National Establishing Processes Of Public Private Partnerships- Towards An Understanding Of Emergent Dynamics

In the later years an increasing number of European countries have engaged in PPP as a means to develop the built environment element of the public services. These include countries like Germany, Portugal, Ireland, Holland, France, and Denmark to mention some (DLA 2005, RICS 2005). There a few countries, Italy and UK have more than ten years experience, most countries have relatively recently established law, central support units and other elements of meta-governance (Van Heffen et al 2000). Not all countries automatically experience a rapid growth in PPP- projects. It is for example characteristic that Holland and Denmark experience a current ìhesitativeî period. Most PPP research focus on establishing single projects and/or study the public sector reform as a singular event (Rosenau 2000, Akintoye et al 2003 and others). In contrast, and adopting a comparative perspective, the paper sets out to investigate processes of establishing PPP on a national arena. It is suggested to view this as a three phase process of establishing, stabilising and differentiation. Also the process can be conceptualises as the development of a characteristic network of players, changing over time. From the longer experiences of Italy and UK it can be shown that reform of the meta-governance is a continual process rather that a ìonce and for allî establishing of new stable regulatory conditions for private enterprises. Moreover it appear that multinational companies downplay the importance of the national arena. Some countries does appear to have special local conditions which is discussed in the paper.