Caspar van den Berg is Professor of Governance at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands. His work has appeared in journals including Governance, Public Administration and JPART. He received the prestigious Van Poelje Prize for best dissertation in the administrative and policy sciences in The Netherlands and Flanders. He was a visiting fellow at Princeton University (2013-2014) and received a prominent four-year Veni scholarship from the Dutch Science Organization (2015).

List of figures; List of tables; Author biographies; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; 1. Policy consultancy in comparative perspective; 2. Consultancy in the UK Government: modernising privatism; 3. Policy consulting in the USA: significant but in decline? 4. Entrenched and escalating: policy-relevant consulting and contracting in Australia, 1987-2017; 5. From corporatist to contractor state? Policy consulting in The Netherlands; 6. Policy consultants for substance and process: a review of the supply and demand for Canadian policy consulting; 7. Swedish government agencies' hiring of policy consultants: a phenomenon of increased magnitude and importance? 8. Conclusion: policy consulting in comparative perspective; Appendix A; Appendix B; Appendix C; Appendix D; Appendix E; Appendix F; References; Index.