THE NEW MANAGERIALISM AND THE POLICY INFLUENCE OF CONSULTANTS IN GOVERNMENT - AN HISTORICAL-INSTITUTIONALIST ANALYSIS OF BRITAIN, CANADA AND FRANCE

Following the rise of the New Public Management (NPM) in the 1980s, po licymakers increasingly mobilized management consultants from the priv ate sector in the course of reforming their bureaucracies. To describe this situation some coined the term ''consultocracy'', assuming that the emergence of the NPM created a growing demand for business managem ent expertise in government circles that allowed consultants to penetr ate the state and become powerful policy actors. Rather than taking th ese matters as given, I ask how has it been possible for consultants t o become (or not) influential players in the process of administrative reform. It is argued that Britain, and to a lesser extent Canada, hav e been more likely than France to give rise to a ''consultocracy'' whe n implementing NPM reforms in the 1980s because in these two countries , management consultancy emerged earlier and is move strongly develope d than in France because of its historical link with accountancy Where as French consultants only began to enter public administration in the 1980s, British and Canadian consultants have been involved in the las t 30 years in the construction of the state's management capacities. T hrough their participation in these institution-building processes, th ey established networks of expertise with the state and acquired the e xperience of work in government. Over the years, this created opportun ities for consultants to make their voices heard in the inner circles of decision-making and made possible the exercise of influence that th ey are now said to have on policy.