Public-Private Partnership: a Two-Headed Reform. A Comparison of PPP in England and the Netherlands

Public-private partnerships (PPP) have become a popular policy instrument in many Western European countries. Governments increasingly refer to PPP as an important instrument to modernize public policy (see Chapter 1) with the assumption that involvement of private actors in the provision of services, or in the realization of policy goals, will increase quality and give better value for money. Many government policy documents stress both the added value created by PPPs and the role of contract in implementing this particular aspect of public management reform. The link is the assumption that contracting-out services to private actors increases efficiency and value for money and can be managed by specifying requirements and by using innovative contracting forms. On the other hand, however, there is an emphasis on partnership and close interaction between public and private actors to generate a responsive and flexible problem-solving capacity that can respond to ‘wicked’ societal problems and produce innovative results that could not have been specified in advance. The rhetoric of the policy stresses the benefits of ‘tight’ contracts and ‘loose’ partnerships, but fails to recognize the potential conflicts created.