Public-Private Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Exploring Their Design and Its Impact on Effectiveness

The 17 Goals cover all crucial policy areas to secure a sustainable future including education, health, economic development, social protection, environmental protection, and natural resources governance. Which actors are involved, do private actors contribute significantly to policy outcomes, does the integration of private actors in the policy process possibly create unintended effects, how are relationships between actors in a public-private partnership governed, etc. are all questions which are open to investigation and debate. Effectiveness can refer to impact on the ground of certain projects and initiatives to reach specific policy goals (goal-attainment effectiveness, i.e. contributions by Yang; Zheng et al.; Franssen et al., and Ingram et al. this volume), lead to increased adoption of private governance mechanisms scaling up their potential impact (process-effectiveness, Marx this volume) or contribute to an increase in recognition of certain public-private initiatives as the most appropriate governance approach to address certain policy issues (constitutive effectiveness, i.e., Tellbro et al., Martens et al.; Moratis; Schouten, and Hospes this volume). [...]it is suggested that, in terms of establishing sustainable development as the core value of PPPs, a fundamental change in the understanding of PPPs as governance scheme rather than a pragmatic economic tool is required.