The invisible forces of institutional work within policy networks: the Az-Zour North One PPP project in Kuwait

This chapter argues that while a vast body of PPP literature debates which factors lead to the successful initiation and implementation of PPPs, scarce attention has been paid to what causes the failure of PPP implementation processes. The chapter addresses this lacuna in the literature and explores how the work of inter-organizational actors at the meso-level affects the development of PPP policy and its outcomes. It builds on the existing policy network literature to develop a theoretical framework to explain why only one PPP project has ever been implemented there, as well as why all implementations of other proposed PPP projects have been massive failures for the past ten years. A review of the literature on policy networks suggests that, while such a perspective can be a useful tool to explore why policies fail, its explanatory powers can be enhanced significantly by connecting it with another framework that is more action-oriented. In other words, while the policy network perspective is beneficial in identifying how actors are organized in constellations of networks and can help to identify the policy games that they engage in to affect policy outcomes, such a framework provides fewer insights regarding how and why actors behave the way they do, and how their behaviors affect the outcomes of the games they play. To address this limitation, the chapter builds on the institutional work perspective, which explores the purposeful work of individual and organizational actors to maintain institutions.