ABSTRACT
Public-private partnerships have been developed in many countries around the world in the context of radical programmes of ‘new public management’ (NPM) reform.1 Some commentators have argued that the NPM phenomenon adds up to a ‘new global paradigm’, while others have been much more sceptical.2 Certainly these reform programmes have taken very different forms in the countries that have embraced them, but common elements in many such programmes have included a movement towards ‘marketizing’ the state sector by way of privatization, decentralization of functions and responsibilities, contracting out services and creating ‘internal markets’ (separating responsibility for the provision of public services from the responsibility for purchasing those services on behalf of the consumer) and, of course, central to the purpose of this study-the promotion of partnerships of one kind or another between the state sector and the private and voluntary sectors.
