Political Advice: Past, Present and Future

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Description

Political 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.

Reviews

Excellently 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 *

Author Bio

Jacqueline Rose is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy (2011), which won the Whitfield Prize of the Royal Historical Society. Her recent research has been in the field of counsel and advice, and she was the editor of The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland 1286-1707, published by the British Academy in 2016. Colin Kidd is Wardlaw Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is the author of five books including Subverting Scotlands Past (1993), Union and Unionisms (2008), and The World of Mr Casaubon (2016). He is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and the Guardian.