Political opportunism and transaction costs in contractual choice of public–private partnerships

Abstract

Abstract The New Public Management (NPM) has achieved many successes in public service delivery, but practitioners frequently observed failures in developing and transitional economies. For instance, China's public–private partnerships (PPP) since 2014 have failed to transfer risks to the private sector, to involve private skills and expertise, and to reduce local government's debt. This article claims that PPP failures in China are associated with the contractual type of nonconcessions and the contractual choice is influenced by both political opportunism and transaction costs. Utilizing data of PPP projects in China during 2014–2016, we find that more opportunistic bureaucrats seek to increase projects of nonconcessions, but transaction costs caused by product complexities hinder governments' reliance on nonconcessions. This research extends the core analysis of PPPs in the literature from transaction costs to political opportunism, which widely exists in developing and transitional economies. Thus, our findings partially explain the failure of their NPM practices. 新公共管理运动在公共服务供给领域取得了瞩目的成就，但在发展中国家与转型经济体中也经历过挫折。例如，自2014年以来，中国推行的政府与社会资本合作(PPP)模式就未能实现将风险转移到私营部门、引入私营部门的技术和经验及减轻地方政府的债务负担的初衷。正鉴于此，在2017年时，中国财政部对PPP项目进行了大范围的整改。针对这一现象，本文理论分析认为，其主要原因在于地方政府采用了大量非特许经营合同，而该类合同具有低风险、弱运营及政府付费的特征。政府之所以选择此类合同，则基于政治机会主义与交易成本两个方面的考量。进一步，本文基于中国2014–2016年PPP项目的数据，通过实证研究发现:地方主政官员晋升压力越大，其短期拉动GDP增长的动机越强，从而通过非特许经营合同上马的基建项目就越多；但是，项目自身的复杂性会导致非特许经营合同在长期产生高昂的交易成本，从而抑制地方政府上马此类项目。本研究将PPP的研究视角从交易成本拓展到政治机会主义，从而更为全面地阐述了新公共管理运动在转型国家更易遭遇挫折的原因。

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