The Paradoxes of Public-Private Partnerships
Don-Yun Chen*, Shih-Jye Chang**
Abstract
From the late 1990s onwards, New Public Management (NPM) has been gradually replaced by the new governance discourse and relevant practices. Theoretically, compared with NPM, the new governance accentuates collaboration and trust between the public and private sectors. Practically, academics and practitioners nowadays tend to conceive public-private partnerships (PPPs) as a panacea to public problems in the era of post-NPM. This kind of atmosphere makes it easy to overlook some paradoxes, including the creation of unintended consequences, in the operation of PPPs. These paradoxes imply that the new governance discourse has yet to devote more analytical discussion to government by contract and the limits of third-party policy tools. This article attempts to indicate that there are some types of paradoxes in the PPPs, derived from value choice dilemmas of public policy and unintended consequences. In sum, this article discovers that although there has not been a clear-cut definition of PPPs among academics and practitioners until now, there has been a general consensus that how to manage and maintain collaborative networks is the most important factor for the success of PPPs. However, this article also argues that if we are over optimistic about collaborative networks, we will fail to notice some operational predicaments resulting from the paradoxes of PPPs. Nevertheless, if we could appreciate the implication of reflective learning from these paradoxes, we will be able to implement a variety of PPPs projects in a more pragmatic and balanced way.
Keywords: public-private partnerships, New Public Management, the new governance, paradoxes, unintended consequences
*Professor, Department of Public Administration, National Cheng-chi University. Specialties: democratic governance, bureaucratic politics, e-governance, public policy analysis and management, national health insurance policy. E-mail: donc@nccu.edu.tw.
**Assistant Professor, Department of Public Affairs, Fo Guang University. Specialties: public management, public service ethics, public policy analysis, national health insurance policy. E-mail: sjchang@mail.fgu.edu.tw.