Public Values in Public–Private Partnerships

• Published date: 01 January 2014
• Date: 01 January 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12137

Anne-Marie Reynaers is completing

her doctoral thesis on public values

in public–private partnerships in the

Department of Political Science and Public

Administration, VU University Amsterdam.

She holds a research master’s degree in

public administration and organizational

science from the University of Utrecht. Her

main f‌i elds of interest are public values,

public–private partnerships, good govern-

ance, DBFMO (design–build–f‌i nance–

maintain–operate) projects; and public

management.

E-mail: reynaers.annemarie@gmail.com

Public Values in Public–Private Partnerships 41

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 1, pp. 41–50. © 2013 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12137.

Anne-Marie Reynaers

VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Although public–private partnerships (PPPs) are fre-

quently analyzed and lauded in terms of ef‌f‌i ciency, their

impact on public values is often neglected. As a result,

there is little empirical evidence supporting or rejecting

the claim that PPPs have a negative ef‌f ect on public

values.  is case study provides valuable insight into

the relationship between public values in PPPs and the

circumstances af‌f ecting the degree to which public values

are upheld. Research f‌i ndings demonstrate that whether

public values are at stake in PPPs cannot be answered

with a simple yes or no. Rather, public values can be

threatened, safeguarded, or even strengthened depending

on the project phase and the specif‌i c facet of the public

value under scrutiny. Insight into which circumstances

inf‌l uence the safeguarding of public values in DBFMO

(design–build–f‌i nance–maintain–operate) projects

unravels the strengths and weaknesses of PPPs in terms of

public values, providing public managers with a starting

point for optimization.

During the last two decades, the organiza-

tion of public service delivery has changed

substantially in many Western countries.

Movements such as reinventing government and New

Public Management have stimulated governments to

introduce private sector management techniques and

increase private sector involvement. As a result, many

public services are now provided by governance struc-

tures such as public–private partnerships (PPPs). In

line with the suggestion that the public sector should

no longer provide services but rather should supervise

private f‌i rms taking over this responsibility (Osborne

and Gaebler 1992), PPPs transfer the responsibility

for the design and realization of public service delivery

to the private sector through long-term contracting.

Although scholars supportive of reinvention argue

that recent reforms of‌f er governments considerable

benef‌i ts in terms of ef‌f ectiveness and ef‌f‌i ciency (Taylor

1999), critics fear that such reforms could have nega-

tive consequences in terms of public values such as

transparency and quality (Gawthorp 1998). Cohen

and Eimicke (1998, 2008), however, argue that recent

reforms take into account public values.  e question

of whether the organizational manifestations of the

reinvention movement provide for a suf‌f‌i cient level of

public values is the subject of increasing discussion,

but empirical evidence conf‌i rming or rejecting the

“public value–shading” hypothesis is scarce. Empirical

research has focused mainly on the ef‌f ect of out-

sourcing and privatization on public values (cf. Beck

Jørgensen and Bozeman 2002), but given its increas-

ing importance for public policy, empirical research

on the PPP–public value relationship remains surpris-

ingly scarce (Bovaird 2010). In order to increase

understanding of the relation between PPPs and

public values, this article considers an infrastructure

PPP in the northern Netherlands in which responsi-

bility for the design, construction, f‌i nance, operation,

and maintenance of a public road was transferred to a

private consortium.  e central research question of

this article is, what happens to public values in PPPs,

and what circumstances af‌f ect the degree to which they

are upheld?

 e article is structured as follows: After initially

def‌i ning PPPs, the discussion turns to the concept

of public values in relation to recent public sec-

tor reforms.  e subsequent sections then outline

the research approach and methodology, report the

empirical results, conduct some discussion, and draw

conclusions from the f‌i ndings.

Public–Private Partnerships

 e use of the term “public–private partnership”

to refer to a wide range of public–private arrange-

ments has led to much confusion in the public

administration literature about its exact def‌i nition

(Sullivan and Skelcher 2003; Weihe 2008). Hodge

(2010), for example, distinguishes f‌i ve partnership

variations: institutional cooperation for joint pro-

duction and risk sharing, public policy networks,

civil society and community development, urban

renewal and downtown economic development,

and long-term infrastructure contracts (LTICs).

 is study addresses a specif‌i c type of LTIC, known

Public Values in Public–Private Partnerships