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The political cost of public–private partnerships: Theory and evidence from Colombian infrastructure development
Author(s) -
Angulo Amaya Maria Camila,
Bertelli Anthony Michael,
Woodhouse Eleanor Florence
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.46
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1468-0491
pISSN - 0952-1895
DOI - 10.1111/gove.12443
Subject(s) - crowds , politics , voting , context (archaeology) , public good , public economics , distributive property , economics , public management , business , public administration , public relations , political science , microeconomics , paleontology , computer security , mathematics , computer science , pure mathematics , law , biology
Infrastructure public–private partnerships (PPPs) eschew traditional public management to provide distributive goods worldwide. Yet, in Colombia, the context of our study, both the promise of and voters' experience with PPPs hinder incumbent parties in elections when theories of distributive politics expect otherwise. We argue that negative experiences with PPPs introduce a sociotropic turn in individual voting: bad experience crowds out the possibility that promising a new project will improve a voter's own welfare. Studying what are, to our knowledge, all 109 Colombian PPP projects between 1998 and 2014, and over 8,700 individual survey responses, our evidence shows that vote intention for the incumbent executive or his party decreases as experience with more PPPs in respondents' districts increases. Our analysis and results introduce an important agenda for research into the political significance of these legacies of new public management.