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The public sector is increasingly collaborating with the private sector in the development of large-scale public infrastructure projects. However, the difficulties arising due to working across organizational boundaries are often detrimental to project performance. This article argues that boundary-spanning activities can enhance the quality of collaboration and subsequently the performance of projects. Boundary spanners utilize relational governance mechanisms and undertake conscious endeavors for building interorganizational relationships by engaging in activities, such as coordination and communication with the stakeholders. The data for this study are composed of 158 survey responses from lead public managers involved in Dutch national public infrastructure projects. The data are analyzed using structural equation modeling. The study demonstrates that the quality of collaboration has a significant impact on the performance of the project during the implementation phase. Further, we find that the different boundary-spanning activities are interconnected and that they have a significant positive relationship on project performance, with a mediating effect of collaboration. The study concludes that, and shows how boundary spanners are vital to the collaborative processes through which public infrastructure projects are implemented.

Actors' toolset to affect institutional change by doing institutional design is limited because criteria for effective institutional design are often too general and abstract. This paper aims to identify institutional design strategies and explore how they influence institutional change. The theoretical framework builds on Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development framework to map institutional change, and it identifies six institutional design strategies: framing, puzzling, powering, network composition, network outcomes, and network interaction. A comparative case study on Dutch infrastructure renewal opportunities – one case's institutional design interventions attained collective renewal, the other did not – maps institutional change in decision-making rounds through institutional directions. Key findings include that institutional change of position, boundary, choice, and information rules first is conducive to collective action. Moreover, mimicry of especially choice rules is pivotal. Furthermore, institutional design strategies have a configurational nature: microlevel strategies have mesolevel consequences, and some configurations instigate change, whereas others cause dynamic inertia.

With the aim to successfully implement infrastructure, implementation arrangements increasingly assign responsibilities for network management to private actors. In the literature, two types of network management strategies are distinguished: process design and institutional design. To date, research has focused on either of these strategies. Moreover, while private actors aim to use the institutional capital built in the network before the private actor was introduced, the role of institutional capital in network management is often overlooked. Taking these research gaps together, we aim to explore the relationship between the two network management strategies and the intermediating role of institutional capital. We compare three cases of infrastructure implementation from the Netherlands. We find that institutional design strategies, through setting the network rules in the implementation arrangement, can ignite a virtuous or a vicious circle, respectively, hindering or enhancing opportunities for network management through process design.

This article presents an ex-post evaluation of the performance of Dutch Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) infrastructure projects compared to Design and Construct (D&C) contracts, which uses quantitative (financial project data and survey) and qualitative (interviews) data. Drawing on institutional theory, notably the economic institutionalism inspired-contractual perspective and the sociological institutionalism-oriented collaborative perspective, the evaluation focuses on four performance indicators—cost, time, quality, and innovation—and five public–private partnership (PPP) performance drivers—private financing, performance-dependent payments, bundling (i.e., the integrated nature of contracts), risk transfer, and collaboration. It was found that the DBFM projects performed similarly to, or better than, the D&C contracts. The impact of bundling on innovation was positive, while its impact on quality was inconclusive. The collaboration proved to be a strong driver for performance and innovation but was not stronger in DBFM projects compared to D&C projects. Over time, collaboration and performance improved suggesting that besides project characteristics, PPP performance is influenced by the way actors deal with contracts and by the gradual process by which they learn to do so. Theoretically, this means that historical institutionalism is part of the explanation of PPP performance.

The theory of collaborative advantage is a major theory rationalizing the role of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). However, the evidence for the theory in the case of PPPs is weak: the literature lacks studies that compared the actual performance and collaboration of PPPs to that of traditionally procured public projects. The aim of this article is to test the theory of a collaborative advantage of PPPs, focusing on three common performance indicators: time, cost, and perceived project performance. Data were collected on Dutch transport infrastructure projects. PPPs were compared to traditionally procured projects with non-parametric tests and robust regression using weighted least squares estimator. It was found that PPPs have better cost performance but that this performance advantage cannot be attributed to collaboration. Therefore, it is concluded that no evidence was found for the theory of a collaborative advantage of PPPs.

Infrastructure development with public–private partnership (PPP) contracts has been claimed to lead to better performance compared to regular contracts. However, the empirical evidence for this claim is weak. The authors assessed the difference in the actual performance of Dutch infrastructure PPP projects (design–build–finance–maintain: DBFM) compared to regularly procured projects (design-and-construct: D&C). DBFM projects demonstrated significantly better cost performance. IMPACT: Public–private partnerships (PPPs) have been widely used for the development and management of transport infrastructure, such as highways, railways, and waterways. However, hard evidence that PPPs perform better than regularly procured projects is lacking. Existing evidence tends to rely on anecdotal and perceptual data. This paper provides policy-makers and managers with real information about the actual performance and benefits of PPPs.

In this thematic issue we pursue the idea that comparative studies of planning systems are utterly useful for gaining a deeper understanding of learning processes and learning capacity in spatial planning systems. In contemporary planning systems the pressures towards learning and continuous self-transformation are high. On the one hand more and more planning is needed in terms of integration of expertise, policy, local knowledge, and response to long term environmental challenges, while on the other hand the value of planning systems is increasingly questioned and many places witness an erosion of planning institutions. The issue brings together a diversity of contributions that explore different forms of comparative learning and their value for any attempt at reorganization, adaptation and improvement of planning systems.

By transferring risks and responsibilities to the private sector, governments hope that public–private partnerships (PPPs) bring about innovations in transport infrastructure development. Taking the position that a PPP is not equal to outsourcing, this article explores the role of the public partner in innovation in infrastructure PPPs. To this purpose, nine Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) projects in Dutch transport infrastructure development were systematically analyzed with qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The results show that the presence of innovation is associated with multiple, nonexclusive combinations of three conditions: the procurement result of the partnership contract, the composition of the private construction consortium, and the project management by the public partner (i.e., stakeholder management, technical management, and contract management). In particular, the public partner’s choice to enter into a PPP with a construction consortium consisting of a small number of firms is associated with innovation.

Compared to regular contracts, infrastructure development and management through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) is expected to lead to better cost and time performance. However, the evidence for this performance advantage of PPPs is lacking. This article analyzes the performance differences of projects with a Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) contract (a type of PPP) and a Design-and-Construct (D&C) contract. Project performance data were collected (N = 65) from the Project Database of Rijkswaterstaat and analyzed using non-parametric tests. Rijkswaterstaat is the executive agency of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. The results show that DBFM-projects have a significantly higher cost performance than D&C-projects. In particular, DBFM-projects have less additional costs related to technical necessities in the implementation phase. Regarding time performance, DBFM-projects seem to perform better although the difference with D&C-projects is not statistically significant. The article discusses explanations for the performance advantage of PPPs, rooted in principal-agent theory. From this discussion, an agenda is presented for further research into the performance advantage of Public-Private Partnerships.

While institutional analyses often assess whether collective action occurs, scant literature exists on key characteristics of institutional rules and how they affect collective action. Building on the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, this paper aims to identify rule directions and demonstrate how rule directions influence collective action. A rule direction is the particular direction that is provided to the decision-making process by the aggregated rules-in-use of a rule type. We compare two Dutch infrastructure projects, where collective decision-making either was or was not achieved. Our study demonstrates that rule directions provide a systematic and context-sensitive explanation for how institutions influence collective action. Collective action requires active agency regarding rule directions – i.e. (re)directing the diversity of positions, soft-closing the exit of boundaries, sharing and assimilating information, establishing process symmetry in aggregation, and managing reciprocity regarding scope – which can transform the institutional predisposition of sectoral action towards collective action.

This essay introduces and frames the contributions to the special issue on learning and co-evolution in governance. It develops the argument that learning, dark learning and non-learning are necessarily entwined in governance, moreover, entwined in a pattern unique to each governance configuration and path. What can be learned collectively for the common good, what kind of knowledge and learning can be strategically used and shamelessly abused, and which forms of knowledge remain invisible, intentionally and unintentionally, emerges in a history of co-evolution of actors and institutions, power and knowledge, in governance. Learning becomes possible in a particular form of management of observation, of transparency and opacity, where contingency is precariously mastered by governance systems expected to provide certainty for communities.

This paper introduces the concepts and ideas that frame this special issue on co-evolution in governance, and their implications for policy learning and adaptation. It offers a brief overview of co-evolutionary approaches to governance and their elementary connections with systems theories, post-structuralism, institutionalism, and actor-network theory, and explores how they are connected to co-evolution in governance. Co-evolutionary approaches differ from other influential understandings of knowledge and learning in policy and governance. It furthermore presents a typology of learning in governance and systematically discusses how each type is affected by patterns of coevolution in governance.

Policy design has returned as a central topic in public policy research. An important area of policy design study deals with effectively attaining desired policy outcomes by aligning goals and means to achieve policy design fit. So far, only a few empirical studies have explored the relationship between policy design fit and effectiveness. In this paper, we adopt the multilevel framework for policy design to determine which conditions of policy design fit—i.e., goal coherence, means consistency, and congruence of goals and means across policy levels—are necessary and/or sufficient for policy design effectiveness in the context of policy integration. To this end, we performed a qualitative comparative analysis of Dutch regional transport planning including all twelve provinces. Outcomes show no condition is necessary and two combinations of conditions are sufficient for effectiveness. The first sufficient combination confirms what the literature suggests, namely that policy design fit results in policy design effectiveness. The second indicates that the combination goal incoherence and incongruence of goals and means is sufficient for policy design effectiveness. An in-depth interpretation of this counterintuitive result leads to the conclusion that for achieving policy integration the supportive relationship between policy design fit and policy design effectiveness is less straightforward as theory suggests. Instead, results indicate there are varying degrees of coherence, consistency, and congruence that affect effectiveness in different ways. Furthermore, outcomes reveal that under specific circumstances a policy design may be effective in promoting desired policy integration even if it is incoherent, inconsistent, and/or incongruent.

Improving public health requires multiple intervention strategies. Implementing such an intervention mix is supposed to require a multisectoral policy network. As evidence to support this assumption is scarce, we examined under which conditions public health-related policy networks were able to implement an intervention mix. Data were collected (2009-14) from 29 Dutch public health policy networks. Surveys were used to identify the number of policy sectors, participation of actors, level of trust, networking by the project leader, and intervention strategies implemented. Conditions sufficient for an intervention mix (>= 3 of 4 non-educational strategies present) were determined in a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. A multisectoral policy network (>= 7 of 14 sectors present) was neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition. In multisectoral networks, additionally required was either the active participation of network actors (>= 50% actively involved) or active networking by the project leader (monthly contacts with network actors). In policy networks that included few sectors, a high level of trust (positive perceptions of each other's intentions) was needed-in the absence though of any of the other conditions. If the network actors were also actively involved, an extra requirement was active networking by the project leader. We conclude that the multisectoral composition of policy networks can contribute to the implementation of a variety of intervention strategies, but not without additional efforts. However, policy networks that include only few sectors are also able to implement an intervention mix. Here, trust seems to be the most important condition.

Municipalities worldwide are confronted with the need to take long-term decisions about ageing water infrastructure in the face of unpredictable future developments. Previous studies on long-term decision making have proposed solutions targeted at the domain of either politics or planning. This study combines insights from the domains of policy, politics, and planning by using the Multiple Streams Framework to explain what enables municipalities to take forward-looking investment decisions. We combine the configurational MSF perspective with an explicitly configurational method namely fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis and apply this to 40 cases of Dutch municipalities. We conclude that enabling conditions differ for small versus medium-to-large municipalities. Furthermore, forward-looking investment decisions can be achieved regardless of the municipalities' organizational analytical capacity. In fact, and contrasting to the requirement of the MSF, not all streams necessarily have to be present for forward-looking decisions to occur. For medium-to-large municipalities, forward-looking investment decisions are stimulated by: (1) the presence of organizational analytical capacity, (2) transactional/networking political leadership in situations without focusing events, or (3) entrepreneurial/transformative political leadership in situations with focusing events. For small municipalities, forward-looking investment decisions are stimulated by networking/interpersonal political leadership combined with the occurrence of focusing events.

Central to integrated flood risk management is the integration of water management with spatial planning. Existing studies often focus on analyzing the policy instruments in the initiation and planning phases of integrated flood risk management. Little is known, however, about the policy instrument mixes that enable implementation of integrated flood risk management. Therefore, in this article we analyze the Dutch Room for the River program to identify what mixes of policy instruments enable successful integrated flood risk management in the implementation phase. We collected archival and survey data and analyzed 19 implemented projects in the Room for the River program applying Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). We conclude that no single policy instrument is necessary or sufficient for successful implementation. We found three policy instrument mixes: an integrated contract mix, a project management mix, and an outside-government mix.

An important reason to procure transport infrastructure projects through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) is that they are expected to have a better cost performance compared to regular infrastructure procurement. However, the evidence for this is weak. Therefore, this article analyzes the cost performance (in terms of costs for additional work caused by contract changes during project implementation) of Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) projects versus Design and Construct (D&C) projects. DBFM is considered a type of PPP and D&C is not. Data were collected on 58 projects from the Project Database of Rijkswaterstaat and analyzed using non-parametric tests. The results show that DBFM-projects have a significantly better cost performance than D&C-projects, especially concerning costs for additional work due to technical necessities. Because scope adjustments are the main reason for contract changes across the D&C- and DBFM-projects, cost performance can be improved particularly by curbing scope adjustments costs.

Contemporary infrastructure networks require large investments especially due to aging. Investment opportunities of network-of-networks are often obscured because current scenarios often concern single infrastructure networks. Major barriers to the construction and use of network-of-networks scenarios are institutional fragmentation and the disconnection of scenario-development phases. This paper aims to construct and enhance the use of network-of-networks scenarios through a participatory scenario process. We employed a hybrid-method approach comprising document analysis, Disaggregative Policy Delphi, and futures-oriented workshop for five large national infrastructure administrations in the Netherlands. This approach yielded twelve key infrastructure developments for which 28 infrastructure experts provided future estimates. We constructed seven scenarios through cluster analysis of experts’ quantitative estimates, qualitative direct content analysis of the qualitative data, and a futures table. The scenarios are: Infraconomy; Techno-Pessimism; Safety; Technological; Missed Boat; Hyperloop; and Green. Our results stress the importance of collaboration: desired scenarios are improbable when infrastructure administrations maintain their current sectoral perspective, whereas an inter-sectoral perspective may generate more investment opportunities. However, these network-of-networks investment opportunities do not simply emerge from network-of-networks scenarios; reasons include administrators’ prevailing conception that sufficient optimization capacity remains within their own networks, and that no common ground exists that helps to overcome institutional fragmentation.

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is a potentially interesting method for spatial planning researchers. Although increasingly used, its application in spatial planning research is lagging behind other disciplines. We conducted a systematic literature review of QCA applications in spatial planning and related disciplines (SPARD), addressing two questions: when, where, and how is QCA used in SPARD and what are the main advantages of QCA for spatial planning research? We found that the main reasons why QCA is used in SPARD are its sensitivity to context, its ability to use small-/medium- n cases, and its attention to causal complexity.

In many Western countries, flood policy is transitioning from a focus on technical flood defence measures towards more holistic and integrated flood risk management approaches. In this article, we explore the boundary spanning role of landscape architects in integrated flood risk management projects. The central research question is: what are the boundary spanning activities and roles that landscape architects perform and which factors are conditional to these activities? We have studied the boundary spanning behaviour of landscape architects in the Dutch ‘Room for the River’ programme. This programme had a dual objective of improving simultaneously the water safety and the spatial quality of the Dutch riverine areas. We conducted a comparative, in-depth case study of three ‘Room for the River’ projects, and investigated conditions that stimulated or frustrated the work of landscape architects in establishing safe solutions with spatial quality. We found that the landscape architects involved in these projects played various boundary spanning roles. We conclude that, depending on the conditional factors, their roles ranged from more traditional content-oriented domain expert/scout to the more innovative organisational expert/task coordinator. For successful boundary spanning, although cognitive capacities (e.g., knowledge about landscape) are important, landscape architects also need to have the appropriate social capacities (e.g., social-emotional competences, networking skills). That is, the work of the landscape architects essentially includes drawing lines that sketch the contours of future landscapes; but to do so, they must also cross the lines between the various actors, organizations, and disciplines involved.

In the past decade, large infrastructure projects in the Netherlands have often been implemented through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), specifically using Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) contracts. While the decision to implement projects through PPPs is based on expected advantages for internal parties – the public and private partners in the PPP –, there is a call for more focus on the advantages and disadvantages of PPPs for external stakeholders. External stakeholder management in DBFM projects is based on a contractual division of risks and responsibilities between the partners. However, it is clear from the literature that the contract does not guarantee successful stakeholder management. Relational aspects are important. Little research has been done, however, into the interplay of contractual and relational aspects in achieving successful stakeholder management. This article addresses this research need. A comparative case study was conducted into the PPP projects A9 Gaasperdammerweg and A16 Rotterdam. The study first shows that sanctions, when combined with a relational approach, have a positive effect on the relationships with stakeholders. Second, external stakeholder management cannot be simply outsourced to the private partner and continuous involvement of the public partner is important for success.

In recent years, governing environmental conflicts concerning the planning, construction, and operation of urban facilities has increasingly become a challenge for Chinese local governments. Chinese governments seek adequate responses to deal with these conflicts, for instance by ignoring criticism and sticking to initial decisions, by suppressing protests, or by compromising. In this article, by analysing 10 cases of conflict in China using crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA), we aim to investigate which combinations of diverse conditions lead to changes in local governments' decisions. Four contextualized paths to explain both the presence and the absence of these changes are identified. These findings increase our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the governance of environmental conflicts in China and may inform Chinese governments and non-state actors who are seeking ways to deal adequately with them.

De recente golf van promotieonderzoeken naar publiek-private samenwerking (PPS) roept de vraag op naar de staat van de huidige PPS-praktijk in Nederland en Vlaanderen en het onderzoek daarnaar. Onze review laat zien dat de proefschriften voornamelijk infrastructurele projecten onderzoeken die met langlopende DBFM(O)-contracten worden gerealiseerd. De proefschriften groeperen zich rond vraagstukken betreffende effectiviteit, transactiekosten en legitimiteit. Een rode draad door hun bevindingen heen is dat of en hoe PPS werkt, sterk contextafhankelijk is. Veel van de aanbevelingen benadrukken het belang van de zachte aspecten van samenwerking. De nadruk ligt op de vroege projectfasen: voorbereiding, aanbesteding en contractering. Daarnaast laat de generaliseerbaarheid van de studies te wensen over. Er is meer onderzoek nodig naar de latere projectfasen van PPS alsook meer programmatisch, kwantitatief en (internationaal) vergelijkend PPS-onderzoek., Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have attracted considerable attention in the Netherlands and Flanders, as witnessed by the recent wave of doctoral theses on this topic. This article presents a review of fourteen Dutch and Flemish doctoral theses, published in the period 2012-2015. The main purpose of the review was to examine what the theses’ most important findings and conclusions are. We found that they mainly focus on themes related to effectiveness, transaction costs, and legitimacy. However, although PPPs are often part of a debate between opponents and proponents, none of the studies found convincing arguments for or against the use of PPPs. Instead, most studies stressed the importance of contextual factors for the success of PPPs. The doctoral theses provided various valuable recommendations for practitioners regarding, e.g., the optimization of PPP procurement and the importance of soft management aspects such as collaborative working and process management. We observed that most theses studied PPPs by applying traditional theories and methods and that the majority focused on the early project phases of planning, procurement, and contracting. More research is needed into the later project phases. Finally, since the generalizability of the theses is limited, more programmatic, quantitative, and (international) comparative research is required.

Over two decades have passed since the federal policy on environmental justice (EO 12898) was issued. However, empirical evidence indicates that injustice persists and that US states vary in their adoption of the terms of the environmental justice (EJ) policy. Moreover, studies of the explanations for the variation in states’ adoption of EJ policy are rare and have yielded puzzling findings—e.g., environmental interest groups are not associated with states’ EJ policy adoption, or the severity of problems is associated inversely with their adoption. We examined the progress and variation in states’ EJ policy adoption as of 2005 using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Our analysis showed first that a strong environmental interest group presence, combined with high racial diversity and low problem severity, is sufficient for a high level of EJ policy adoption, especially in Western states. Second, when environmental interest group presence is weak, if it is combined, again, with high racial diversity and the presence of a more liberal state government, a high level of EJ policy adoption also occurs. This is observed in the East coast, Midwestern, and Southern regions of the USA. Environmental politics and policy research can benefit from a configurational approach, especially when there is no guiding theory on the conjunctional effects of key factors.

Public–Private Partnerships (often abbreviated as PPPs or P3s) continue to attract considerable attention worldwide as a governance model for delivering public services, particularly in the transpo...

1. Using Complexity Theory for Research and Program Evaluation Michael Wolf-Branigin (author), Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN: 9780199829460 (paperback) 2. Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use Michael Quinn Patton (author), The Guilford Press, 2011, ISBN: 9781606238721 (paperback) 3. Evaluating the Complex: Attribution, Contribution, and Beyond Kim Forss, Mita Marra and Robert Schwartz (eds), Transaction Publishers, 2011, ISBN: 9781412818469 (hardback)

An important contributor to cost overruns of infrastructure projects is contract changes after the construction contract has been concluded. Using mainly descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests, real project data were analyzed from forty-five Dutch transportation infrastructure projects with a total construction contract value of over € 8.5 billion. First it was explored if we could find evidence for the presumption that contractors bid low on contracts to recover the loss of bid profit by claiming contract change costs in the project implementation. We conclude that we could not find evidence for the opportunistic behavior of contractors. Second, the different sizes and reasons for the contract changes were explored. We conclude that: scope changes are the most significant reason for contract changes, followed by technical necessities; smaller projects tend to have higher relative contract change costs; and contract changes due to omissions in the contract are more present in smaller projects than in larger projects. The results of the analysis suggest among other things that policymakers and planners should pay more attention to flexible contracting, and to the contract management of smaller projects.

An understudied aspect for the successful completion of PPP infrastructure projects is the extent to which they are satisfactorily implemented. Studying PPP implementation is important though, because well-planned projects can fail if project implementation is inadequately managed. This article aims to find out which management and public–private cooperation approaches produce satisfaction for public procurers in the implementation phase of different kinds of infrastructure projects. To this purpose, twenty-seven Dutch road construction projects are systematically analyzed with fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The results show four configurations that produce satisfaction. It is concluded that externally-oriented management, which is characterized by a stakeholder-oriented project implementation approach, and close public–private cooperation, where public and private partners work together closely and interactively, are important for achieving satisfaction. In less complex projects with narrower scopes, however, the partners may rely on less interactive forms of cooperation, more characterized by monitoring contract compliance.