Abstract
Why are politicians so unpopular? One common explanation blames a professionalized political class that is increasingly detached from ‘ordinary citizens’. But, there is very little empirical investigation of what it is about the professionalization of politics that engenders distrust. This article uses 12 focus groups and 15 interviews with civil servants from the Australian Public Service—‘insiders’ with first-hand knowledge and experience of the political system—to reflect on political professionalization and its impacts. As a group, civil servants’ views on this question remain largely unexplored yet their proximity to the political process gives them a distinct vantage point from which to reflect on current explanations for rising anti-political sentiment. We find both positive and negative attitudes towards professionalization that destabilize prevailing explanations: on the demand side, civil servants share first-hand experience and knowledge of how the political process works but remain cynical about politicians, whilst on the supply side, they value governing competence more than demographic representation yet still want more ‘amateur’ politicians. Our reflections on these findings highlight contradictory expectations: we want politicians who act like professionals, but who are paid like amateurs.
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Notes
The APS is the civil service of the Commonwealth of Australia, meaning that all of the participants in this study worked at the federal level of government.
Whilst this statement captures the general trend, it is also important to note several exceptions. For example, Bean (2015) has also argued that, whilst confidence in Australia’s political institutions has never been high, neither has it undergone an unremitting decline.
The Australian Election Study is a nationally representative survey of voters that has been running since 1987.
Leigh (2002, 47) has described Roy Morgan Poll data as ‘the most reliable data on attitudes towards Australian politicians’.
In the first tranche, we invited 25 senior civil servants to participate in the study. Ten replied to the invitation. We then worked up to 15 interviews using the snowballing technique.
The term ‘many’ is used to refer to more than three interviewees or repeated verbal references to the same issue within a focus group discussion. In both cases, this is based on analysis of the written transcript itself, rather than physical or emotional reactions within the focus groups or interviews (which do not form part of the data analysed in this study).
The base salary for parliamentarians is $199,040 per annum (from 1 January 2016). Ministers of state and parliamentary office holders receive an additional salary on top of this base salary. Parliamentarians are also able to access various entitlements related to ‘parliamentary or electorate business’ (Parliament of Australia 2016).
In this extract, the discussion about ‘helicopter rides’ refers to the resignation of Bronwyn Bishop, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. In August 2015, Bishop came under media pressure over her use of travel entitlements after it was revealed that she had spent more than $5000 chartering a helicopter from Melbourne to Geelong to attend a Liberal Party fundraiser (ABC 2015).
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge financial support from the IGPA Research Incentives Fund and the Australian Research Council (DP120104155). We would like to thank Thaneshwar Bhusal, Marion Carter, Lain Dare and Lyndall Hasselman for their help in facilitating the focus groups, and Jacob Deem, Magali McDuffie and Caroline Sinclair for additional research assistance. We would also like to express our particular thanks to the government agencies who gave us their permission to run the focus groups and the public servants who gave their time to participate in this study. John Boswell provided typically incisive comments on draft text. Finally, we would like to thank the journal’s reviewers for their suggestions on how to improve the article as well as those who provided feedback on an earlier version of this paper at the IGPA Research Symposium on ‘Populism: what’s next for democracy?’ (University of Canberra).
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Fawcett, P., Corbett, J. Politicians, professionalization and anti-politics: why we want leaders who act like professionals but are paid like amateurs. Policy Sci 51, 411–432 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-018-9323-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-018-9323-7