Equalities in Public Private Partnerships (EQUIPPPS)

该提案寻求为一个战略网络提供资金，以确定研究差距，并制定发展中国家四个部门的公私伙伴关系研究议程：教育、卫生、住房和水。公私伙伴关系在公共服务的筹资和提供方面发挥着越来越重要的作用。它们被认为有可能解决全球南方在提供和获得公共服务方面的不平等问题。因此，它们被宣传为支持可持续发展目标的重要发展筹资机制(见SDG 17.3和第三届联合国发展筹资首脑会议亚的斯亚贝巴宣言，2015年7月)。然而，购买力平价的出现并不新鲜。它们于20世纪80年代首次出现在全球北部，作为更广泛的基础设施发展战略的一部分。购买力平价是在不增加公共部门债务的情况下筹集资金的一种手段。它们还被誉为通过私营部门代理人的更多参与来避免被认为是公共部门不足的一种方式，据称具有效率和成本效益优势。到1990年代末期，一些双边和多边机构正在全球南方推广公私伙伴关系，以解决日益增长的公共服务需求，并在过去几年加强了有利于公私伙伴关系的宣传努力。然而，关于发展中世界各部门内部和跨部门的购买力平价影响的学术工作仍然严重缺乏。批评人士认为，没有足够的证据支持围绕购买力平价推定的好处及其促进减贫或解决不平等问题的更广泛能力的许多主张和假设。在得出关于公私伙伴关系有效性的结论时，另一个令人担忧的问题是，公私伙伴关系的研究往往停留在具体部门的孤岛上，未能处理跨部门的联系、挑战或见解。这限制了对公私伙伴关系的总体评价，将其作为克服公共部门不足的手段。此外，购买力平价是一个宽泛的术语，涵盖了不同部门的广泛安排，可以有多种不同的解释(IOB，2013；Languille，2016；Romero，2015)。这需要在试图从发展中国家的购买力平价成果中吸取教训的过程中解脱出来。最后，目前对公私伙伴关系的推动和反对在很大程度上都未能解决有关特定区域和国家的公共和私营部门的性质和历史的一些根本问题。公共和私营部门构成要素的复杂性(行为者的类型)、公私伙伴关系的性质(关系的类型)及其结果，包括与公平有关的结果(影响的类型)仍有待调查。该网络力求解决以下问题：需要了解跨部门的公私伙伴关系进程、在实践中如何执行公私伙伴关系以及其影响在不平等动态方面的性质。该网络将把学者、政策制定者、发展从业者和其他利益攸关方聚集在一起，建立能力，将公私伙伴关系作为应对发展挑战的解决办法进行审问。特别是，它寻求通过利用不同学科和部门来源的学术和非学术专业知识来促进跨部门和跨学科的受精。该网络将围绕位于印度和南非的两个枢纽组织，并协调位于英国的网络活动。它将进行范围确定工作，举行各种协商会议和最后的全面网络会议。它通过博士生辅导部分体现了早期职业生涯和能力建设因素，并将通过网站、内联网、其他形式的社交媒体和提供网络活动的网络链接，在网络内外实施积极的交流战略。

This proposal seeks funding for a Strategic Network to identify research gaps and formulate a research agenda on Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in developing countries across four sectors: education, health, housing and water. PPPs increasingly play a significant role in the financing and delivery of public services. They are deemed to offer potential for addressing inequalities in provision and access to public services across the Global South. As such, they are promoted as an important development financing mechanism in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (see SDG 17.3 and the Addis Ababa Declaration of the Third United Nations Financing for Development Summit, July 2015). The occurrence of PPPs, however, is not new. They first emerged in the Global North in the 1980s as part of a wider strategy of infrastructure development. PPPs were presented as a means to raise finance without increasing public sector debt. They were also heralded as a way to avoid perceived public sector inadequacies through greater involvement of private sector agents with alleged efficiency and cost effectiveness advantages. By the late 1990s, PPPs were being promoted across the Global South by a number of bilateral and multilateral agencies as the solution to growing demands for public services and the advocacy efforts in favour of PPPs have strengthened in the last few years. Yet, there remains an acute lack of scholarly work on the effects of PPPs within and across sectors in the developing world. Critics have argued that there is insufficient evidence to support many of the claims and assumptions surrounding the presumed benefits of PPPs and their wider ability to contribute to poverty reduction or to address inequalities. Another concern in drawing conclusions regarding the effectiveness of PPPs is that PPP research has tended to remain in sector-specific silos and has failed to address cross-sectoral linkages, challenges or insights. This constrains evaluations of PPPs in general as a means to overcome inadequacies in the public sector. Further, PPP is a loose term that covers a wide range of arrangements across different sectors and it is open to a diverse range of interpretations (IOB, 2013; Languille, 2016; Romero, 2015). This needs unpicking in an attempt to draw lessons regarding PPP outcomes in the developing world. Finally, both the current promotion of and opposition to PPPs largely fail to address some fundamental questions regarding the nature and history of both the public and private sectors in particular regions and countries. The complexities of what constitutes the public and private sectors (types of actors), the nature of PPP partnerships (types of relationships), and their outcomes including with regard to equity (types of impacts) remain to be investigated. This network seeks to address the need to understand PPP processes across sectors, how PPPs are implemented in practice and what the nature of their effects are in terms of dynamics of inequalities. The network will bring together academics, policy makers, development practitioners and other stakeholders to build capacity to interrogate PPPs as a solution to development challenges. In particular, it seeks to foster cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary fertilization by drawing on academic and non-academic expertise of varying disciplinary and sectoral origin. The network will be organised around two hubs located in India and South Africa, with the co-ordination of network activities located in the UK. It will engage in scoping exercises, hold various consultative meetings and a final full network meeting. It embodies an early-careers and capacity building element through a doctoral student mentoring component and will engage in an active communication strategy both within the network and beyond through a website, intranet, other forms of social media, and provision of web-links to network activities.