Role Conceptualisations and the Purple Zone: Parliamentary Staff Through the Eyes of Former MPs

We analyse how former MPs describe and assess the various staff groups when talking about the daily work of the Finnish parliament. Our theoretical framework draws on the politics/administration divide and the concept of a “purple zone” blending the “blue” of politics and the “red” of administration (Bellò & Spano, 2015), as well as on role conceptualisations produced by elected politicians as a source of administrative legitimacy (Stout, 2013). The analysis is based on textual material comprising 49 semi-structured interviews from the Oral History Archive of the Finnish parliament. The general picture of the MP–staff relations in the material is one of respect and gratitude, but also differentiation, emanating from both the parliamentary hierarchy and the politics/administration divide. The institutional staff, particularly the porters, receive exceptionally positive appraisals. The committee staff, formally neutral but directly involved in the legislative preparation, are admired for their status and expertise, but sometimes criticised for entering too deeply into the “blue” area. Parliamentary assistants are more likely to receive mixed accounts related to their proximity to the MPs’ political work and their “low” position in the parliamentary hierarchy when compared to the committee staff. Parliamentary party group staff and parliamentary assistants also come up in system-oriented accounts regarding the reorganisation of the parliamentary work. Although many in the parliamentary staff can be situated in the purple zone, the former MPs conceptualise their roles rather traditionally. The study broadens the concept of the purple zone beyond previous research dominated by policy implementation.