Overview
- Reveals how the growing influence of professional service firms has: reduced democratic governance and accountability, transformed public programs into privately managed assets, led to less equitable forms of service delivery, and facilitated new forms of tax avoidance
- Brings together the work of leading researchers from the fields of sociology, political science, geography, anthropology, urban studies, and critical management
- Documents the opposition and resistance to professional service firms and the construction of alternatives
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About this book
This volume explores the influence of professional service firms on public policy-making from a global perspective. Drawing on cases studies from around the world, researchers from different disciplines—including sociology, political science, geography, anthropology, history, and management studies—examine how professional service firms have generated power in the policy-making process. The chapters further investigate the structure and organization of these firms and their relationship with public agencies. They discuss the impact of strategies, techniques and models promoted by these firms on political decision-making. And they analyze how these firms have contributed to the formation of global policy-pipelines, facilitating the quick diffusion of policy ideas across time and space. Exposing how professional advisors can undermine democratic decision-making, the chapters in this book explore the potential for resistance and regulation of public-private relationships.
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Keywords
- Professional Service Firms (PSFs)
- Globalization
- Policy mobilities
- Privatization
- Consulting
- Neoliberalism
- public policy actors
- policymaking
- climate consulting
- professional services
- Smart Cities Mission
- international consultancy
- placemaking
- Municipal Reference Model
- public-private partnerships
- Big Four firms
- PricewaterhouseCoopers
- management consultancy
- Development Finance
Table of contents (16 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Strategies and Practices of Professional Service Firms
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Front Matter
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Advising Cities
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Finance and Financialization
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Front Matter
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Privatization and Public Private Partnerships
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Professional Service Firms and Administration: Entrenching Private Expertise
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Front Matter
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Reviews
“This is a wide-ranging and refreshingly interdisciplinary collection on a topic that tends to fall through the cracks in social science scholarship: transnational private expertise in the regulation of national public life. The book synthesizes a broad set of examples to illuminate the growing influence of professional service firms on public policy processes. It is of great value to scholars interested in the production of governance expertise internationally.”
—Merje Kuus, Professor of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada
“Professional service firms’ growing influence over public policymaking has become a defining feature of our times, producing new forms of governance and a global parastate ‘consultocracy’, yet this phenomenon remains poorly studied. This fascinating book opens up a valuable research agenda for understanding these firms, their role in policy processes and democratic decision-making. It deserves to be read by anyone worried about the commodification of expert knowledge, and even more by those who are not.”
—Cris Shore, Professor of Anthropology, Goldsmiths University of London, UK
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Chris Hurl is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. His research investigates urban governance, state formation, and the politics of the public sector in Canada.
Anne Vogelpohl is a Geographer and holds a Professorship for Social Sciences at HAW Hamburg, Germany. She investigates contradictions between expertise and participation and between global politics and urban everyday life.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Professional Service Firms and Politics in a Global Era
Book Subtitle: Public Policy, Private Expertise
Editors: Chris Hurl, Anne Vogelpohl
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72128-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-72127-5Published: 01 September 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-72130-5Published: 02 September 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-72128-2Published: 31 August 2021
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 349
Number of Illustrations: 4 b/w illustrations, 2 illustrations in colour
Topics: Public Policy, Public Finance, Globalization