Political Advice

The continuing churn of political advisers in Donald Trump's White House serve as a reminder of the salience and relevance of political advice. 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 changing (and sometimes unchanging) nature of expertise; the ever-pressing issue of access and exclusion; and how that is controlled.This volume of essays feeds into a contemporary concern, set in a wider historical context. Moreover, the volume treats political advice in an interdisciplinary fashion with contributions from classics and literature as well as from history and politics. The unique practitioners' perspective to the problem of political advice is brought by the contributions of politicians, political advisers and senior civil servants.

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., 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.

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 Scotland’s 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.