Citizen trust in the efficacy of democratic governance appears to be declining globally. Even demonstrably successful public initiatives often face public underestimation or dismissal (Compton et al., 2021; Marvel, 2005). This research explores the hypothesis that this public perception gap stems, in part, from a mismatch between how society expects success stories to be structured and the often slow, complex realities of government achievement.

This study posits that traditional narrative structures, such as the hero's journey with its clear villains and triumphant resolutions, may not adequately capture the nuanced and often incremental nature of successful public administration. The meticulous, behind-the-scenes work of bureaucrats might struggle to resonate with the public imagination as readily as tales of heroic individuals overcoming insurmountable challenges.

To investigate this hypothesis, the study analyzes well-documented cases of successful public governance initiatives. We expect to find significant deviations from the archetypal narratives typically employed to capture the public's attention (e.g., Hollywood blockbuster movies).

The goal is to identify recurring patterns in these deviations, aiming to improve our understanding of how legitimacy and effectiveness are actually achieved in government. For instance, Wildavsky (1972) observed that government interventions often resolve one crisis only to create another, often stemming from the initial solution itself. Identifying similar deviations from conventional narrative structures could equip public officials with a clearer picture of how success unfolds in governance and how it can be better communicated to the public.

Increasing reliance on private sector consultants within the public sector was spurred by the advent of New Public Management (NPM). Under this paradigm, governments enlist public sector consultants to deliver public value through enhancing public sector performance, mainly by enhancing efficiency and effectiveness. This takes place across various stages of policymaking and service delivery, and in a wide range of domains, from healthcare to defense, and crisis management (Diefenbach, 2009; Martin, 2000). More recently, and with the emergence of new governance paradigms such as Public Value Governance, and the New Public Service, governments also seek to engage consultants to better legitimacy, and collaborative processes.

While public sector consultants are engaged to enhance public sector performance and deliver public value, in reality, the outcomes of their engagement are often paradoxical. In some cases, consultants can contribute to creating public value, for example by enhancing organizational performance and policymaking (Althaus, Carson, & Smith, 2021; Kirkpatrick, Sturdy, Alvarado, Blanco-Oliver, & Veronesi, 2019; Kirkpatrick, Sturdy, Reguera Alvarado, & Veronesi, 2023). Yet in other cases, they can contribute to adverse outcomes such as hollowing out organizational capacities, blame avoidance, diminishing or obscuring accountability for failures, and undermining transparency and democratic quality of policymaking (e.g., Howlett & Migone, 2014; Vogelpohl et al., 2022; B. L. Zaki, Suykens, & Catala, 2024). As such, public sector consultants do not only contribute to enhancing public value creation, but also to public value destruction (see Dunlop, James, & Radaelli, 2020; B. Zaki, 2023).

However, notwithstanding the continuing increase in reliance on public sector consultants, two issues stand out. First, the conditions under which public sector consulting contributes to public value creation and destruction are often vague, scarcely theorised and are rarely explored from a multidimensional view. Second, literature on public sector consulting remains largely fragmented and where there is a compelling need for a synthesis of the theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and empirical landscape. In this paper, we address these gaps by means of a systematic literature review of 92 scientific articles sourced from the Web of Science (WoS) database. This aims to: first, provide a state of the art of a fragmented yet burgeoning field by showcasing theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and empirical trends and gaps. Second, we develop a multidimensional framework that identifies the potential conditions (at the organizational, task, policy field, political levels) that shape how public sector consultants influence public sector performance outcomes, whether in the direction of public value creation, or destruction. The paper concludes with a future research agenda focused on the relationship between public sector consulting, and public value creation, as well as implications for theory, and practice.

Althaus, C., Carson, L., & Smith, K. (2021). Rethinking the commissioning of consultants for enhancing government policy capacity. Policy Sciences, 54(4), 867-889.

Diefenbach, T. (2009). New public management in public sector organizations: the dark sides of managerialistic ‘enlightenment’. Public Administration, 87(4), 892-909.

Dunlop, C. A., James, S., & Radaelli, C. M. (2020). Can’t get no learning: the Brexit fiasco through the lens of policy learning. Journal of European Public Policy, 27(5), 703-722.

Howlett, M., & Migone, A. (2014). Assessing contract policy work: Overseeing Canadian policy consultants. Public Money & Management, 34(3), 173-180.

Kirkpatrick, I., Sturdy, A. J., Alvarado, N. R., Blanco-Oliver, A., & Veronesi, G. (2019). The impact of management consultants on public service efficiency. Policy & Politics, 47(1), 77-95.

Kirkpatrick, I., Sturdy, A. J., Reguera Alvarado, N., & Veronesi, G. (2023). Beyond hollowing out: Public sector managers and the use of external management consultants. Public Administration Review, 83(3), 537-551.

Martin, J. F. (2000). Policy consulting and public policy. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 59(1), 24-35.

Vogelpohl, A., Hurl, C., Howard, M., Marciano, R., Purandare, U., & Sturdy, A. (2022). Pandemic consulting. How private consultants leverage public crisis management. Critical Policy Studies, 16(3), 371-381.

Zaki, B. (2023). Practicing policy learning during creeping crises: key principles and considerations from the COVID-19 crisis. Policy Design and Practice, 1-18.

Zaki, B. L., Suykens, B., & Catala, I. (2024). New development: Understanding the relationship between public sector consulting and public value destruction—An epistemic learning perspective. Public Money & Management, 1-5.

In crises and disasters, how citizens evaluate state action dominates the media and public discourse. However, whereas most studies focus on individual level attitudes when explaining citizen perceptions of crisis management, little is known about how administrative action can actually make a difference. In addressing this gap, the paper examines local level administrative crisis management in the Covid-19 crisis in Germany, asking about the differential impact of crisis communication and performance versus individual predispositions. Using a unique combination of data from a citizen survey (N=662) and a public administration survey in 19 corresponding districts, and applying multilevel analysis, our study provides indicative evidence that administrative action does influence citizen perceptions, albeit to a lesser extent than individual characteristics. Findings further suggest that crisis communication by local agencies, rather than administrative performance, shapes public perceptions of crisis management.

An important but understudied aspect of public sector performance is measurement of the administrative burden of social policies. This question is important because of multiple reasons: One, previous research has shown that not all dimensions of administrative burden are created equal. Different costs have different salience for different groups based on their access to social, economic, cultural, and administrative capital. Similarly, citizens can exchange different administrative costs to strategically navigating administrative burden. This cost buyout or interchangeability becomes important because, depending upon local implementation infrastructure, more than one access pathway can be used by the citizens, each with potentially different administrative burdens. Theoretically and empirically, it should be possible to compare different pathways and their associated burdens. Two, administrative burden reduction, (along with sludge and friction reduction) has become a burgeoning research agenda. Many governments have enacted multiple methods to measure administrative burdens and reduce them, like digitalizing certain services, autoenrollment of participants and providing need-based assistance to certain populations. Likewise, relative salience of different costs has created an opportunity for state and private providers to monetize administrative burdens. We argue that it should be possible to compare different access pathways not just for overall administrative burdens, but also in terms of whether they reduce costs that are more salient for the target groups.

To this end, this article reports the methodology used to compare administrative burden in two different administrative pathways in healthcare sector in Punjab, Pakistan. First, we outline how we operationalized costs by breaking down citizen-state interaction into process, frontline, material and citizen interactions. This allowed us to point out which aspect of service delivery was creating the most administrative costs. Second, we discuss using willingness to pay approach to compare similar public services in terms of their burden. We discuss why this approach did not work in our case because of cultural construction of time and public services. Finally, we discuss how the idea of time costs can be used to understand the impact of burdens on vulnerable populations.

This paper explores the intricate dynamics of increased workload and e-governance in the context of amalgamation reforms in Armenia. Amid a backdrop of rapid decentralisation and local government consolidation, the study delves into the implications of these reforms on the daily lives of public servants on different levels of government and on ordinary citizens. It meticulously examines how the distribution of work and responsibilities shifted as local communities amalgamated, providing insights into the efficiencies and challenges that emerged. Additionally, the paper scrutinises the role of digital governance tools in mitigating the workload pressures experienced by local administrators.

By investigating the synergy between amalgamation-induced increased workloads and the introduction of e-governance tools, the paper aims to shed light on the underlying tensions and potential solutions that emerge in local governance systems undergoing significant transformation. It is within this dynamic space that we uncover the intricate interplay between administrative efficiency and public service delivery, shedding light on the broader implications for democracy, accountability, and citizen engagement.

Ultimately, this study contributes to the ongoing discourse surrounding decentralisation, local democracy, and e-governance, offering valuable insights into the evolving landscape of local governance in the era of consolidation and digitalisation.