Navigating the 'Purple Zone' - the Role of Private Secretaries in Ministers' Offices in New Zealand

Non-partisan support for ministers in executive government in New Zealand is an important area of study which to date has focussed primarily on senior public servants or heads of departments. One non-partisan role that has served ministers since the introduction of the Westminster model to this country has been neglected in scholarship: that of the private secretary in ministerial offices.

The objectives of this thesis are to gain an understanding of the key influences on the role of the private secretary in the New Zealand. The research question asks: How is the role and the function of private secretaries affected by explicit and implicit arrangements with ministers and with the public service?

The interpretivist framework of beliefs, traditions and dilemmas is applied within this thesis, and expressed within three separate articles integrated into a single portfolio. The themes of the articles - core executive studies, public service bargains (PSBs), and politicisation theories – are lenses through which the experiences of private secretaries are examined. While each article focusses on a single theme, the narratives of the participants expose their beliefs, the traditions within which their beliefs sit, and the dilemmas experienced.

There are several contributions of this portfolio to scholarship. The beliefs and meaning that actors make from their experiences, the traditions that shape their beliefs, and the dilemmas confronted and resolved are central to understanding how one actor, the private secretary contributes to executive governance.

The portfolio applies three discrete theories as heuristics in a novel way, and through the narratives of participants, identifies key theoretical elements that are linked through roles and relationships, coordination and contestability, and resource dependency and structure.

This thesis identifies a paradox between networks and structures that exists in core executive studies that is only revealed through the experiences of these non-partisan actors, private secretaries.

The overarching interpretivist framework, beliefs, traditions and dilemmas, offers a coherent structure to the portfolio that allows readers to choose to attend to differently focussed articles or to engage with the portfolio as a whole, with threads of longitudinal change and stasis woven from the narratives of participants.

The portfolio reveals a consistent thread of beliefs about the role of private secretaries in ministers’ offices; traditions of neutrality and service; and dilemmas that require a response from the actors – to accept and adjust to changed circumstances, or to resile from change and remain with the expected tradition. For these actors, the overarching dilemma between neutrality and responsiveness is confronted on a daily basis as they assess their own beliefs around the nature of neutrality in a political context.