State Secretary ( sv, statssekreterare) is the title of the senior political appointee, second in rank to the Cabinet Minister ( sv, Statsråd) in charge of the ministry. Unlike ministers, State Secretaries are not members of the

Government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government ...

. Each cabinet minister has a state secretary, who is the closest person working with the cabinet minister. Some cabinet ministers of higher rank, like the

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

and the

Minister for Finance A finance minister is an executive or cabinet position in charge of one or more of government finances, economic policy and financial regulation. A finance minister's portfolio has a large variety of names around the world, such as "treasury", ...

, have more than one state secretary. If a minister dies or resigns, or if a government resigns, the state secretary also turns in their resignation. For historical reasons, the State Secretary in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs has another title ( sv, Kabinettssekreterare, in English literally " Cabinet Secretary"). State secretaries tend to, more often than the Ministers, hail from a fixed

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

background or a professional background relevant to the area of responsibility of their ministry.

See also