AW: [governance] 3P or 3C

Sat Nov 17 15:48:37 EST 2007

Asmat,

I don't know the details of the initiative you are pointing to and my
apologies to all for a somewhat glib reponse.

The issues of PPP's and so on are very important ones in this context as
(based on an earlier note), PPP's are it appears, the operative arm of MSP's
which seems of such interest and enthusiasm among Civil Society folks at
least.

Based on a casual review and a range of personal experiences (including I
should add in the Canadian geomatics context in an earlier lifetime), the
results are decidedly mixed.

In the instance you have pointed to, the website, as with previous
iterations of Canadian government attempts to generate a geomatics industry
in Canada is sponsored (and I presume paid for) by the Canadian government
i.e. taxpayers.  My prediction is that (as with previous such initiatives)
the site and the infrastructure it represents will continue as long as the
Canadian government continues to pump money in and will collapse once that
is withdrawn. 

Nothing wrong with this, and I personally think that developing a Canadian
geomatics industry is a suitable target for Canadian government funding, but
I would be very careful about calling it a "partnership" which to my
definition implies shared risk/shared reward.  In this (and parallel
instances) the risk i.e. expenditure is all on the public sector side, while
the (immediate) reward is gained by the private sector "partners" (the
argument being that the public reward comes in the longer term with
increased jobs, tax revenues etc.etc.).

But this is small potatoes compared to the situation in other sectors where
for example various governments have guaranteed private investments in
public infrastructure (schools, roads, hospitals) and so on and where the
risks (and costs) of often grotesque cost overruns have been borne by the
public sector while the ultimate returns are structured to the benefit of
the private sector "partners" and dare I say without any sort of look in by
Civil Society.

For an in-depth review of the UN's experience in this area see below.

MG

Beyond Pragmatism: Appraising UN-Business Partnerships
Authors: Ann Zammit, Peter Utting
Programme Area: Markets, Business and Regulation
Paper No.: 1
Code: PP-MBR-1
No. of Pages: 63
< <http://snipurl.com/un_ppp> http://snipurl.com/un_ppp>

In recent years, the United Nations (UN) has emerged as one of the 
principal proponents of public-private partnerships (PPPs), considered 
by many to be a key instrument of development and an ideal to be 
emulated. The authors of this paper argue that idealizing the concept 
and its normative content, as well as the feel-good discourse that 
infuses much of the mainstream literature, risk diverting attention away 
from various tensions and contradictions that characterize UN-business 
partnerships (UN-BPs) and that raise questions about their contribution 
to equitable development and democratic governance. Both the theory and 
practice of partnerships suggest that thinking and policy need to go 
beyond evidence and assumptions about "good governance" and pragmatism.

The paper identifies key ideational, institutional, political and 
economic forces that have driven the PPP phenomenon, only some of which 
are recognized in the mainstream literature. This analysis reveals the 
multiple, sometimes contradictory agendas and interests involved. The 
authors argue that if the contribution of UN-BPs to equitable 
development is to be adequately assessed, these diverse logics 
underpinning partnerships need to be identified and addressed.

"Partnership" has become an infinitely elastic concept, and the authors 
suggest that it is essential to unbundle the notion, by analysing the 
different activities and relationships subsumed under various 
partnerships in order to reflect on their contribution to equitable 
development. A review of UN-BPs suggests that, unless the UN's 
partnering work is founded on greater conceptual clarity and more robust 
analytical frameworks, it will be difficult to make useful comparisons 
or draw practical conclusions.

The paper outlines the growing number of partnerships across the UN 
spectrum and notes the recent emphasis placed on mainstreaming and 
scaling up partnership activities in the UN system. The authors argue 
that the case for scaling-up, and how this should be done, rests on 
whether it can be plausibly demonstrated that such scaling-up would, in 
and of itself, have a decisive impact on the problems or issues at 
stake. Both the theory of partnerships and empirical studies that have 
been carried out on actual experiences suggest that it is crucial to 
study the effects of such partnerships from a political economy 
perspective: will they strengthen local capacities or simply facilitate 
faster and deeper penetration of foreign capital and globalization; are 
they really compatible with the nature, mandates and priorities of the 
UN in general and UN agencies in particular; and how do they affect 
power relations among different development actors and institutions?

From the above analysis, the authors conclude that there is a need to 
develop a more active, critical intellectual culture in and around UN 
partnership activities. This would involve the UN moving beyond the 
present emphasis on accumulating and showcasing best practice examples 
of partnerships, and devoting greater resources and energies to 
developing and applying methodological tools that facilitate ex-ante and 
ex-post assessments of the immediate or direct development impacts of 
partnerships, as well as of their wider development implications.

It is essential to devote greater attention to seeing the bigger picture 
and to take account of key contributions, contradictions and trade-offs. 
This requires both the development of a panoply of evaluation methods 
that go beyond some conventional tools, and a broader conceptual 
framework regarding development than that which currently informs the 
UN-BP arena. For example, focusing on foreign direct investment, 
linkages between transnational corporations (TNCs) and small and 
medium-sized enterprise, and privatization as an objective or outcome of 
partnerships, is problematic from the perspective of equitable 
development. Corporate social and environmental responsibility, net 
balance-of-payments flows, value added, transfer pricing and the 
crowding out of domestic competitors, among other things, also need to 
be included in the reckoning.
While impact assessment has not been a priority of UN agencies promoting 
partnerships, some measures have been taken to reform the operating and 
normative environment of UN-BPs. The paper pays particular attention to 
reforms related to accountability, mainly in relation to the United 
Nations Global Compact, as well as the issues of decentralization and 
local ownership of partnerships.

The authors emphasize the need to be more selective about which 
partnerships potentially contribute to the fundamental goals of the UN. 
Among other criteria, they highlight the principle of "policy coherence" 
in the sense of avoiding ad hoc interventions where there is a 
disconnect from core government or agency policy, or a situation where 
one policy or governance approach contradicts another, as illustrated in 
the cases of some partnerships associated with water privatization, or 
global health funds that generate tensions in relation to public health 
policy.

In spite of the complexity involved, it is incumbent on the UN, as a 
leading institution in the field of international development, to 
reflect on how partnerships relate to particular patterns of 
development. However, critical thinking in the UN on its relationship 
with the private sector in general, and partnerships with TNCs in 
particular, has been marginalized in recent years.

Given its key roles in promoting partnerships and as a learning forum, 
it is important for the Global Compact to accelerate its efforts to move 
beyond best practice learning and embrace "critical thinking". This 
would require greater intellectual pluralism and interactions with a 
wider range of subdisciplines and research institutions, as well as with 
civil society organizations that are organically linked to social 
movements. Without this balance of intellectual and social forces, the 
Global Compact runs the risk of doing as much to legitimize corporate 
power as promote inclusive and equitable patterns of development.

-----Original Message-----
From: Asmat Ali [mailto:asmatali at yahoo.com] 
Sent: November 17, 2007 11:24 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; michael gurstein
Subject: RE: RE: AW: [governance] 3P or 3C

MG, pls see this , it is exactly from the sphere where you live i.e. Canada

http://cgdi.gc.ca/en/aboutcgdi.html

michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

Nope, Asmat -- not where I live, whatever the text books or theory might be
peddling these days.

And the idea that these PPP's might include civil society (at least in
Canada) is not even on the radar...

(I should add that in the ICT area that I know best, in Canada there are
Public/NGO "partnerships" which in practice are ways for government to
outsource their public (and legislated) responsibilities (and overhead
costs) to the already completely underfunded and over-burdened Not for
Profit sector. 

MG

-----Original Message-----
From: asmatali at yahoo.com [mailto:asmatali at yahoo.com] 
Sent: November 17, 2007 10:41 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: RE: AW: [governance] 3P or 3C

michael gurstein, I guess that you have changed the order unintentionally ,
it is private sector which takes risk and public sector takes benefits.

Regards
asmat ____________________________________________________________
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Asmat Ali 
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