Policy Consultancy in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

While the role of consultants in the policy process has long been a concern for scholars of public administration, public management and political science, empirical studies of policy-related consulting are scarce, with little quantitative data. The country-level case studies in this book shed light for the first time on a number of important but as yet under-researched questions. The first is the actual extent of the use of government consulting in a number of countries, andwhat have been cross-time developments: to what extent has the use of consultants grown over time, and what are the (political, fiscal-economic, society, policy-related) factors that explain greater or lesser growth in a particular country or sector? The second is the question of what role(s) consultants play in the public sector and how large is the share of these consultants in policy work (policy analysis, policy advice, implementation and evaluation). A third is how large is the portion of consultancy work that is management consultancy, or other types of consulting, such as ICT-architects, legal advisers and accountants? The fourth is howmuch of consultants’work is concerned with substantive policy advice, and how much is procedurally oriented, i.e. organizing policy support, collecting input from external stakeholders, communicating the policy, etc.? The core arguments of the book are: 1) policy consultancy has been a problematic blind spot for scholars, politicians and other commentators who are concerned with the substantive and procedural quality of the policies that shape our societies; 2) policy consultancy is a far more important and sizeable component of the work that happens within government than the literature currently acknowledges; 3) the use of policy consultants is unevenly distributed across types of policy