LIST OF PANELS

Building from the 2020 IPPA panel discussion, “Consultants in the Policy Process,” this panel explores the role and impact of consultants in the policy-making process. Over the past three decades, policy consultants have been taken up by governments around the world in addressing a wide array of policy problems in different areas, including big issues - such as health governance, climate change adaptation, sustainable development, and e-government - as well as more mundane problems such as snow removal, hospital construction, and everyday accounting.

Through this time the nature of the policy ideas with which they are associated seems to have evolved, as they have moved from the role of “rational planners” in the 60’s to “cost-cutters” in the 80’s, to legitimate actors in debates on policy problems and solutions today. Moreover, their position in the policy making process has been transformed, as they have become increasingly embedded in policy networks and processes as “co-pilots in the steering of government organizations” (Saint-Martin, 2013; 2017). Most recently, their extensive involvement in Covid-19 pandemic response in various jurisdictions suggested that major crises may serve to further entrench their role in governance and the provision of policy advice (Vogelpohl et al, 2022).

As consultants have become powerful intermediaries in packaging and circulating policy ideas and practices across jurisdictions, a variety of disciplinary approaches have emerged that set out to understand their power and influence. Research on consultants has considered their role in the diffusion of specific policy instruments and governance arrangements, such as privatization and outsourcing; how their inclusion in policy processes have contributed to a shift to new policy logics; and how their involvement in the policy process serve to depoliticize policy decisions (Beveridge, 2012; Jupe and Funnel, 2015; Keele, 2019; O’Mahoney and Sturdy, 2016). 

This panel investigates the changing position of policy consultants in the policy-making process. We are interested in the variable ways in which consultants have been taken up by public officials, how they adapt and translate policy ideas to different policy milieux, how they are differently entrenched in the policy-making process, and what kind of impact they have on 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. We are further interested in how consultants may have varying roles in different political, economic, and institutional environments, and thus invite contributions considering their role in various polities, including the global south. Below we outline some broad questions that contributors might consider engaging with, although others are welcome:

Ideas and knowledge:

·         Which policy ideas and types of knowledge are consultants particularly associated with? What is their role in diffusing these ideas?

·         How do consultants contribute to the introduction of new rationalities and technologies to the policy-making process?

·         How do they influence the circulation of knowledge across jurisdictions and how do they help to put this knowledge into practice?

·         Are consulting firms developing policy capacities? Are those unique or preferred to the capacities of other policy organizations?

Power and dependencies:

·         What kind of power relations pervade the interaction of governments and consultants? How are they positioned in elite and international policy networks?

·         How do consultants frame themselves as credible actors? Whom do they engage?

·         How are community activists able to effectively engage with the consultation process and ‘talk back’ to the advice that consultants provide?

Policy context and consultants’ roles:

·         How do political and institutional factors, particular to different polities, policy sectors or policy subsystems, condition their role and influence?

·         How do social, economic, and political crises affect the role of consultants?

·         What can be learned from the extensive involvement of consultants in governments’ responses to the pandemic?

Methods

·         Methods and approaches to studying consultants: benefits, limitations, and ethics.