Experts for Hire: Consultancies and the Marketisation of Government Knowledge Production

The private consulting industry has played a major role in helping decision-makers manage, reorganise and digitalise the public sector. While research has documented their roles and tasks more broadly, we know less about how consultancies are being repositioned as experts and the nature of the evidence, research and knowledge they produce. This paper argues that the current trend of knowledge-based policymaking has created a new and emerging market for private consultancies, with firms (potentially) moving into roles previously occupied by academics, experts and partly organised interests. However, this 'expertisation' of the consulting industry remains empirically and theoretically underexplored. In the article, I outline the need for a research agenda that invites an expertise perspective on policy consultancy, that examines the knowledge claims, methods and content of consultancy advice, that uses rigorous empirical methods and big data text sources, and compares across countries and knowledge regimes, including countries hitherto shielded from the consultancy trend. Finally, I discuss the urgency of further research on the phenomenon, as the shift could fundamentally change how governments generate knowledge, accelerating the marketisation of government and driving convergence in national knowledge regimes.