Public-private partnerships as the management of co-production: Strategic and institutional obstacles in a difficult marriage

6. Public-private partnerships as the management of co-production: strategic and institutional obstacles in a difficult marriage Erik-Hans Klijn and Geert R. Teisman INTRODUCTION: THE FOCUS ON PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP Public-private partnerships have enjoyed popularity in western Europe recently (see Osborne, 2000). Public-private partnerships are also an important component - at least in the rhetoric - of Tony Blair’s New Labour policies (Falconer and McLaughlin, 2000; Sullivan and Skelcher, 2002). This has led to an enormous growth in both strategic partnerships (principally the LSP, the local strategic partnerships) as well as those of a more implementational nature (for example for regeneration projects) (Sullivan and Skelcher, 2002). Even in the European Union, traditionally the bastion in which the division of public and private enterprise and market operation forms part of the standard repertoire - there is an increasing focus on PPPs (Teisman and Klijn, 2000). The expertise centre (Kenniscentrum) within the Ministry of Finance in the Netherlands set up at the end of the 1990s to support PPP initiatives in the Netherlands states that: ‘International experiences show that a faster and more efficient implementation of infrastructure projects is possible by means of public-private partnership (PPP). In the Netherlands both public and private actors show great interest in and willingness to adopt PPPs’ (Kenniscentrum, 1998). In short, public-private partnership has everything going for it and it is considered as one of the most important new horizontal forms of governance in the modern network society. What are Public-Private Partnerships? Public….