Description
Book SynopsisPolitical advice has never seemed more prominent – or more problematic. This volume of essays speaks to a contemporary concern, set in a wider historical context. Political Advice: Past, Present and Future brings several very different voices to bear on the problem of advice and influence, the distinction in so far as it is valid between political and policy advice, the two-way parasitism of adviser and advised, the nature and idioms of political advice literature, the ever-pressing issue of access and exclusion, and the curious history of advisers’ success and failure. With contributions from classics and literature as well as from history and politics, this volume treats political advice in an interdisciplinary fashion. Moreover, a unique practitioners’ perspective on the problem of political advice is provided by the contributions of politicians, political advisers and former senior civil servants.
Trade ReviewExcellently quirky. * London Review of Books *
This richly compelling volume traces the mostly hidden history of political advice from Greek democracy to present-day spadocracy. I would advise any modern Machiavelli or rising Rasputin, as well as every politician and political historian, to heed its timely counsel. * David Armitage, Harvard University, co-author of The History Manifesto *
Appreciated and despised in equal measure, political advisers have been at the heart of government decision-making for many centuries. This valuable collection of essays digs deep into the history and more recent practice of political advice to expose why these advisers, while sometimes controversial, have been so valued by generation after generation of our political leaders. * Ed Balls, former Shadow Chancellor, Cabinet Adviser and Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury *
Table of ContentsForeword: Political advising - Lord Butler 1Political advice: Past, present – and future? - Colin Kidd and Jacqueline Rose 2What would Perikles do, and why it still matters – asking the ancient Greek gods for political advice - Esther Eidinow 3Obliquus ductus: Indirect political advice in the Renaissance - Joanne Paul 4How not to do it: Poets and counsel, Thomas Wyatt to Geoffrey Hill - Colin Burrow 5William Davison and the perils of advice in Elizabethan England - Jacqueline Rose 6The parliamentary way of counsel - Paul Seaward 7Smith as spad? Adam Smith and advice to politicians - Jesse Norman 8A mirror for princes? British orientalists and the Persian Question - Ali M. Ansari 9Reflections on the Central Policy Review Staff - William Waldegrave 10Astrology and advice at the Reagan court - Colin Kidd 11You’ve got to ask the right expert: Who gives political advice? - Marius S. Ostrowski 12Advice in a time of belief: Civil service impartiality in two referendums - Jim Gallagher 13Advising Trump - Rob Goodman 14Managing the growing tension between politics and governance: Hard choices ahead for Whitehall and Westminster - Martin Donnelly
