The Black Hole of Public Administration

Chapter 9 P3 and “The Porcupine Problem”

CHAPTER 9 P3andThe”PorcupineProblem“ A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again… —Arthur Schopenhauer Introduction In Schopenhauer’s parable, the animals arrive at a solution by maintaining a safe distance from one another, and as a result, while their mutual need for warmth is only moderately satisfied, they do not get pricked. In recent decades, the private, public and social/civic sectors have developed strategies of rapprochement and concertation in the name of greater efficiency, effectiveness and economy. Indeed, public-private partnerships (PPP or P3) have been shown to reduce administrative and operations costs by some 20 to 50 percent in public transportation projects (L. Roy 2003). In other areas, P3s have had mixed performances: great successes, mediocre results, and major failures. 331 332 The Black Hole of Public Administration It is therefore important to understand the causes and sources of such successes and failures, and to develop the basis for some protocols that would tend to increase the probability of positive outcomes. This is a tall order for a short chapter. Public-private partnerships—be they bipartite or multipartite —clearly pose a porcupine problem that needs to be resolved somehow. The completely different logics and mechanics of coordinationthatunderpinprivate,publicandsocialorganizations may, if properly harnessed, lead either to impressive synergies, innovation and higher productivity, or to a good deal of waste. To make the highest and best use of P3s, however, one must elicit the conditions for the best warmth/prickliness ratio. Many have chosen to resolve the porcupine problem by walking away from it: vilifying the P3 process entirely, damning it as fundamentally contre-nature. Others have uncritically embraced this new form of mixed organization, and have been in denial vis-à-vis the substantial evidence that it has often failed miserably. A third group (to which we belong) has felt that the benefits of P3s can be substantial, but that they cannot be obtained unless certain conditions are met. This chapter analyzes the porcupine problem posed by P3s, and suggests a workable set of conditions that promise some value adding, and as little prickling as possible: moderate warmth and safe distance. Section 1 presents some basic economics and politics of the P3 process, some features of the different stages in that process, and a short primer on the centrality of well-executed contractual arrangements. Section 2 deals very briefly with the strong ideological opposition that has been mounted against such arrangements in some ‘progressive’ circles. Section 3 derives some lessons from our examination of a wide range of experiences in Canada and abroad, and suggests some levers that might be used to ensure a much greater probability of success for P3s. The conclusion tries to explain why the debates around P3s have been so unenlightening, and have developed such a fundamentalist tone. 333 P3 and The “Porcupine Problem” The political economy and contractual nature of the P3 process Governments cannot necessarily dispatch, solo, the complete range of tasks associated with the provision of all public or mixed public/private goods in the most effective, efficient and economical way. Many state monopolies have come under attack for their ineffectiveness, inefficiency and lack of innovativeness. Some forms of partnering with the private or social sectors have been shown to produce better results for taxpayers. As a result, reform-minded (and cash-strapped) governments have extended the concept of contracting out to a wider range of public activities, and significantly expanded the scope of the work done in partnership with other sectors (Bettignies and Ross 2004). These partnerships are hybrid arrangements that have been quite varied in terms of the targeted results, the geographical terrain encompassed, and the range of rationales of their instigators (Vaillancourt Rosenau 2000). The public activities that are involved range widely as well: from infrastructure to the reengineering of both ‘clean’ services (such as civil air navigation or revenue collection) and ‘dirty’ ones (e.g., water, sewage and energy), to experimenting with de-institutionalizing persons with intellectual disabilities, and increasing collaboration with the voluntary or cooperative sectors on a variety of fronts. These arrangements have been designed to take maximum advantage of the relatively better performance, for certain tasks, of the different basic integrating mechanisms...