Political Advice: Past, Present and Future

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.

Table of Contents:
1 Introduction Jacqueline Rose and Colin Kidd 2 What would Pericles Do?-And Why It Still Matters Esther Eidinow 3 Obliquus ductus: Indirect Political Advice in the Renaissance Joanne Paul 4 How Not to Do It: Poets and Counsel, Thomas Wyatt to Geoffrey Hill Colin Burrow 5 William Davison and the perils of advice in Elizabethan England Jacqueline Rose 6 Parliament counsels the Crown: advice, rhetoric and party politics since the seventeenth century Paul Seaward 7 Adam Smith and Political Advice: Three Smithian Moments Jesse Norman 8 The Central Policy Review Staff: a useful model? William Waldegrave 9 Astrology and Advice at the Reagan Court Colin Kidd 10 Expertise and advice in two referendum campaigns Jim Gallagher 11 Revisiting the Eagle and the Lion: Politics, policy and the JCPOA Ali Ansari 12 'You've got to ask the right expert': Political ideologies of advice-giving Marius Ostrowski 13 Effective Political Advice in an Age of Populism Martin Donnelly 14 The Future of Political Advice: The Problem of Cybersecurity: Lucas Kello 15 Afterword Robin Butler

About the Author :
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.

Review :
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.