Non-Partisan Advisors in the Minister’s Office—Ghosts in the Core Executive Machine?

The ‘core executive’ is conceived of as the collection of organisations and procedures that coordinate executive government. Two approaches to core executive studies are: the resource dependency approach, which focusses on how roles interact and resources are utilised; and the functional approach, which focusses on how roles change over time. Both approaches are applied to non-partisan advisors (private secretaries) in ministerial office settings, actors which to date core executive studies have ignored. It reveals the resources that non-partisan advisors apply to contribute to policy coordination and maintain political neutrality; and that their role has changed since the increased presence of partisan advisors in ministers’ offices in the past 20 years. Six distinct roles describe how non-partisan advisors respond to and meet the needs of both minister and public service in the core executive. When compared with political advisory roles, five of the roles appear strongly aligned in function.

Wh-Scope Marking in Japanese: Evidence for the Indirect-Dependency Approach

The goal of this squib is to tease apart two competing approaches to wh-scope marking, the direct-dependency approach and the indirect-dependency approach, by introducing Japanese wh-scope marking. The two approaches make different predictions regarding the type of the embedded clause in wh-scope-marking constructions. The embedded clause is regarded as declarative under the direct-dependency approach but as interrogative under the indirect-dependency approach. What is especially interesting in this respect is that Japanese wh-scope marking requires the embedded clause to be marked by the interrogative complementizer ka. Japanese wh-scope marking thus provides clear morphological evidence for the indirect-dependency approach.