Divergent pathways: PPP developments in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland

Ireland expanded the use of its public-private partnerships programme during the Covid-19 crisis. PPP in the UK stalled in 2018 with the abandonment of both PFI and PF2 for future projects. Both countries had commenced similar PPP procurement policies. This paper examines why, despite initially similar approaches, learning and adaption made PPP policy in Ireland sustainable while learning and adaptation in the UK was more limited, leading to the abandonment of PPP. Our learning-centered analysis of country-specific PPP pathways is, in the Irish case, supported by interviews with elite stakeholders and document analysis and, in the UK case, by an analysis of publicly accessible politician statements and government documents. Our paper contributes to the examination of how policy traditions among European countries, such as Irish consensualism and administrative centralism, can impact the pathways along which approaches to novel public policies, such as PPPs unfold.