A minister as an agent of policy change: the case of unemployment insurance in the seventies

Abstract. A relationship of mutual dependence characterizes the interaction of cabinet ministers and senior public servants in the public management process. Public servants tend to be prominent in the administrative aspects of public management while ministers tend to dominate the policy-making aspects. Ministers are greatly dependent on the technical expertise of public servants in order to succeed within the routine or administrative domain of public management. However, two essential functions, surveillance and legitimation, are the main responsibilities of ministers, not of public servants, during the innovative or policy-making phase of public management. Furthermore, an effective performance of these two functions may enable a minister to become a major agent of policy change or policy reform. This thesis is supported by an analysis of the development of unemployment insurance in the 1970s. Bryce Mackasey, the minister responsible for introducing a new scheme of unemployment insurance in 1971, carried out surveillance and legitimation functions so effectively that he became a major agent of policy reform. Once his successors, Robert Andras and Bud Cullen, began to routinize the program, their surveillance and legitimation skills became increasingly unnecessary and inconspicuous. At the same time, public servant activity in the public management process began to grow more noticeable. Sommaire. Une relation de dépendance mutuelle caractérise l'interaction des ministres du Cabinet et des fonctionnaires d'échelon supérieur dans le processus de gestion publique. Les fonctionnaires ont tendance â jouer un rôle important dans les aspects administratifs de gestion publique tandis que les ministres ont tendance à en dominer les aspects d'élaboration de politiques. Les ministres comptent beaucoup sur l'expertise technique des fonctionnaires lorsqu'ils ont affaire à des questions de routine ou d'ordre purement administratif. Cependant, la surveillance et la légitimation sont deux fonctions essentielles qui constituent les principales responsabilités des ministres et non des fonctionnaires pendant la phase d'innovation ou d'élaboration de politiques de gestion publique. De plus, un ministre qui exerce ces dew fonctions avec efficacité a de grandes chances de devenir. un important agent de changement ou de réforme politique.