Nor are PPPs "designed to fail" as Joanna suggest, unless they are outright scams, but few of them actually are.
The main motivation behind PPPs is, surprise, surprise, political. They originally started in the 19th and 20th centuries mainly for two reasons; political patronage and counteracting socialist influence in working class organizing.
The "partnerships' were mechanisms to channel public funds to the supporters of particular political parties. General government services would not do because they would make it difficult to reward only supporters of a particular party and deny that support to the opponents, so political parties (e.g. in the US) opposed general government programs and favored PPPs instead. Israel is also big on PPPs since this is a mechanism of providing patronage and steering public funding to political supporters, e.g. right wing religious organizations and their service and educational outfits.
Another motivation, relevant mainly in Europe and to some degree in Latin America, was the undercutting of socialist influence in labor movement. In a large part, this was a result of the unholy alliance between the Catholic Church and governments. Following the encyclical "Rerum Novarum," the CC became quite active in fighting socialism in labor movement mainly through setting up Catholic labor unions and Catholic social assistance organizations (Protestants did that too.) Facing the "threat" of socialist parties, governments increased their social spending, but made sure that the funds were channeled through conservative - typically religious - service organizations, and PPS came handy in that targeting. This was especially true in Germany and the Netherlands, and later in fascist Italy, Spain and Portugal. The so called "subsidiarity principle" - which is the cornerstone of social assistance policies in the EU is an outgrowth of that practice. By contrast, Sweden - where socialist influence was strong and organized religion weak - opted for direct general state provision of social services (aka welfare state) instead of PPPs.
Wojtek
On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 12:14 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you are right about privatization, I'm not quite as sure about all
> public-private partnerships. My sense is, and I wonder if Chuck agrees,
> that phenomena like the Berkeley-Novartis and Berkeley-BP deals aren't
> supposed to fail, though they ARE supposed to succeed by transferring the
> dead labor of long-term public investments in infrastructure, training and
> (sometimes) prestige into profitably commodifiable knowledge and
> technologies (sometimes recompensed in the form of sharing proprietary
> knowledge or technologies, sometimes by means of technology transfer
> payments, sometimes by profit sharing and sometimes generating a revolving
> door - in real or serial time - between industry and the academy.) That
> there are ancillary consequences, like the move away from the historically
> public (however contradictory) mission of state universities and a
> prioritization of research and regional economic sponsorship over teaching
> and citizenship (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know this reflects a romanticized view
> of the past), much less contingency over tenure, is all the better.
>
>
> On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 6:48 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > The part of the privatization story that no one seems to get, is that
> it's
> > supposed to fail.....after a bunch of public money disappears into
> private
> > pockets.
> >
> > You'd think that seeing this pattern repeat itself often enough would
> > clarify....but as I keep saying: it's not an economic problem; it's a
> > political problem.
> >
> > Joanna
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Jordan Hayes" <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com>
> > To: "LBO" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> > Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 11:53:33 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
> > Subject: [lbo-talk] London Underground's Privatization Experiment Dead as
> > Remaining PPP is Bought Out
> >
> > "Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone sued the government twice in
> > the early 2000s to prevent the full-scale contracting out of
> > maintenance and work on the London Underground, which then-Chancellor
> > of the Exchequer and soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Gordon Brown
> > imposed on to the city beginning in 2003."
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > "One of the largest forays into re-privatization of a public
> > transportation
> > entity in the West has come to an end, less than a third of the way
> > into
> > what was supposed to be a thirty-year commitment."
> >
> > [ ... more at ... ]
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/05/11/london-undergrounds-privatization-experiment-dead-as-remaining-ppp-is-bought-out/
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
>
> --
> *********************************************************
> Alan P. Rudy
> Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
> Central Michigan University
> 124 Anspach Hall
> Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
> 517-881-6319
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>