ABSTRACT
The concept of public–private partnership might seem to be a novel concept emerging in the world in the 1990s. Pursuant to privatization of state-owned undertakings in the 1980s, the Conservative government in the UK introduced the private finance initiative in 1992. The Labour Government rebranded the policy in 1997 as public–private partnerships and extended it to include other variations such as concession and joint venture (Shaoul 2009, 2). Nonetheless, the concept of public–private partnerships, as a framework concept, in fact contains various forms some of which, for instance concessions, have been used in Europe from Roman times and even earlier (Van Garsse 2008, 222). Origins of public–private partnerships could therefore be traced back to ancient times. The nature of partnership between public and private sectors has varied according to time, place and objectives of actors involved (English and Skellern 2005, 1–21). These public–private partnerships generally diminished in the beginning of the twentieth century in which the role of the state broadened and the involvement of public authorities within the provision of public services and infrastructure increased. They then re-emerged in the 1990s. It would not be wrong to assert that public–private partnerships have enjoyed world-wide resurgence with the intertwined and interconnected terms globalization, neoliberalism and the New Public Management approach.
