Public-Private Partnerships and Urban Governance: Introduction

It is not a very original observation that political institutions frequently find themselves unable to implement their programmes without some form of outside assistance or collaboration (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973).1 Ironically in some ways, the actors who are among the first thought of for offering this assistance are those who are the very targets of the programmes. To some observers, this phenomenon corroborates the ‘limits to politics’ argument, i.e. that modern society is becoming increasingly ‘ungovernable’ and more reflective of norms and values indigenous to private initiatives than of collective decisions and actions (Birch 1984; Crozier et al. 1975; King 1975; Lowi 1979).