Partisan political staff at the local level: A self‐assessment of the policymaking role of the chief of cabinet

Abstract This study explores the policymaking role of the chief of cabinet, as head of the partisan political staff and a central actor within politico‐administrative relations. We focus on the local government level, where the role of political staff is understudied. While the added value of partisan political staff can be diverse and comprise advisory and non‐advisory activities, we do assume an active policymaking role for the chiefs of cabinet within the local policy advisory system. The research question is: “How do chiefs of cabinet conceive their own policymaking role at the local government level?” Adopting an actor‐centered approach, this research studies 20 chiefs of cabinet in cities in the Belgian region Flanders, where the amount of political staff has risen sharply. Q methodology is used for self‐assessment of the policymaking role (Van Exel & De Graaf, 2005), with statements based on Maley's three arenas (Maley, 2015). The results show that multiple types of chief of cabinet exist, revealing variation within one single institutional system. The resulting taxonomy consists of three types of chiefs of cabinet, each with a different role and impact on both policymaking and the civil service: “The Whip,” “The Negotiator,” and “The Streamliner.”