Public-Private Partnerships

Theory and Practice in International Perspective

Stephen Osborne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781134615056
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

Public-Private partnerships are an increasing aspect of the delivery of public policies and services across the world. This book is the first to draw upon a range of disciplines to offer theoretical perspectives upon their analysis as well as a range of case-studies of their management from around the world. It also offers a number of frameworks fo

Part I

Understanding public-private partnerships

1 The theory of partnership
Why have partnerships?
Ronald W.McQuaid

1.1 Introduction

This chapter explores some of the theoretical and policy issues concerning the reasons for developing and operating partnerships. In particular partnerships to promote urban and rural regeneration or economic development are analysed as these involve a wide range of actors (including central or federal government, local government, the private sector, and local communities) and the underlying issues that they deal with are multifaceted. Many case studies of such partnerships exist (see e.g. Wannop; 1990); however, the more general theoretical basis for understanding and analysing them remains poorly developed.

Partnership approaches have received widespread support from across the political spectrum, including policy makers, officials and local communities. They are likely to remain high on the policy agenda at all levels (see e.g. Audit Commission, 1991). At the supra-national level the European Union (EU) promotes partnerships as it operates with and through member states and more local agencies to achieve its policy aims, taking account of national rules and practices (CEC 1996). At the national level in many countries, including the UK, there has been government pressure to move away from public provision of services towards joint private-public partnerships or greater private provision.

At the local level continued or greater involvement in partnership approaches is likely between public bodies and/or private bodies and non-governmental organizations because of pragmatic factors such as resource constraints, as well as more ideological factors (see Leach et al. 1994). These factors include: a belief in the overall advantages of a partnership approach; the move towards enabling local government (where publicly funded services are implemented by private or not-for-profit bodies rather than by the public sector); a recognition that any one local actor often does not have all the competencies or resources to deal with the interconnected issues raised in many policy areas; and greater agreement that urban regeneration should include the genuine participation of the local community. However, the theoretical and empirical validity of these views needs further analysis. Indeed, in order to fully understand the behaviour and policies of organizations involved in economic development and regeneration it is necessary to consider the nature of their relationships with networks of and partnerships between other actors, including the flows of resources, power, and information within these networks.

While each partnership is a function of particular historical, economic, social and political contexts, there are many common trends. The natures of partnerships, particularly ‘private-public partnerships’ but also partnerships between quasi-public and/or public agencies, are altering because of changing global economic patterns, government funding and changing economic structures, in both the US (Weaver and Dennert 1987) and the UK (Harding 1990; McQuaid 1994, 1999). One broad context for the growth of partnerships is the transformation of central-local government and changing state-private sector relationships, in which partnerships may be the result of, but in other cases the cause of, such changing relationships. Indeed this has given rise to a paradox concerning the fragmentation of publicly funded agencies and the multifaceted nature of issues that government must deal with. This apparent paradox is that there has been a move in recent decades for many government functions to be delivered through quangos or other agencies with a narrow range of objectives so as to increase focus, accountability and effectiveness. Yet as a result of the multifaceted nature of the issues and problems being dealt with, these agencies must generally work in various forms of partnership to effectively tackle the issues. However, as discussed below, these partnerships cloud accountability, reduce focus and influence overall efficiency and effectiveness unless the partnerships are carefully designed and operated.¹

The remainder of this chapter explores some of the factors that are useful for understanding partnerships in different circumstances. Section 1.2 discusses what is meant by the term partnership. Section 1.3 sets out a framework of typologies for analysing them. Sections 1.4 and 1.5 consider why urban economic development policies might use partnerships, by analysing their potential advantages and disadvantages respectively. Section 1.6 considers some of the theories concerning why different actors with differing motivations and objectives may work together in partnership and the implications of the theories for the development of partnerships. Section 1.7 presents the conclusions and discusses areas for future research.

1.2 Definitions of partnership

The term ‘partnership’ covers greatly differing concepts and practices and is used to describe a wide variety of types of relationship in a myriad of circumstances and locations. Indeed, it has been suggested that there is an infinite range of partnership activities as the ‘methods for carrying out such (private-public) partnerships are limited only by the imagination, and economic development offices are becoming increasingly innovative in their use of the concept’ (Lyons and Hamlin 1991:55).² This section considers some general and policy-orientated definitions of partnership in the context of economic development and regeneration.

There are a number of assumptions underlying definitions of partnership. First, the potential for synergy of some form, so ‘the sum is greater than the parts’. Second, the partnership involves both development and delivery of a strategy or a set of projects or operations, although each actor may not be equally involved in all stages. Third, in public-private partnerships the public sector are not pursuing purely commercial goals. So a criteria of partnership is the presence of social partnership (so excluding purely commercial transactions).

Partnership involves cooperation—i.e. ‘to work or act together’—and in a public policy can be defined as cooperation between people or organizations in the public or private sector for mutual benefit (see Holland 1984). Harding (1990) sets out a similar general definition of ‘private-public partnership’ as ‘any action which relies on the agreement of actors in the public and private sectors and which also contributes in some way to improving the urban economy and the quality of life’ (Harding 1990:110), although he argues that this has limited conceptual value. Bailey (1994) provides a working definition of private-public partnership in urban regeneration as ‘the mobilisation of a coalition of interests drawn from more than one sector in order to prepare and oversee an agreed strategy for regeneration of a defined area’ (Bailey 1994:293).

Taking an economic development perspective, Sellgren (1990) defines partnership as a scheme with involvement or funding from more than one agency. Bennett and Krebs (1994) similarly stress the joint objectives of the bodies and defines partnership as cooperation between actors where they agree to work together towards a specified economic-development objective and draw the key distinction between generalized policy communities that develop a broad local vision for the area or local economy and the specific networks (or partnerships) that are necessary to support individual projects.

There are a number of further definitions which take a policy perspective. One that shows the wide scope of partnerships and the contributions of partners is from the Commonwealth (State) of Massachusetts which says ‘(A) partnership is a collaboration among business, non-profit organizations, and government in which risks, resources and skills are shared in projects that benefit each partner as well as the community’ (Stratton 1989). Other policy definitions may try to define more closely the range of actors involved, the geographical areas covered and any power that is devolved.

Within the context of urban development in areas of multiple deprivation, the UK Government has defined the partnership approach as involving the ‘voluntary commitment by the wide range of bodies with a contribution to make to urban development or regeneration (including local communities, the local authorities, Government departments and agencies and the private sector) to an agreed comprehensive long-term regeneration strategy for their areas’ (The Scottish Office 1993:6). This approach incorporates a range of issues which will be further considered below. These include: the voluntary nature of the relationships; the wide range of participants, ranging from the community to the private sector (the voluntary sector is only mentioned elsewhere in their document), local government, national-government departments and quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations; the need for an agreed strategy; the long-time scale; and agreed contributions of resources (presumably in a variety of forms) to the process, although it omits the sharing of risks.

At European Union level, one of the European Commission’s three main principles in its guidelines for its structural policy was ‘to implement a partnership with all the parties involved in structural policy, especially the regional authorities’ (CEC 1987). It went on to define the term partnership in its framework Regulation for Reforming the Community’s Structural Funds as ‘close consultation between the Commission, the Member States concerned and the competent authorities designated by the latter at national, regional, local or other level, with each party acting as a partner in pursuit of a common goal’ (CEC 1989:15; CEC 1996). Hence this type of partnership implies both consultation and action at a local level, as will be discussed further below.

Others, such as Atkinson (1999), argue that there are varying meanings of words such as partnerships and the meaning assigned to partnership in urban and rural regeneration in the UK is an exercise in power which reinforces social relations. He argues that there is no single authentic mode of assigning meaning to terms such as partnership and that their meaning is constructed in the context of power and domination where official discourses have privileges over others. However, while such analysis is useful the degree of influence of such official discourses or documents may vary in different circumstances, and what is omitted from the documents may often be fundamental to its operation. Also the real level of influence by different actors at the local level is dependent on many factors beyond those set out in documents. It is usually the underlying relationships which develop before, during and after any strategy document is written that are more significant than the documents themselves. In addition different actors within a partnership may have different views on its purpose, operation and power structures (McQuaid and Christy 1999). Hence, partnership remains a varied and ambiguous concept.

In order to refine the concepts underpinning differing types of partnerships it is necessary to consider some of their key dimensions or characteristics. Otherwise we may be left at one extreme with such a wide level of generality that few lessons can be learnt, or at another extreme with a series of specific case studies which do not fully consider the external environment and possible underlying principles and pressures affecting partnerships. The next section sets out some key dimensions which help define broad types and characteristics of partnerships.

1.3 Types of partnership

This section considers a range of parameters which are useful for analysing partnerships or developing models of them, in the context of urban regeneration and economic development. Each partnership has many dimensions. In order to try to capture the richness of various forms of partnership this section sets out a range of dimensions to partnerships which can be combined to form a set of characteristics of a partnership. Hence any individual partnership is a combination of these different dimensions and there are large differences between partnerships and within a partnership over time.

Table 1.1 Components of partnerships

Five main dimensions of partnership are now discussed: (a) what the partnership is seeking to do—i.e. its purpose and whether it is strategic or project driven; (b) who is involved—i.e. the key actors and the structure of their relationship in the partnership; (c) when—i.e. the timing or stage of development of the partnership process and changing relationships and activities over time; (d) where—i.e. the spatial dimension; (e) how the activities are carried out, the implementation mechanisms (Table 1.1). A further set of characteristics, the expected benefits of the partnership, are considered in the next section. Each of these dimensions for analysing partnerships also have themselves a number of axes, or sub-dimensions. However, there is a balance to be drawn between increased complexity (and realism) and clarity of any typology of partnerships. Finally each of these components will have direct implications for the efficiency and effectiveness of a partnership and for the balance of power within it, and so can help form a basis to analyse these issues.

(a) What is the partnership seeking to do?

Purpose The main dimension along which we can classify partnerships is their purpose. The purpose of entering into a partnership may be to gain extra resources for an area, project or organization, to release synergy through collaboration and joining various types of resources, or to transform one or more of the partner organizations. This may include letting them act more entrepreneurially through loosening some constraints and introducing new ways of doing things which are more effective or efficient (see e.g. Mackintosh 1992; Hastings 1996).

The implicit purposes of the partnership are also important. These may be to improve effectiveness or efficiency, to attract additional resources into the area, to manipulate one of the partners to supporting your activities, or to overcome local opposition. Clearly issues such as how and by whom the components making up the overal...