Governance Forms in Urban Public-Private Partnerships

ABSTRACT

The article starts a conversation in the literature about the governance structures of certain kinds of collaboratives in public management: public-private partnerships. The findings come from the study of implemented partnerships for regeneration and management of city centres in the U.S. (Business Improvement Districts) and U.K. (Town Centre Management), and the introduction of urban regime theory. A three-ideal typology is built up, concerning the roles played by structures/design of the partnership, legal frameworks, incentives, evolution, competition, governance structures, and the ways all of these evolve. The conclusion is that public-private partnerships are constantly evolving and may assume “variable geometries” in response to the form of governance dominating their internal arrangements. Partnerships may be of various kinds: symbolic partnerships, in which hierarchical governance predominates; instrumental partnerships, which obey market rules; organic partnerships, where the predominant form of governance is network-based. The kind of PPP employed affects how the relationship between public and private organisations is managed.

Notes

Peters (1998) differentiates partnerships both from single transactions or subsidies—which do not imply real continuous interaction—and from purchases and services obtained from the same supplier, because the contract between both parties is based on a previous competitive process and is not the result of a continued relationship.

Business Improvement District (BID) partnerships analysed in the U.S.

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  Town Centre Management (TCM) partnerships analysed in the U.K.

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In the United States, BIDs receive various names: Special Assessment Districts (SADs), Downtown Improvement Districts (DIDs), Special Improvement Districts (SIDs) and Business Improvement Zones (BIZs) (Rothenberg Pack 1992; Hambleton and Taylor 1993; Mallett 1993; Bradley 1995).

There is currently BID legislation in Canada, England, New Zealand, South Africa, Serbia, Albania, and the U.S. There are bills going through parliament in Japan, Ireland, Scotland, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tamyko Ysa

Tamyko Ysa ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Business Policy and of the Institute of Public Management (IDGP) at ESADE Business School (University Ramon Llull). Her areas of interest are the management of partnerships and their impact on the creation of public value; the design, implementation, and evaluation of public policies; and the relations between companies and governments. She is the Principal Researcher of the Research Group for Leadership and Innovation in Public Management (GLIGP). The GLIGP is especially interested in processes of institutional development and the interconnections between the public sector, the profitmaking private sector, and the third sector.