Public works: better, faster, cheaper infrastructure?

Abstract

Abstract Are public-private partnerships (P3s) better, faster, and cheaper, as their proponents suggest? If P3s do not deliver on those promises, how might we explain their perennial appeal? Mutation and malleability have been part of the P3 story since the very beginning. This includes procurement arguments offered in favour of P3s, developments in private finance, and the leading forms of project development. Shapeshifting has, in turn, reconfigured the nature and purpose of public services and works, affecting the ease, possibility, and desirability of returning to the “public” option. Overcoming P3s requires more than addressing issues of profitmaking from public services, a common concern on the Left. It equally calls for addressing how P3s have reconfigured the “public interest” and reoriented state decisionmaking.