Public-Private Partnerships for Infrastructure and Service Delivery: An Introduction

This chapter provides a wide framework to understand how public and private actors collaborate. Collaborations happen at three different levels (macro, meso, and micro) and with different levels of intensity and formalization. Despite the mixed results experienced so far with public-private partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure and service delivery, the shift toward a new approach to sustainability by corporations can certainly prove useful to reconceive the way in which PPP is used and structured. Further, Covid-19 pandemic has shed a new light on the importance of collaborations to improve resilience and foster innovation. This chapter also presents the main feature of PPP contracts for infrastructure and service delivery, which are the focus of this book; the policy goals that could be pursued and the main challenges to achieve such goals.