No Policy for Public Private Partnership? PPP, Collaboration and Institutions: The Bumpy Road of Transport Policy Development in Denmark

The paper examines how the PPP‐policy has developed in a country with low PPP activity. The paper focuses on the following research questions: How does collaboration occur between the public and private sector in relation to the provision of transport infrastructure and public service? How does policy on PPP evolve, with special emphasis on the transport sector? First, the paper introduces the theoretical framework on policy options focusing on the development from privatization to contracting out and public private partnership. Second, the policy development on PPP and other policy choices in
relation to infrastructure and public service provision in the Danish transport policy is explored through an empirical mapping of a) the general policy on PPP in relation to the transport area from governmental offices focusing on the Danish Ministry of Transport and b) a mapping of existing infrastructure projects and public service provision contracts in the transport sector within roads and busses, bridges and tunnels, rail, airports and aviation and harbors. The projects will be categorized in relation to organizational and financial models and it leads to a. discussion of types of policy choices across the sector and the reasons behind whether or not PPP was chosen. The final part of the paper presents an institutional historical account of the Danish case, and focuses on the more general question of how PPP policy planning evolves. There is no direct step from privatization to contracting out to PPP. The presence and the continued results shown by state owned companies meant that the PPP policy
option was not the immediately preferred option for the Danish government. The point can perhaps be made at a more general level. In countries where there was not a strong privatization policy already, where the PPP policy option did not present itself as the next obvious step, and alternative options were available, the government approach towards PPP is likely to be more reluctant.