Public–private partnerships (PPPs) have become an effective and efficient contractual agreement between the state and the private sector for providing infrastructure services. Yet, their social acceptance and legitimacy are questionable. Communities accept such changes to their social contract with the government only if the PPPs are perceived to be legitimate as public institutions are not trusted by the communities. As a result, the disappointments and controversial underperformance of PPPs in Nigeria, like most developing countries, have been generally associated with community opposition due to any agency or competence-related failure. Hence, the need for this study. Drawing on data from two urban road PPPs in Nigeria, we identify the following three deeply internalised shared beliefs that shape a community group’s perceptions and attitudes towards an infrastructure built by PPPs in their neighbourhood: the public services should be provided for free, PPPs are created mainly to serve perceived ‘corrupt’ politicians and public institutions are not effective and efficient in service delivery. These beliefs, combined with the community’s structural power, explain why some community groups oppose (or support) infrastructure PPPs within their proximity, and the growing legitimacy challenge PPPs face. Our paper in this regard provides a guidance for designing effective and targeted community engagement strategies for PPP projects and contributed to PPP stakeholder management and mainstream stakeholder management research.

Based on the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, this paper overcomes the atomistic view of external stakeholder engagement research to examine the specific conditions under which community engagement in urban infrastructure public-private partnerships (PPPs) can be transformational and create social value with and for communities. In particular, it shows that a transformational approach to community engagement is, in practice, closer to a form of governance that emphasizes involved stakeholders’ responsibility. It traces this line of argument through the literature and practice of social enterprises and other hybrid collaborations in the private sector. Conceptually, it contributes to a political and transformational understanding of community engagement within the context of public-private partnerships. First, by proposing a “governmentality analytical framework” for understanding and uncovering the often purposefully concealed dynamic power relations in the engagement process between the state, communities, and private investors. Second, by proposing a set of guiding principles on how to: empower communities to be organized; reconfigure the institutional environment to offer incentives and reliability; and design public-private partnerships as hybrid organizations capable of including other actors, such as non-governmental organizations.