Key mechanisms of the accountability process in public-private partnerships

Abstract

This article brings together empirical academic research on accountability in Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). Via a systematic literature review, we explored how well grounded are concerns about PPPs eroding accountability. We investigated over 50 publications on PPPs, published between 1983 and 2017. These studies were analysed in lights of a categorisation framework of publications to map out the process through which accountability takes place in practice for PPPs. Four key accountability mechanisms stand out in our analysis: behaviour, information, evaluation and sanction. Based upon this analysis, we identified four main account-holders and the mechanisms they employ to participate in the overall accountability process of PPPs. Since none of them can exert full control over the mechanisms of accountability available to them, we argue that this unbalanced and chaotic state of contradicting and overlapping demands of accountability indeed generates accountability deficits, but it can be turned into an advantage if interdependency and complementarity between account-holders is further validated.