140 research outputs found

    Emerging Meta-Governance as a Regulation Framework for Public-Private Partnerships: An Examination of the European Union's Approach

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    This article extends previous research on public-private partnerships (PPPs), which has primarily been case study or national context oriented, by examining how these PPPs are regulated in the framework of the European Union (EU). While a number of partnership models have been identified in the academic literature, this study focuses on three significant types of PPP: the contract-PPP, the concession-PPP, and the institutional-PPP. Based on a notion of the EU as a meta-governance framework that guides, steers, and controls PPP activity at national, sector, and project level, the article draws a number of lessons on the EU’s role in regulating the formation phase of PPP. The research demonstrates that this meta-governance framework provides the EU with no direct regulations for the use of the PPP model in the 27 member states, but two sets of regulations which apply if a public authority decides to sign a PPP deal. As the EU hitherto has engaged in regulation of PPP at a somewhat abstract and conceptual level, national and local public administrations are given considerable room for manoeuvre to craft regulations and policies to support or hinder uptake of PPPs. More recently, however, the Commission has raised its stakes by launching a European Partnership Excellence Centre to support policy learning, the spread of best practice, and PPP expert networks

    Public-Private Partnerships as Converging or Diverging Trends in Public Management? A Comparative Analysis of PPP Policy and Regulation in Denmark and Ireland

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    The utilization of the public-private partnership (PPP) model as a means of delivering various types of asset-based public services and infrastructure is often seen in academic research as part of a globally spread public management reform trend. This view is often suggested with reference to the staggering amount of attention and public money, which is now being dedicated to the formation of PPPs worldwide. This article, however, proceeds from the observation that if we look beyond the reports from a small handful of primarily Anglo-Saxon countries, which have so far attracted widespread attention in the PPP literature, we observe a much more divergent and heterogeneous pattern in various national governments’ policy and regulation for PPP and the amount of actually implemented PPP projects. By comparing the initiatives taken by the Irish government, which has embraced PPPs, with those of the Danish government, which has been PPP sceptic, the article draws on two in-depth country case studies to examine how and why PPPs developed so differently in the two countries. The research illustrates that whereas PPPs in Denmark have been subject to a loosely organized institutional framework with a number of fundamental policy and regulation issues being either unresolved or not very supportive to the uptake of PPPs, Ireland, on the other hand, now presides over one of the most ambitious PPP programs in the world, with major policy, regulation and procurement functions centralized within the Ministry of Finance and the Treasury. As research on PPPs continues to proliferate, this article illustrates that academic PPP literature would benefit from adopting a more explicit comparative focus to account for these significant comparative differences in national governments’ PPP approaches

    National understøttelse af offentligt-private partnerskaber (OPP): en komparativ analyse af 20 europæiske lande

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    Artiklen præsenterer resultaterne af en komparativ analyse af den nationale understøttelse af offentlige-private partnerskaber (OPP) på tværs af 20 europæiske lande med varierende OPP-erfaring. Baseret på en gennemgang af litteraturen defineres tre elementer som centrale for national understøttelse af OPP: politisk opbakning, reguleringsmæssige rammer og institutionel understøttelse. I analysens første del gennemføres en sammenlignende analyse af den politiske, reguleringsmæssige og institutionelle understøttelse af OPP på tværs af de 20 lande. Det danner grundlag for at identificere ligheder og forskelle samt gruppere landene i forhold til national understøttelse af OPP. I analysens anden del gennemføres en eksplorativ analyse af sammenhængen mellem national understøttelse og den faktiske udbredelse af OPP opgjort som omfanget og størrelsen af OPP-projekter i landene

    National understøttelse af offentlige-private partnerskaber (OPP):En komparativ analyse af 20 europæiske lande

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    Artiklen præsenterer resultaterne af en komparativ analyse af den nationale understøttelse af offentlige-private partnerskaber (OPP) på tværs af 20 europæiske lande med varierende OPP-erfaring. Baseret på en gennemgang af litteraturen defineres tre elementer som centrale for national understøttelse af OPP: politisk opbakning, reguleringsmæssige rammer og institutionel understøttelse. I analysens første del gennemføres en sammenlignende analyse af den politiske, reguleringsmæssige og institutionelle understøttelse af OPP på tværs af de 20 lande. Det danner grundlag for at identificere ligheder og forskelle samt gruppere landene i forhold til national understøttelse af OPP. I analysens anden del gennemføres en eksplorativ analyse af sammenhængen mellem national understøttelse og den faktiske udbredelse af OPP opgjort som omfanget og størrelsen af OPP-projekter i landene

    With Comparative and Multi-level Case Studies from Denmark and Ireland

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    This PhD dissertation studies national similarities and differences in policy and regulation of public-private partnerships (PPPs), with an empirical focus on Denmark and Ireland. The starting point and motivation for the study is the observation that whereas PPPs are often depicted in the academic literature and in policy practice as a globally disseminated governance scheme, in reality, a closer examination of the PPP reform landscape reveals significant differences in national governments’ PPP policy and regulation and in the amount of actually implemented PPP projects. By comparing the initiatives taken by the Irish government, which has embraced PPPs, with those of the Danish government, which has been a PPP sceptic, this study inquires into the fundamental questions as to how, why and to what consequences some governments have developed widespread policy and regulation frameworks to support the implementation of PPPs, whereas others have been much more reluctant. The dissertation addressed four research questions: (i) what are the key actors, strategies and institutions that create policies and regulations for the formation of PPPs?; (ii) how did governments’ PPP policies and regulations develop over time, and how can their similarities and differences be explained?; (iii) how do differing national policy and regulation frameworks serve to facilitate or hinder the formation of PPPs, exemplified by four case studies from the schools sector?; (iv) what framework conditions does the EU set for PPP initiatives at national and sub-national levels? The main aim of the dissertation is to study how and why national PPP policy and regulation frameworks developed over time. At the national government level, the study thus contains both diachronic and synchronic analysis. Furthermore, in line with previous research within what has been called the governance approach within PPP studies, policy and regulation are also seen as constitutive elements that tap into and set the general framework conditions and institutional ‘rules of the game’ for the realisation of concrete PPP projects. The comparative interest at the central government level is thus supplemented by an analysis (a) of the interplay between decisions about policy and regulation at the national level and the formation of concrete PPP projects, and (b) of the EU’s role in regulating decisions about PPPs at national level and in relation to the formation of concrete PPP schemes. A main finding is that whereas academic PPP literature often portrays governments’ rationales for resorting to PPPs in terms of achieving innovation, collaborative advantage, value-for-money, new market possibilities, improved risk sharing etc., the findings brought to the fore in this dissertation suggest that a primary objective indeed was to remove major public infrastructure investments from governments’ balance sheets, and thereby reduce the pressure on public capital budgets and provide more infrastructure than would otherwise be possible. However, as the off balance sheet rationale has been shown to be largely false, because there is always a bill to pay in the long term, this raise a number of broader legitimacy and accountability issues, which the present PPP policy and regulation frameworks of governments do not seem to adequately address
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