Reconceptualising Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in global public policy
PurposeThe paper provides historical outlook on different trends in PPPs in global public policy. The purpose of this paper is to reject the essentialist and neoliberal approach to PPPs by critically evaluating both normative and empirical arguments within existing literature.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws its methodological lineages to nonlinear historical narrative around the concept and construction of the idea and language of “PPPs”. The paper follows discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003) to locate the way in which PPPs were incorporated within the language of global public policy.FindingsThe paper finds that most of the existing literature looks at managerial, operational, functional and essentialist aspects of PPPs. Therefore, the paper argues that critical success of PPPs depends on its social value for the common good with an emancipatory outlook.Originality/valueThe paper argues to move beyond functional aspects of PPPs and locate emancipatory possibilities within the praxis of global public policy.