‘Experts for Hire’: Conseptualizing the Rise of Consultants as Government Advisors

Consultants are today widely used as advisors to governments across the globe. No longer limited to IT services or management consulting, they increasingly act as policy advisors, working side by side with bureaucrats and traditional advisory bodies. As such, “experts for hire” have become an integral part of the machinery of government in many countries. Despite this development, their role as experts and the way their advice is used by governments remain poorly understood. While the literature on consultants is growing, there is still a lack of conceptual and theoretical frameworks to grasp the nature of consultants’ expertise and the functions they fulfil within public governance. This paper seeks to address this gap by developing a typology of consultants’ expertise, roles, and modes of use in government policymaking. The paper is conceptual in nature but may include illustrative empirical examples drawn from background interviews with bureaucrats and consultants.