Conclusion: Public–private relations in the wild

In this conclusion, the authors draw on their readings of all the contributions in 'The Politics of Public–Private Partnerships and International Development: Insights from Ethiopia' to highlight the contributors’ insights and the connections between them, as well as suggest new directions and questions that have been opened up by the volume’s collective analysis. The chapters in this volume illuminate how the PPP agenda is rendered in markedly different ways as it moves from policy to practice despite sustained efforts to refine PPP frameworks and claims about their importance for achieving the UN SDGs and reducing the international development finance gap. By tracing partnership relations over time and across borders within and beyond Ethiopia, the contributors to this volume shed light on messy constellations of actors, institutions and relations that fit – although often uneasily – under the PPP umbrella. They follow public and private configurations, from beer breweries to textile exporters to housing and hospitals, in international development cooperation and around the windowless conference rooms of the World Bank. In this conclusion, the authors suggest that the unruliness, inconsistencies and arbitrariness that emerge through these cases indicate that PPPs can be fruitfully reframed not only as wild but also as situated in the wild.

This chapter is part of the book 'The Politics of Public–Private Partnerships and International Development'.