Transnational Public–Private Partnerships' Performance in Water Governance: Institutional Design Matters

Abstract

Transnational public-private partnerships (PPPs) are new forms of governance that have caught the interest of researchers in recent years. While the literature tends to portray PPPs as loosely institutionalized forms of governance, we argue that PPPs' institutional design varies and matters for their eff ectiveness. We aim to demonstrate that a high degree of institutionalization (obligation, precision, delegation) is relevant in cases that involve collective action problems-that is, for those PPPs that have to deal with distributional confl ict, cheating, or free-riding. To substantiate our argument, we compare and analyze the performance of three transnational water partnerships (not to be confused with municipal for-profi t PPPs). Our results confi rm that a high degree of institutionalization tends to be important for those water partnerships that implement costly projects. It is less important for those that focus on the comparatively undemanding task of exchanging and disseminating knowledge and best practice in water management and governance.

Transnational Partnerships: Conditions for Successful Service Provision in Areas of Limited Statehood

“…This finding is especially relevant for the service partnerships in our sample. As their tasks are resource intensive, they have to deal with problems of free‐riding or misuse of resources and therefore crucially require a high level of institutionalization (Beisheim and Campe ). At the local level , our observations clearly indicate that the projects carried out by these service partnerships also require a high degree of institutionalization.…”

Unlocking the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” of Corporate Water Stewardship in South Africa—Exploring Corporate Power and Legitimacy of Engagement in Water Management and Governance

“…Beisheim and Campe [27] add institutionalization of arrangements as a fourth measure of effectiveness. Equally important to effectiveness, the second sub-component of outcome-based legitimacy is distributional equity and justice [28], here as a result of corporate engagement in water management and governance and stewardship initiative and project interventions.…”

“…Following Bodansky [31], the legitimacy criteria for corporate engagement in water management and governance and in corporate water stewardship are divided here to three components, with associated sub-components as described by Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen and Vihma [26], Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen and McGee [28], Fuchs et al [25], Liese and Beisheim [26] and Beisheim and Campe [27] (Table 1). In order to enable practical analyses, the criteria are "normative", i.e., "based on theories of democracy and justice" [31] and internationally accepted principles of good water management and governance [35,36] distinct to "sociological" criteria, which would be "based on the views of those subject to the authority" [31] (on the relationship of the two, see Section 2.3 below).…”

“…described in detail below was constructed based on literature of corporate power and legitimacy of their engagement in water, food and environmental management and governance (notably [2,13,15,16,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]). The framework lists different dimensions and forms of corporate power on water and examples of each (described in Section 2.1) and components and sub-components of legitimacy to engage on water and suggested applications of each (described in Section 2.2).…”

The innovativeness of national policy portfolios – climate policy change in Austria, Germany, and the UK

“…Therefore, we adopt an evaluation perspective on policy innovation (see Beisheim andCampe 2012, Jordan andHuitema 2014) and provide an empirical example of how to study the issues. Do policy innovations in their entirety replicate the status quo, or do they contribute to a momentum towards a tipping point which changes the dominant instrumental logic?…”