t. Many will simply be overwhelmed themselves). The interviewees did give an idea of the problems faced.
Quotes from Advisers In Lees-Marshment (2025)
- “I had no meaningful line management at all”
- [It was like] “The Hunger Games”
- “You are left to your own devices and you’re running the country”
- “You’ve often got people who’ve never managed anybody as the bosses of teams in a really intense environment”
Improving Management In Politics
What to do? There needs to be efforts to professionalize the role of political advisers. Lees-Marshment recognizes it is always going to be an unusual role but that doesn’t mean we can’t do better.
The article recommends that an ‘Office of Political Staff Support’ be set up for all political advisers and staff to professionalize this vital area of government. …It would oversee and facilitate professional talent management, bespoke orientation and professional development, community-building events; communicate HR policies, handle employment issues, review workforce data and preserve and disseminate institutional knowledge.
Lees-Marshment (2025) Abstract
For more work by Jennifer Less-Marshment see Improving Political Management; Some Of It Is A Bit Dark Ages, Improving Stakeholder Involvement In Government Decision Making, The Pragmatic And Principled Reasons For Political Marketing Research
Read: Jennifer Lees-Marshment (2025) Professionalizing the management of political advisers, Public Money & Management, Open access in advance, Published online: 05 Aug 2025, https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2025.2540466
