The 'powerful leaders in the second line' are a strongly under-researched part of the German political-administrative elite. Being the administrative leaders of ministries at federal and Länder levels, the 'secretaries of state' (and their functional equivalents) play a crucial role in policy-making as well as in politics. Also, their positions are typically located at the interface of the political and administrative parts of the executive. The degree to which they are politically loyal, functionally or party politicized or, on the other hand, neutral experts of their policy field is largely unknown, but of crucial importance for political results.

In this long term project, we collect biographical data on all secretaries of state at federal level in Germany since 1949. Currently, we successively complement the data set with biographies from the Länder level. The data allow for structural analyses of the socio-demographic composition of the administrative elite, sequence analyses of career paths as well as various comparisons – between departments, governmental periods or levels of government.