Public–private partnerships are enjoying a global resurgence in popularity, but there is still much confusion around notions of partnership, what can be learned from our history with partnerships, and what is new about the partnership forms that are in vogue today. Issues around partnership in this sense have emerged in a number of developed societies and can be seen as a ‘post-welfare state’ issue, in that it reflects a common experience in fully evolved welfare systems, especially in Western Europe.
Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are increasingly seen as a way of innovating the production and management of public services. On the other hand, the performance of PPPs has been widely debated.
While public–private partnerships (PPPs) are often analyzed in terms of efficiency, their impact on public values is often neglected. As a result, there is little empirical evidence supporting or rejecting the claim how PPPs can contribute in creating public values.
Although there is an extant literature in OECD countries, evidence on creating public value through PPPs in other contexts is missing. Our paper focuses on Albania, where PPPs are increasingly mentioned as another scheme of private sector intervention in infrastructure and public service delivery.
The Albanian experience with developing PPPs is still relatively recent. The main legal act related to concession contracts is the Law no.125/2013 “Law on concessions and public private partnerships” that abolished the Law on Concessions No. 9663, dated 18.12.2006. These acts constitute the legal framework for promoting the implementation of concession projects financed by the private sector. The new law of concessions and public private partnerships has been developed based on the model of other European PPPs laws and their principles.
From 2013 Albania has implemented PPPs in the transport, energy, water, health, waste management and ICT sectors. Albania’s Economic Reform Program (ERP) 2016 – 2018 contemplates the creation of a unit within the Ministry of Finance to evaluate fiscal risks stemming from all active PPPs and concession contracts that will propose measures to mitigate them, and provide risks assessments to be included in budget document submissions to Parliament.
Despite institutions for planning and procuring PPPs in Albania, capacity and experience, especially at the local level, pose a challenge for PPPs project implementation.
Our research aims at contributing to the literature on PPPs by analysing an often neglected context as that of post-communist countries. We will analyse PPPs through the lenses of the Public value theory.
