Governance of Public-Private Partnerships: A Case Study of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq’s Electricity Sector

Abstract

This thesis is focused on the most salient area within the public private partnerships (PPPs) literature, namely, the concern about the attainment of the public interest. Accordingly, it addresses the gap identified in the PPP research field with regards to assessing the governance of PPPs from a broader stakeholder perspective and investigating the question of how the public interest could be served. The fundamental ideas of the Strategic Choice Framework (SCF) are adopted for this study as a means to explore democratic governance and to examine the performance of the market-based reform of the important strategic sector of electricity, and how PPP projects might be in the public interest. The thesis enriches our understanding of PPPs through a unique case study investigation of a developing economy, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).

In evaluating PPP project performance, the study incorporates the concept of ‘practice of contracting’ to the SCF to assess dynamic economic efficiency. The study shows that the choice of adopting PPP projects to reform the electricity sector has not been based upon the diverse and democratically chosen wider public objectives. The KRI’s electricity sector case shows that the wider stakeholder objectives of developing the electricity sector through PPPs should be incorporated in order to attain outcomes that are in the public interest. The research also explores the governance structure of PPPs and the electricity sector as a whole to identify the governance issues and their implications for wider stakeholder interests. The study suggests public participation in PPP governance and the design of an effective process to engage stakeholders so as to have ‘voice’ in the strategic decision-making and development processes. The study incorporates the Senecah’s (2004) ‘Trinity of Voice’ concept in order to examine the ways in which stakeholder engagement in the strategic decision-making process can be effective.

Date of Award	19 Jun 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Rob Branston (Supervisor) & Phil Tomlinson (Supervisor)