Public-private partnerships in development policy: Strategic and infrastructure approaches

Since the early 1990s, international organisations such as the World Bank and the United Nations have promoted the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in development policy through several initiatives, including the Global Compact and, more recently, the Sustainable Development Goals. Consequently, today's businesses are considered development partners rather than pariahs, and PPPs are increasingly used as a development tool. However, PPPs in development constitute a muddled concept, and empirical studies evaluating the effects of development PPPs are still limited. This chapter sets out to answer the following questions: what characterises PPPs in development policy and to what extent are PPPs used in practice to promote development? Based on a literature review, this chapter identifies two main approaches to PPPs in development policy and exemplifies their use in practice with data from the World Bank and the United Nations.