1 Introduction: The rise of professional service firms as public policy actors.- 2 America First: How consultants got into the public sector.- 3 Taming uncertainty: Climate policymaking and the spatial politics of privatized advice.- 4 Who drives India's smart cities? Understanding the role of consulting firms in the Smart Cities Mission.- 5 Boutique consultancy and personal trust: Advising on cities in Moscow.- 6 Everywhere from Copenhagen: Method, storytelling, and comparison in the globalization of public space design.- 7 International consultancy firms and African states: New Debt Bonds.- 8 'The DNA of Government': Professional Service Firms, calculative technologies and the politics of municipal benchmarking.- 9 Connecting local government with global finance: Professional service firms as agents of financialization.- 10 'Infrastructure' and the Big 4: Public-private partnerships, corridors, and the expansion of capital.- 11 The corporate takeover of public policy: The case of public private partnerships in Britain.- 12 Camouflaged privatization: The influence of the Fratzscher Commission and PricewaterhouseCoopers on Berlin's schools.- 13 Hegemonic privatization and its discontents: Reflections on the statecraft of contract-based local governance in England.- 14 Expert advice? Assessing the role of the state in promoting privatized planning.- 15 Conflicting interests: Professional planning practice in publicly-traded firms.- 16 The governance of management consultancy use: Practices, problems and possibilities.