ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a variety of public-private arrangements that exemplify the concept of "mixed" administration in which regulatory responsibility is shared. The most common example of public-private cooperation in governance takes the form of agencies contracting with private non-profit and for-profit firms to provide social services. Privatization is an imprecise term; scholars use it to describe very different phenomena, including the sale of state-owned assets, deregulation, and contracting out the provision of goods and services. A contractual system relies on judicial enforcement of the private law of contract at the behest of the supervising agency rather than judicial enforcement of administrative law principles at the behest of private citizens. The imposition of rigorous legal procedures, together with oversight by a body which is itself accountable to the electorate are not the only mechanisms for ensuring the legitimacy of public-private arrangements.
