DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY IN PUBLIC–PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS: THE CURIOUS CASE OF FLEMISH SCHOOL INFRASTRUCTURE

This article questions the negative outlook on the democratic accountability in public–private partnerships (PPPs). It challenges this widely held perception in the literature with the empirical findings of a case study of Flemish school infrastructure (Belgium). A large design, build, finance, and maintenance (DBFM) programme is compared with the regular subsidizing system through the public agency AGIOn (Agency for School Infrastructure). This case study demonstrates that more accountability forums and actors can be active in the PPP, that they can behave more actively in the PPP, and that they get results in terms of accountability. It provides a critical example of having more accountability in the PPP variant of school infrastructure than in direct public provision, and there are reasons to argue that this also means improved accountability, because internal and latent processes of accountability become external and actual ones.     

POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN SOUTH AFRICA

Public opinion suggests that political corruption is entrenchedin South Africa. Comparative experience does not indicate thatthe historical South African political environment was especiallylikely to nurture a venal bureaucracy; as a fairly industrializedand extremely coercive state the apartheid order may have beenless susceptible to many of the forms of political corruptionanalysts have associated with other post-colonial developingcountries. Democratization has made government less secret,inhibiting corruption in certain domains but through extendinggovernment's activities opening up possibilities for abuse inothers. Today's authorities argue that the present extent ofcorruption is largely inherited and indeed certain governmentdepartments, notably those concerned with security and the homelands,as well as the autonomous homeland administrations themselves,had a history of routine official misbehaviour. After describingthe distribution and nature of corruption in South African publicadministration this article concludes that a substantial proportionof modern corruption occurs in regional administrations andcertainly embodies a legacy from the homeland civil services.A major source of financial misappropriation in the old centralgovernment, secret defence procurement, no longer exists butcorruption is stimulated by new official practices and freshdemands imposed upon the bureaucracy including discriminatorytendering, political solidarity, and the expansion of citizenentitlements. Though much contemporary corruption is inheritedfrom the past, the simultaneous democratization and restructuringof the South African state makes it very vulnerable to new formsof abuse in different locations.