The Role of Individual Actors in Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Projects: Insights From Madinah Airport in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The existing literature on infrastructure public-private partnership (PPP) has overstated the mechanistic requirements of PPP projects, the exogenous and isomorphic (i.e., coercive, mimetic, and normative) pressures that lead governments to adopt PPPs, and the importance of PPP-enabling organizational fields. This literature, however, has overlooked the role of individual actors in shaping and affecting the initiation and implementation of PPPs. This chapter addresses this gap in the literature and presents an empirical analysis of the expansion of Madinah Airport via the PPP route in Saudi Arabia. In the face of an unwieldy institutional environment that lacked the prerequisites considered critical by existing PPP literature, the airport’s success through PPP represents an unusual outcome. The chapter argues that, when committed institutional entrepreneurs are supported by sufficient political power, they can overcome broader barriers that have traditionally hampered the uptake of PPPs in developing countries. These results accentuate the impact of individual actors in the implementation of PPP contracts.