Prosopography and sequence analysis. A case study on Flemish ministerial advisers

In the so-called Napoleonic systems, ministerial advisers are an influential part of the executive triangle. Since the reform of the Belgian state in 1980, the Flemish government has had its own executive triangle. It has relatively large and influential ministerial cabinets, modelled on those of the federal government. Despite their influence on day-to-day policy making, these advisers often work in the shadow of their minister and only feature in the media in the context of a scandal or a promotion to a high position in the administration. This warrants the question: who are these advisers, where do they come from and where do they go after their passage in the cabinet? In the Napoleonic systems, and particularly in France, these questions are answered according to a research tradition known as prosopography. Originally a historiographical method, prosopography is nowadays used in (French-language) research on political and business elites. At the same time, English-language authors have also shown considerable interest in the career paths of political elites, such as those of ministerial advisers. There is no single tradition such as that of prosopography, but rather a variety of approaches, depending on the research context. The purpose of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, we try to arrive at a synthesis of prosopography and sequence analysis. On the other hand, as a by-product of the former, we fill an empirical gap by compiling a prosopographical dataset on Flemish ministerial advisers between 1999 and 2020. This working paper only addresses the first part, to gather feedback at the ECPR workshop in Toulouse. Later on, the case study will be added to this paper.