When Consultants Come to Town: How the European Commission Justifies the Involvement of Private Contractors in Online Public Consultations.

Against the background of increased reliance on private contractors in European regulatory governance, this article explores how the European Commission justifies the hiring of external consultants for policy formulation purposes, particularly for organizing and analyzing the results of consultations with stakeholders and the general public. We focus on Jean-Claude Juncker’s term of office (2014-2019), a period marked by the multiplication and systematization of public consultation opportunities across the policy cycle due to the introduction of the so-called Better Regulation Agenda. The article presents and tests a novel typology of legitimation claims regarding the involvement of external consultants in regulatory policymaking, focusing on both the official institutional discourse of the European Commission and its existing administrative practice. We find that consultants are legitimized using procedural arguments. They are expected to implement the Better Regulation methodology for public consultations in an accurate and cost-effective manner, but not to innovate, adapt, or optimize the process. In other words, the purpose of hiring consultants is not to bring in external expertise unavailable in-house but rather to replace European Commission civil servants with cheaper private sector workers. In the long run, this carries the risk of eroding institutional memory and public knowledge and capabilities.