Global Goals Yearbook 2018

REALIGNING PARTNERSHIPS
Act
Plan
Check
Do
stakeholders. However, MSPs do not ensure inclusiveness and
results-orientation.
From PPP to ABC: New mindsets
The term public–private partnership defines who owns the
partnership – public actors and private actors – and not
what its purpose is. Partnerships for the SDGs should instead
be described in a way that reflects the actors as well as their
purposes. I propose to call the new partnerships “administration–business–civil
society” (ABC) partnerships. The administrative
partners strive for solutions that serve the commons.
The business partners strive to create added value in a context
of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development.
Civil society organizations (CSOs) strive to maximize
the interests of the groups/people/topics they represent in a
context of social responsibility and sustainable development.
ABC partnerships could be used to address a wide variety of
issues, such as administrative decentralization; small-scale
and direct democracy; transparent access and participation;
green growth; steady-state economies and the challenge of the
growth paradigm; and the implications of the precautionary
principle and the polluter-pays principle. They could build
on the different strengths of business, civil society, and governmental
partners. But this probably needs a reorientation
of the goals of all three parties: A new mindset.
For administrative partners, the new goal could be to achieve
concrete targets in alliance with societal partners while achieving
mutual gains, instead of just cost-savings and downsizing
government. Efficient governance makes no sense when it is
not effective. For CSO partners, the goal could be to take coresponsibility
for solving societal challenges. Usually, however,
CSOs interact with governments and businesses as advocates
for the common good. Advocacy includes lobbying, convincing,
fundraising, campaigning, protesting, as well as being a
“watch dog.” Engaging in partnerships on an equal footing with
their traditional “opponents” will be a new challenge, although
some are already doing it, and others can learn from them.
For business partners, CSR should become an integrated
objective, in addition to creating added value. Voluntary
and informal initiatives and agreements between the public
and private sectors as well as civil society (such as the “green
deals” established in The Netherlands) should be embedded
in a regulatory coherence framework that sets out the rules
of engagement between different parties. It is becoming clear
that businesses that have signed up for CSR want to be a part of
the implementation of the SDGs. Various CSR networks, such
as the International Network for Corporate Social Responsibility,
which is based in Nigeria, have come to understand that
high quality in government and governance is fundamental to
reaching their objectives. Moreover, where there are so many
fragile states with instable, ineffective administrations, I think
that the social dimension of CSR should also cover assisting in
the development of more robust state organizations. Private
companies may have useful experiences to offer – although
I am not arguing that state organizations should be run like
businesses: That is a mistake from the past, when New Public
Management was the predominant paradigm.
PPPs and MSPs have traditionally been implemented on a
“North–South axis” within the aid-development paradigm.
However, as the SDGs call for universal application, there is
a need to develop a new implementation basis, which will be
different than in the past with regard to purpose (better, not
just cheaper results), vision (keep implementation holistic,
inclusive, and oriented toward the long term), scope (not only
North–South, but also North–North and South–South), and
roles (each partner can take up a leadership role).
Why PPPs need to transform into ABCs
Unfortunately, several PPPs have left a legacy of large disasters,
and these examples may serve to show what should not be
repeated. One of the worst PPPs was perhaps the water project
in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where the Bolivian government and
a private company worked together for several years around
2000 to develop infrastructure for water supplies for the
public. Partly funded by the World Bank and implemented
by a private company more interested in profit than in serving
the public – and with little serious support from the
authorities – the project inspired large-scale riots, which were
followed by police brutality that left several people injured
or killed. For PPPs to have a future, stronger accountability
and transparency measures would be needed. In their paper
“Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships for Implementing the 2030
Agenda,” Marianne Beisheim and Nils Simon have already
drafted detailed proposals on this. Moreover, adding civil society
to PPPs as an afterthought is not enough: Putting wings
on a car does not ensure that it will fly; it is still a car. Success
criteria for ABC partnerships could be distilled from existing
good practices all over the world: These practices constitute
the essence – or as the English expression goes, the “ABCs”
– of partnerships for the SDGs.
Global Goals Yearbook 2018
69