LIST OF PANELS

Across the globe, the use of private consultants in the public sector has grown exponentially over the last three decades, and the public sector is one of the most important markets for the large consultancy firms in terms of profit. This has potentially far-reaching implications for established democratic orders in terms of transparency, trust and legitimacy. Yet, the scholarly work that explicitly focus on the political effects of enlisting private consultants within the public sector remain remarkably scarce.

It is only during the last few years that scholarly attention has been turned towards private policy consultants. In this research the main argument has been that governance today calls for new understandings of how policy advice is ‘arranged’ in a policy advisory system with less clear boundaries between such dichotomies as public and private. The term policy consultants denote a broader category of actors whose expertise directly rivals that of traditional bureaucrats in many ways. As such, they indicate a new modality of consultancy which the growing research indicates as particularly important for further studies, however, so far, the existing literature has remained quite descriptive and focused on isolated cases. The ambition of this panel is to gather together scholars with an interest in policy consultants and to advance the theoretical understanding and the empirical work on the role of policy consultants in public policy.

The panel will revolve around the broad research question: What is the role and influence of policy consultants in contemporary democracies? The panel welcomes both theoretical and empirical contributions to broaden our understanding of this question.

References
Beveridge, Ross. 2012. “Consultants, depoliticization, and arena shifting in the policy process: privatizing water in Berlin.” Policy Sciences 45(1): 47-68.

Craft, Jonathan. 2013. “Appointed Political Staffs and the Diversification of Policy Advisory Sources: Theory and Evidence from Canada.” Policy and Society 32(3): 211–23.

Craft, Jonathan, and Michael Howlett. 2012. “Policy Formulation, Governance Shifts and Policy Influence: Location and Content in Policy Advisory Systems.” Journal of Public Policy 32(2): 79–98.

Hodge, Graeme and Diana Bowman. 2006. “The ‘consultocracy’: The business of reforming government.” In Graeme Hodge (Ed.), Privatization and Market Development. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

Howlett, M., and A. Migone. 2013. “Policy Advice through the Market: The Role of External Consultants in Contemporary Policy Advisory Systems.” Policy and Society 32(3): 241–54.

Howlett, Michael, and Andrea Migone. 2013a. “Searching for Substance: Externalization, Politicization and the Work of Canadian Policy Consultants 2006-2013.” Central European Journal of Public Policy 7(1): 112–33.

———. 2013b. “The Permanence of Temporary Services: The Reliance of Canadian Federal Departments on Policy and Management Consultants.” Canadian Public Administration 56(3): 369–90.

———. 2014. “Assessing Contract Policy Work: Overseeing Canadian Policy Consultants.” Public Money & Management 34(3): 173–80.

Howlett, Michael, Andrea Migone, and Seck L. Tan. 2014. “Duplicative or Complementary? The Relationship between Policy Consulting and Internal Policy Analysis in Canadian Government.” Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique 47(1): 113–134.

Howlett, Michael, and Adam M. Wellstead. 2011. “Policy Analysts in the Bureaucracy Revisited: The Nature of Professional Policy Work in Contemporary Government.” Politics & Policy 39(4): 613–33.

Jupe, Robert and Warwick Funnell. 2015. “Neoliberalism, consultants and the privatization of public policy formulation: The case of Britain’s rail industry,” Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 29: 65-85.

Kirkpatrick, Ian et al. 2018. “The Impact of Management Consultants on Public Service Efficiency.” Policy & Politics.

Leys, Colin. 1999. “Intellectual Mercenaries and the Public Interest: Management Consultants and the NHS.” Policy & Politics, 27(4): 447–65.

Martin, J. 1998. Reorienting a Nation: Consultants and Australian Public Policy. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Saint-Martin, Denis. 2013. “Making Government More ‘Business-Like’: Management Consultants as Agents of Isomorphism in Modern Political Economies.” In John Mikler (Ed.), The Handbook of Global Companies. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

Saint-Martin, Denis. 2000. Building the New Managerialist State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Veselý, Arnošt. 2013. “Externalization of Policy Advice: Theory, Methodology and Evidence.” Policy and Society 32(3): 199–209.

Over the past three decades, governments around the world have increasingly turned to the management consulting industry for advice on policy-making and administrative reform. Offering input on a range of issues—such as sustainable development, smart cities, and e-government, but also care, education and health —they have come to be powerful intermediaries in packaging and circulating policy ideas across jurisdictions. And yet, while consultants play an influential role in contemporary policy-making practices, their work remains largely unexplored by critical scholars. This session looks at the role of consultants and consulting firms in the production of public policy. We invite papers that interrogate the role of consultants in the generation of policy across different regions and institutional settings, their position in elite networks and their influence in the governance process.

 Below we outline some broad questions that contributors might consider engaging with, although others are welcome:
· Actors: How do consultants frame themselves as credible actors? Whom do they engage with and how are they positioned in elite networks?

· Global geographies: How has the global market for consulting services changed over the past thirty years? In what regions has consulting been taken up? Why?

· Policy arenas: What kind of policies do consultants focus on? How do they influence the circulation of knowledge across jurisdictions and how do they help to put this knowledge into practice?  

· Intermediation: How do consultants circulate between government agencies, private firms, and the third sector? What kinds of power relations are established? How are community activists able to effectively engage with the consultation process and ‘talk back’ to the advice that consultants provide?