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This article focuses on the composition of the Ontario Premier�s office and uses an institutionalist approach to put the influence of advisors in context. It looks at expenditures attributed in the Public Accounts to the Premier�s Office and staffing. It assumes that the number of advisors and their placement in the decision-making hierarchy should have a material impact on the quantity and quality of the advice being received by the Premier. Among other things the articles shows that the classic policy/administration divide was not clearly defined in Ontario. Instead it exhibits a back-and-forth habit of experimentation that depended on the personality of the prime minister, the capacities of political and bureaucratic advisors, and the stages of the governmental cycle. There have been discernible cycles in the hiring of political staff and in the growth of expenditures that would indicate the Premier�s Office was more concerned with campaign preparations and externalities than it was in rivaling bureaucratic influence. Compared to Ottawa, where the structures of the Prime Minister�s Office and the Privy Council Office have been far more distinct in this similar time frame, the Ontario experience reveals itself as one of constant experimentation.
