Summer 2004

The Partnerships Symposium

In both developed and developing countries, the use of public-private partnerships has become a pervasive phenomenon in public administration and management. While partnerships have been around for a long time, it was not until the late 1980s that scholars paid serious attention to defining, classifying and analyzing the rapidly growing number of partnerships among public, private and not-for-profit organizations. During the 1990s and the early years of this century, public servants have devoted considerable effort to the creation and operation of partnerships and academic scholars have begun to examine the many dimensions of the partnership phenomenon, including its political, managerial, organizational, legal and ethical dimensions.

There is much debate among both practitioners and scholars regarding the benefits and costs of partnerships and even regarding what constitutes a genuine partnership. At the same time, new partnerships continue to be created and there are calls for even greater use of partnerships in the future, especially with respect to several aspects of electronic government (e.g. procurement of information technology, integrated service delivery). Partnering is also a central element of the current and growing emphasis in public administration on horizontal management and on "holistic" governance. There is, therefore, an urgent need to examine what we have learned about the benefits and risks of governments' involvement in partnerships.

Tony Bovaird leads off the symposium with an examination of the evolution and types of partnerships, their theoretical underpinnings, their strengths and weaknesses, and their likely future development. He argues that the types, roles and management of partnerships will differ depending on whether they were developed within the NPM paradigm or the somewhat more demanding public governance one. He makes a helpful comparison between the features of genuine collaborative partnerships and transactional contractual relationships with respect to several governance principles (e.g., citizen engagement, transparency, accountability). He concludes that public-private partnerships will continue to play a significant role in the public sector but that they will have to pay more attention to public governance issues. He suggests also that partnerships involving NGOs and the voluntary sector may become more problematic as the private sector takes on a more substantial partnering role with government.

While Tony Bovaird makes some reference to the UK's experience with partnerships, the next paper, by Albert Hofmeister and Heiko Borchert, focuses on experience in Switzerland. The authors begin by noting two impediments to the "stakeholder orientation" required for successful public-private partnering, namely that NPM reform in Switzerland did not help to reduce the public sector's inward-looking orientation and that reform initiatives under-estimated the importance of culture. They explain the benefits and risks of partnering and then, based on Swiss experience, they identify critical success factors for public-private partnerships. The authors also outline new rules for successful public-private governance and they propose a new theoretical model to help assess an actor's capacity to cooperate with others and to produce sustainable outcomes through this cooperation.

Pierre Sadran explains, with respect to France, that partnerships have a long history in that country and that their use has grown quickly, especially since the 1980s and notably at the local level. Despite the French belief in "the moral superiority of the public sector," public-private partnerships have become common in virtually all areas of state action. Debate no longer focuses on their legitimacy but rather on their technical and economic effectiveness. Professor Sadran illustrates the diverse forms that public-private partnerships can take by reference to arrangements where the partners match one another in power and structure (e.g. public transport); where entities varying in size and weight collaborate with experienced property developers (e.g. urban services); where the public sector partners with a fragmented non-profit sector (e.g. social policy); and where at the local level two agencies of modest size create a "one-off initiative" (e.g. a cultural partnership). Professor Sadran concludes by calling on the social sciences to pay more serious scholarly attention to the phenomenon of public-private partnerships, both because of their current importance and their future expansion.

The paper by Derick and Jennifer Brinkerhoff is the first of three papers dealing with the use of public-private partnerships in the third world. Their paper focuses on partnerships between international donors (e.g., the World Bank and the UN) and non-governmental development organizations. The authors argue that these "donor-NGDO" partnerships influence significantly the success of development assistance, that there is a need to reduce the controversy over such partnerships by assessing their purposes and effectiveness, and that learning points from examining donor-NGDO partnerships can inform the use of partnerships in inter-organizational governance structures beyond the international development sphere. A central point in the paper is that "[e]ffective partnerships do not depend simply on overcoming the operational and administrative hurdles to shared effort. Unless the political and economic realities of donor-NGDO relations is accounted for, partnerships are likely to remain largely public relations exercises, breeding more cynicism, fingerpointing, and conflict than synergy and effective action."

The paper by Shamsul Haque is closely related to the theme of the Brinkerhoffs' paper. Professor Haque examines the relationship between public-private partnerships and NGOs, with particular reference to experience in Bangladesh. He notes that the Bangladesh model of partnership between the government and NGOs is not only well known around the world but has been replicated in many countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Contrary to positive reports about the success of this model in Bangladesh, Professor Haque argues that the government-NG0 partnership there as not been successful in achieving its objectives of development and empowerment in rural Bangladesh. Indeed, he contends that this partnership may have had negative effects on the realization of these objectives. He concludes with a number of recommendations for improving the partnership arrangements, including the identification of an overall development vision for the country because its "developmental agenda has become extremely fragmented and confusing due to diverse objectives, programs, and interests of leading NGOs, foreign donors, and government agencies."

In the final paper of this symposium, Ali Sedjari examines the use of public-private partnerships as a tool for modernizing public administration. His analysis is informed in part by brief case studies of the experience of Morocco and Tunisia where the use of partnerships has been adapted to the particular needs of each country. He argues that the conditions for large-scale development of partnerships are present in the tendency of the state to withdraw from public services and in the pressures for profitability in the private sector. He classifies the forms of public-private partnerships into three categories: partnerships initiated by the public sector, those initiated by the private sector, and what he describes as "appointed" partnerships. He also examines four types of partnerships (e.g. partnerships with regional impact) and the range of participants that can be involved in partnering. Professor Sedjari concludes that the use of public-private partnerships is not only a promising avenue, but an essential one, for modernization and development.

The Globalization-Decentralization Symposium
While the papers in this symposium may appear at first sight to be eclectic, they have a number of features in common. The thread running through the papers is the effects of the phenomena of globalization and the new form of public sector administration and the reaction of public bodies to these phenomena.

The first paper - by Nasir Islam - examines the administrative culture of Pakistani public administration by applying the four dimensions identified by the renowned Dutch anthropologist, Geert Hofstede. Hofstede argued that national cultures could be distinguished from each other by power distance, by levels of individualism as opposed to collectivism, by their avoidance of uncertainty, and by their level of masculinity as opposed to femininity. Islam maintains that power distance - the level of inequality of power tolerated by a society - is substantial in Pakistani public administration. This large power distance is enshrined in the country’s Constitution, which recognizes the pre-eminence of the executive centre, in the status and prestige enjoyed by military organizations, and in the centralist structure of government. With regard to the dimension of individualism as it is understood in the West, Islam argues that it does not exist in Pakistan. Islam, like Hofstede, asserts that Pakistani culture is characterized by collectivism. Pakistani administrative culture is also characterized by a high propensity towards control of uncertainty. However, this is balanced by society’s collectivist nature, which exerts a restraint on the instruments deployed in the control of uncertainty. Finally, Islam observes that Pakistan scores fairly highly in relation to masculinity. As a result, the roles of the sexes are differentiated. In this context, participation by women in decision-making positions is still limited and Pakistani culture continues to discourage women in terms of access to education and higher education in particular.

The second paper, by Tatiana Sotirakou, begins with a description of the changes affecting the role and the mission of universities and the administration of higher education in England. In this context, the mercerization of universities and of learning, together with the involvement of private sector finance, form the main component of the response by university strategic planning. Sotirakou then examines the conflict experienced by departmental heads in British higher education institutions. She concludes that the imperatives of managerialism imposed more and more on heads of department comes into conflict with their traditional activities such as research and publications. She also sheds light on the nature of conflict between roles by examining the compatible and incompatible demands placed on heads of departments. She then tackles the sources of conflict by distinguishing between those arising in the new universities and those in older ones. Sotirakou concludes her article by proposing a strategic management model which aims to define and accommodate the needs and expectations of those involved both internally and externally.

The issues relating to accountability between the public and private sectors within networks and partnerships is the subject of the third paper - by Acar and Robertson. In theory, partnerships should enhance the production of public goods, spread the risk and share information and resources. But participants in public-private partnerships are often silent about the problems associated with accountability. The authors identify a range of factors that damage public-private partnerships in the context of education in the United States. The first is the availability of and access to information with regard to the activities and the performance of the partnership. Acar and Robertson assert that there are four main reasons for this problem: personal constraints, financial constraints, problems of measurement and restrictions on access to data held by the other partners. The second problem lies in sectoral differences, in particular differences at the personal and organizational level and, specifically, differences between public sector schools and private enterprises. Frequent changes in staff, resources and partners constitute the third issue affecting accountability.

Charih and Robert examine the administrative consequences of government on-line, an initiative launched by the Canadian government in 2000. The objective of this initiative is to enable Canadians and foreigners to gain access to public information and to transact with the federal government through a single electronic portal. The authors maintain that the successful operation of on-line government faces a number of challenges in terms of scale. They set out the objectives of on-line government, its scale and its targets and then they look at the demands of the integration of programmes and services, the potential impact on the machinery of government and the current mechanisms for accountability. Charih and Robert also address the problem of organizational identity, problems in terms of access to on-line government in a multi-cultural country and the management skills needed by on-line government.

In the fifth and final paper in this symposium, Blue Wooldridge suggests a strategic approach to training the public administrators of tomorrow. He argues that training must be linked to the mission and the objectives of the organization so that its employees can contribute to the performance of the institution. In order to achieve this, he argues for a strategic approach consisting of a number of stages intended to manage training and staff development. His suggested approach takes into account the mission of the organization, its needs and those of the individuals belonging to it in terms of training, skills development and the expectations of those involved both within and outside the organization.

Upcoming Debates

The major theme to be examined in the next edition of this web page is "Shared Governance: Combating Poverty and Exclusion." The papers in this symposium, together with other papers, will be briefly summarized on this web page and published in full in the International Review of Administrative Sciences. Information on the Review is available at http://www.iiasiisa.be/iias/airisa/airisa.htm).