Unpacking the Path‐Dependent Process of Institutional Change for PPPs

Abstract

In the recent past, several countries and states have begun to use Public‐Private‐Partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure development and have attempted to create institutional environments that enable PPPs. Providing an enabling environment for PPPs entails a combination of institutional creation and changing existing institutions relating to project procurement. This paper attempts to understand how path‐dependant institutional change takes place in the context of PPPs and their enabling environments, and why different institutional environments evolve differently, using two cases: the implementation of PPPs in the road sector in the Netherlands and in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. We identify two factors that can be used as predictors of the direction of institutional change: a long‐term orientation towards institutional change and a willingness to learn and modify transitional institutions. Where these factors exist, and thereby provide a goodness of fit, institutional change is likely to occur.

How Do Governments Support the Development of Public Private Partnerships? Measuring and Comparing PPP Governmental Support in 20 European Countries

“…Increasingly, academic literature argues that the variations in PPP diffusion and performance across countries is to a considerable extent influenced by the institutional and political context of these countries, leading to weak or strong 'PPPenabling fields' (Delhi, Palukuri, & Mahalingam, 2010;Galilea & Medda, 2010;Jooste, Levitt, & Scott, 2011;Matos-Castañ o et al, 2014;Meunier & Guinet, 2010;Mu, de Jong, & Heuvelhof, 2010). Within economic and sociological neo-institutional theories, institutions are seen as the set of socially constructed frameworks of symbols and resources that both constrains and enables social action (North, 1990;Scott, 2001).…”

“…However, we acknowledge the importance of informal norms and cognitive frameworks as they influence the behaviour of both public and private actors within PPPs. Moreover, such frameworks support and shape the more formalised institutions (Matos-Castañ o et al, 2014). But such informal norms and cognitive frameworks are very hard to map systematically in a multi-country study.…”

“…Mahalingam, Devkar, and Kalidindi (2011; see also Matos-Castañ o et al, 2014) developed a framework in which they categorise PPP-enabling institutions into mechanisms that facilitate legitimacy, trust and capacity, and link this with earlier academic work (see e.g. Delhi et al, 2010;Jooste et al, 2011).…”

“…At the same time there is now a growing awareness that the development of PPPs has evolved very differently across national institutional contexts (Petersen, 2011), and national governments have responded very differently to the PPP reform trend (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2008; Verhoest et al, 2013). These country differences have, however, been insufficiently systematically mapped and accounted for in previous research, which is largely a result of the fact that the PPP literature has hitherto been characterised mainly by single country studies whereas comparative research has been limited (for a few exceptions, see Greve & Hodge, 2007;Jooste & Scott, 2012;Matos-Castañ o, Mahalingam, & Dewulf, 2014;McQuaid & Scherrer, 2010;Petersen, 2011). While there is growing academic and political interest in comparative issues related to PPPs and their implementation, there is an evident need for comparative analyses in order to understand the large national differences in the development of PPP policies and institutions and their consequences for uptake of PPPs across different countries.…”

Cross-Sector Partnerships for Systemic Change: Systematized Literature Review and Agenda for Further Research

“…(Matos-Castaño et al 2014, p. 48) From this quotation, it can be seen that the change being studied might be within the PPP as a result of the environment's influence, or it might be within the environment as a result of the PPP's influence. The focus in this article is not on the social, environmental, or economic problem to be solved through the PPP, but rather on the structural changes to the institutional field or to the partnerships (Matos-Castaño et al 2014). Transformation has a very broad usage of the term, from transforming a product to transforming an industry to transforming an ecosystem.…”