ABSTRACT
Focusing on whether governments primarily rely on the advice of career public servants or partisan advisors, this chapter introduces the concept of executive styles and explains why different executive styles – particularly a civil service executive style or a politicized executive style – likely affect policy outputs. In line with the edited volume, this chapter also considers the relevance of executive styles alongside a growing prominence of ideas from abroad, the place of global policies, and new political coalitions beyond traditional left/right cleavages. With illustrations from Canada’s provincial governments, this chapter demonstrates that jurisdictions with similar formal institutions can yield different executive policy styles that can substantially affect the types of policy outputs adopted by governments.
