Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are often regarded as the solution for time and budget overruns in large infrastructural projects, but not all are successful. This raises the question of what really makes PPPs work. Focusing on the role of relational aspects, this article examines the degree to which trust and managerial activities correlate to the perceived performance and cooperation process in PPP projects. A multilevel analysis of survey data from 144 respondents involved in Dutch PPP projects shows that both trust and management correlate significantly to the perceived performance of these projects. Moreover, trust is associated with a good cooperation process.

Highlights  The way governments support innovation is changing  Regionalization, public-private collaboration, customization are gaining importance  Authorities must align their administrative capacities to support innovation  Organizing interaction is an insufficient contribution to realize innovation  Managing expectations of what governments can contribute is important

Governments increasingly choose facilitation as a strategy to entice others to produce public goods and services, including in relation to the realisation of sustainable energy innovations. An important instrument to implement this governance strategy is discursive framing. To learn how public authorities use discursive framing to implement a facilitation strategy, we conducted a comparative case study on two Dutch examples in which the government aims to facilitate non-governmental actors to exploit public waterworks for the production of renewable energy. Using content analysis, we identify ten 'facilitation frame' elements. We find two configurations of elements: restrained facilitation and invitational facilitation, which both have their advantages, ambivalences and drawbacks. It is often unclear what governments want to achieve and what they have to offer in terms of facilitation. The (discursively) offered support, ranging from 'giving space' to 'creating beneficial conditions', is often elusive. We conclude that, to avoid deadlock, false expectations and the inactiveness of external actors, the government's communication should both enthuse and inform these actors about what they can expect. If, however, the potential, non-governmental initiators just lack the necessary capacity to act, there is only so much discursive framing can do. Then authorities should reconsider their 'facilitative' role.

Water authorities search for new collaborations with nongovernmental actors, with the aim of facilitating societal initiatives. A comparative case study was conducted to analyze the value dilemmas faced by water authorities when they choose to facilitate and how they cope with these dilemmas. The study found that the most prevalent dilemma is between traditional democratic values and efficiency-related values. In the chosen solutions, the latter seem to prevail over the former. Casuistry, cycling and hybridization are common coping mechanisms. The study shows the potential of non-governmental initiatives in the water sector while also reflecting critically on dominant administrative values.

Collaborative governance is believed to lead to more innovative solutions to complex problems in public services. This article analyses whether this hypothesis applies in the case of decentralisation of labour market policy to regional networks of various actors in the Netherlands. We first develop a theoretical argument that integrates theories of collaborative governance with theories of innovation, distinguishing between a wide and a small option for innovation in relation to the structure, process and output/outcome of collaborative governance. Our findings show that, despite a variety of partnerships and ambitions across the regions, new and bold solutions to complex problems are scarce. In particular, wide innovation, which creates public value beyond the existing policy frameworks and services, is limited in practice. The article advances the theory by specifying barriers and conditions for network innovation in the public sector, and provides some suggestions for further research.