During the 7th Conference in Interpretive Policy Analysis at Tilburg (The Netherlands), Golo Bartsch presented recent developments of German political consulting, and adressed some of the legitimacy questions caused by them.

From 5th to 7th of July, political scientists from all over the world gathered at Tilburg, where the Tilburg Law School, Tilburg University hosted the 7^th International Conference in Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA). Guided by the conference topic "Understanding the Drama of Democracy", the participants presented their latest scientific work on different aspects of public policy making during several conference panels. Golo Bartsch, Associate at Ecologic Institute Berlin, presented a paper about the recent developments within the "scene" of so-called political consultants ("Politikberater") of Berlin. As this scene today is made up of a huge variety of heterogeneous actors, from scientific experts to commercially motivated lobbyists, attempts to distinguish knowledge transfer and interest representation become increasingly important as well as difficult. In his paper "Between helpful advice and questionable influence", Golo Bartsch suggests some first possible steps into that direction.