ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines definitions of public private partnerships (PPPs), locates the emergence of PPPs in different sectors in historical context, and discusses the literature which has looked at PPPs across different sectors, noting the theoretical resources deployed. It discusses the significant role played by PPPs in promoting materially and ideologically the shift to private finance in public sector provision. PPPs have proliferated in high, middle-, and low-income countries since the mid-2000s. The chapter offers a range of empirical case studies, of how PPPs have played out in practice across different sectors and different geographical locations, with a specific focus on the implications for inequalities. It considers some features associated with the structures, agents, and discourses associated with PPPs in different sectors that tend towards addressing or entrenching inequalities. The World Bank database on Private Participation in Infrastructure only includes data on economic infrastructure, that is energy, telecommunications, transport, water and sewerage.
