Building public trust through publicprivate partnerships
By: BREWER, Brian
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Contributor(s): HAYLLAR, Mark R.
Material type: 
ArticlePublisher: Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage publications, Sept. 2005International Review of Administrative Sciences 71, 3, p. 475-492Abstract: Collaborative working through publicprivate partnerships, though not new, has become more common. Strong partnerships are built and sustained by norms of reliability consistent with the high levels of systemic trust that the principles of good governance encourage. This article examines two publicprivate partnerships in Hong Kong in which government actions have severely undermined the trust necessary for the publicprivate partnership model to work effectively. In the first case, the trust established through a long-standing government/civil society partnership in the delivery of school-based education has been dissipated by acrimonious public wrangling over the autonomy of the service providers. The second case focuses on a large-scale infrastructure project to build an arts hub on redeveloped land. Policy inconsistencies by the Hong Kong government, together with deep suspicions about the extent to which large, well-connected businesses have influenced the projects development, have seriously undermined the trust of arts community stakeholders and the general public.
Collaborative working through publicprivate partnerships, though not new, has become more common. Strong partnerships are built and sustained by norms of reliability consistent with the high levels of systemic trust that the principles of good governance encourage. This article examines two publicprivate partnerships in Hong Kong in which government actions have severely undermined the trust necessary for the publicprivate partnership model to work effectively. In the first case, the trust established through a long-standing government/civil society partnership in the delivery of school-based education has been dissipated by acrimonious public wrangling over the autonomy of the service providers. The second case focuses on a large-scale infrastructure project to build an arts hub on redeveloped land. Policy inconsistencies by the Hong Kong government, together with deep suspicions about the extent to which large, well-connected businesses have influenced the projects development, have seriously undermined the trust of arts community stakeholders and the general public.
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