Responsive regulation in public‐private partnerships: Between deterrence and persuasion

Design‐Build‐Finance‐Maintain‐Operate (DBFMO) contracts are a particular type of public‐private partnership whereby governments transfer the responsibility for the design, construction, financing, maintenance, and operation of a public infrastructure or utility service building to a multi‐headed private consortium through a long‐term performance contract. These arrangements present a typical principal‐agent problem because they incorporate a “carrot and stick” approach in which the agent (consortium) has to fulfill the expectations of the principal (procurer). This article deals with a neglected aspect in the literature related to the actual use of “the sticks or sanctions” in DBFMOs and assesses to what extent and under which conditions contract managers adopt a deterrence‐based enforcement approach or switch to a persuasion‐based approach, specifically when the contract clauses require the use of (automatic) deterrence. An empirical analysis of four DBFMOs in the Netherlands shows that the continuation of service delivery, the need to build trust, and the lack of agreement on output specifications play a role in the willingness of the procurer to apply a more responsive behavior that uses persuasion, even when deterrence should be automatically applied. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd     

Public–private partnerships and developing‐country agriculture: Evidence from the international agricultural research system

This study examines the role of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in promoting pro‐poor productivity‐enhancing technological innovation in the international agricultural research system. The study examines the extent to which PPPs are being used to overcome market and institutional failures that otherwise inhibit the development and dissemination of technologies targeted specifically to small‐scale, resource‐poor farmers in developing countries. Drawing on a survey of 75 PPP projects in the international system, findings suggest that while PPPs are changing the way the system manages its research agenda, few partnerships lead to joint innovation processes with the private sector. This indicates the need for closer examination of organizational practices, cultures, and incentives in the international agricultural research system. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The challenges of fractionalized property rights in public‐private hybrid organizations: The good,the bad,and the ugly

Policy designers seeking to harness profit‐driven efficiency for public purposes are increasingly creating organizations with fractionalized property rights that distribute “ownership” among public and private actors. The resulting hybrids are quite diverse, including mixed enterprises, public‐private partnerships, social entrepreneurship organizations, government‐sponsored enterprises, and various other hybrid forms. Marrying public purposes to private sector efficiency and strategic flexibility provides a tempting rationale for mixing public and private owners in hybrid organizations. Because public‐private hybrids involve fractionalized property rights, however, they exhibit tension among owners over both strategy and, more importantly, goals. To understand public‐private hybrids, we assess them in terms of six dimensions of property rights: fragmentation of ownership, clarity of allocation, cost of alienation, security from trespass, credibility of persistence, and autonomy (of both owners and managers). The unclear allocation of fractionalized ownership rights facilitates the appropriation of financial residuals and asset ownership opportunistically. Other weaknesses in the property rights configurations of public‐private hybrids create managerial dissonance or opportunistic behavior that typically leads to a narrowing of goals, but sometimes also to organizational failure.     

Governing public–private partnerships: A systematic review of case study literature

Governance plays a critical role in determining the success and failure of public–private partnerships (PPPs). We conducted a systematic review of case study literature on PPP governance and developed a governance framework consisting of 21 issues in four groups: institutional, organizational, contractual, and managerial. Then, we investigate the dynamics of governance issues, including the relative importance, interrelationships, and connections with PPP success and failure. Results suggest that PPPs should emphasize cooperation, trust, communication, capability, risk allocation and sharing, competition, and transparency in their governance. We also found that the governance practice of emphasizing dominant and direct factors and ignoring recessive and indirect ones has hindered PPPs’ success.     

International advocacy for contract-based public private partnerships through case studies: a re-interpretation of Southern Cross Station,Melbourne

In response to urban infrastructure deficits, international organisations, such as the United Nations, encourage governments to harness private finance. Contract-based Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) represent one policy option enabling infrastructure to be privately financed and constructed, and for service provision to occur. With PPPs also a contested policy option, private sector policy intermediaries advocate for their adoption, including through the selective promotion of case studies. In recognition that favourable case study narratives may leach out local context, a multi-dimensional analytical framework is introduced distinguishing between de-institutionalised, aspatial, non-historical, uncritical and non-futuristic perspectives. Recently the private sector-led World Economic Forum published ‘Harnessing Public-Private Cooperation to Deliver the New Urban Agenda’, which reported upon the PPP-led development of Spencer Street (or Southern Cross) Station in Melbourne, Australia. In deploying the framework, this paper concludes that case study narratives can be reductionist and locally detached in various ways. The role of policy intermediaries in the transfer of policy information therefore requires carefully interpretation, not least because of the malleable use of case studies to reveal desired conclusions.     

Effectiveness of private finance initiatives (PFI): study of private financing for the provision of capital assets for schools

The study reported in this paper explores how effective Public Private Partnerships (PPP) have been as critical providers of capital assets within the state education sector in the UK. Specifically, the research investigates the impact on educational provision of the UK government's contentious £43 billion Private Finance Initiative (PFI). The inquiry focuses on 27 English Local Education Authorities (LEAs) currently or recently involved in PFI. The investigation examines the effect of PFI's on LEA decision‐making processes and discusses these authorities assessment of the UK government's current PFI strategy. An evaluation of PFI as a source of sustainable finance is reported as well as recommendations made for LEAs currently considering adoption of PFI. Through such analysis, this study seeks to de‐layer and ascertain the influence of complex external environmental influences and stakeholders that need to be taken into account in order to make PPPs work. The paper concludes by presenting the critical considerations for enhancing the working relationship between private and public sector partners. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public‐private partnerships in international trade: a lobbying effort from passive to aggressive in the USA?

Public‐private initiatives have been the domain of many governments as they try to shape international trade for their countries. The research presented in this paper indicates that US international businesses are not satisfied with the passive role that has been assumed by the US government and current public‐private partnerships. The evidence suggests that US companies desire a more aggressive role for the federal government in the not too distant future. Public‐private partnerships will be less informational and play an active part in stimulating international trade throughout the world. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

Ordering Disorder – On the Perplexities of the Partnership Literature

The literature on public‐private partnerships (PPP) has proliferated in recent years. However, confusion about the actual meaning of PPP still abounds. As a consequence, contradicting findings and statements about PPP flourish in the literature. This article reviews the literature, and argues that there are different streams of PPP research which operate with qualitatively different notions of the PPP concept. Accordingly the literature is divided into four different PPP ‘approaches’. By doing so the article offers some clarification concerning an increasingly complex concept. The article concludes that an authoritative definition of PPP – one that can encompass all the different variations of the concept currently in use – is not logically possible.     

Public policy and privatisation: the case of the Qatari experience

This article uses a qualitative methodology employing the elite model to describe and analyse the complex interplay of political and economic factors in the privatization experience of the state of Qatar. The article begins by providing a theoretical framework for privatisation in the context of public policy and classifying policies of privatisation into two categories: macro‐ and micro‐privatisation. The second part uses this framework to discuss the factors that gives the Qatari experience its distinguished flavour. These factors include: elite legitimacy and social culture, bureaucratic power, international pressure and patron–client networks. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

构建和谐社会必须坚持和完善中国共产党领导的多党合作和政治协商制度

中国共产党领导的多党合作和政治协商制度是有中国特色的社会主义政党制度,也是我国的一项基本政治制度。多党合作和政治协商制度的产生和形成是由我国社会历史发展条件决定的,有其社会经济基础方面的客观必然性,也是与中国共产党及各民主党派的主观努力分不开的,它的巩固、发展和完善在新的历史条件下也有着重要意义。     

Meta‐Governance of Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Actors' Perspectives from Kenya

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development promotes multi‐stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) as a means of implementation while at the same time putting renewed focus on the need for national‐level ownership and implementation. Despite the fact that an ever growing body of literature on the merits and drawbacks of MSPs delineates several success conditions for partnerships, efforts to translate this knowledge into national‐level meta‐governance for MSPs remain marginal to date. This study outlines the benefits the literature alleges for such “meta‐governance” frameworks, before it uses a country‐level study with a series of stakeholder interviews to take a closer look at national‐level context conditions and lessons learned with regard to two water partnerships in Kenya. Our findings suggest that to date the existing meta‐governance for partnerships in Kenya is rather weak and fragmented. Yet respondents support the view that MSPs could benefit from such a framework, in particular regarding local ownership of MSPs and the potential to scale successful cases. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Critiquing Food Security Inter‐governmental Partnership Approaches in Victoria,Australia

Food security is an issue, not only in developing countries but also in developed economies such as Australia where people from vulnerable groups cannot access affordable and appropriate food on a daily basis. Agencies emphasise the need for collaborative approaches to such complex, multi‐sectoral challenges. This article analyses two inter‐governmental partnership approaches facilitating local government's response to food insecurity in 12 municipalities within the state of Victoria. We focus on the partnership approaches to collaboration, processes and structures, and collective outcomes. The comparative data analysis from in‐depth interviews and document analysis of project‐associated materials and municipal policies provides insight into the different partnership approaches. Results suggest that while strategically designed and focused inter‐governmental partnerships can build local government capacity to respond to food security, there are systemic, regulatory, and resource barriers in play. In conclusion, the implications of these findings for future inter‐governmental approaches to address complex challenges are considered.     

Looking for Sustainability in Not‐for‐Profit Program Delivery: An Experiment in Providing Post‐Bushfire Recovery Programs

This article examines an experiment in delivering services and programs in communities that were affected by the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Three not‐for‐profit agencies received funding to develop and deliver programs over a period of three years with the aim of achieving sustainability for the programs thus created. They were not constrained by the requirements of normal government funding, which is short term, subject to competitive tendering and targeted at specific programs and client groups. The nature of the funding allowed the three agencies to introduce innovative programs tailored to the needs of the community and with the aim of building community capacity. However the question of whether the programs are sustainable when existing funding runs out remains open.     

Correlates of rigorous and credible transnational governance: A cross‐sectoral analysis of best practice compliance in eco‐labeling

The number of eco‐labeling schemes is rising dramatically, yet the rigor and credibility of such schemes remains uneven. Whereas some eco‐labeling organizations (ELOs) comply with best practice guidelines designed to increase the credibility of their standards through attention to good operating principles, such as transparency and impartiality, others do not. Within this article, I attempt to explain this variation through multivariate regression analysis of an original cross‐sectoral dataset of transnational ELO policies and practices. I find compelling evidence to suggest that ELOs with environmental non‐governmental organization (ENGO) partners, nonprofit structures, or broad transnational reach are most likely to comply with best practices. I also find that private ELOs are more likely to disregard best practices than public ones. Conversely, I find little evidence that levels of industry funding or sector‐specific competition dynamics affect best practice compliance. This study contributes new data, a new method of comparison, and new findings to the growing literature on transnational governance.     

UK Privatisation Revisited: Ideas and Policy Change, 1979–92

Privatisation in the UK was facilitated by the interplay of ideas, institutions, actors, and economic interests. The motivations of the programme were ideational and political, but the objectives were economic and administrative. Together these paved the way for the success of the policy. Although several rationales were at play in the unfolding of privatisation, the ideological predilection of the Thatcher governments underpinned this far-reaching policy reform. This explains why the Thatcher government did not reform nationalized industries within the public sector, but instead shifted them into the private sector. Privatisation succeeded because it was championed by new right policy entrepreneurs, was supported by interest groups prepared to support, or least not impede, such dramatic policy change, and when the public enterprise status quo was deemed in need of reform. Of course, ideas only act as a catalyst for policy change when an established policy agenda having withered, been worn-out or otherwise discredited, can then be successfully challenged.     

The political cost of public–private partnerships: Theory and evidence from Colombian infrastructure development

Infrastructure public–private partnerships (PPPs) eschew traditional public management to provide distributive goods worldwide. Yet, in Colombia, the context of our study, both the promise of and voters' experience with PPPs hinder incumbent parties in elections when theories of distributive politics expect otherwise. We argue that negative experiences with PPPs introduce a sociotropic turn in individual voting: bad experience crowds out the possibility that promising a new project will improve a voter's own welfare. Studying what are, to our knowledge, all 109 Colombian PPP projects between 1998 and 2014, and over 8,700 individual survey responses, our evidence shows that vote intention for the incumbent executive or his party decreases as experience with more PPPs in respondents' districts increases. Our analysis and results introduce an important agenda for research into the political significance of these legacies of new public management.