Public–Private Partnerships are no silver bullet: An expanded governance model for Critical Infrastructure Protection

Abstract

For more than a decade, efforts have been underway to establish Public–Private Partnerships (PPP) for Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP). Due to issues arising in connection with their implementation, there has been increasing criticism in recent years questioning the usefulness of such PPP. However, cooperation between the state and the private corporate sector in CIP is not only useful, but inevitable. This paper will therefore sketch a new and above all broader approach to public–private cooperation to help solve some of the problems that have become apparent. Based on the network approach developed by governance theory, it is argued that CIP policy should increasingly rest on self-regulating and self-organizing networks. Thus, the government’s role would no longer consist in directing and monitoring, but of coordinating the networks and identifying instruments that can help motivate networks to meet the task of CIP.

Introduction

Critical infrastructure protection (CIP) is currently seen as an essential part of national security in numerous countries around the world and a broad range of political and administrative initiatives and efforts is underway in the US, in Europe, and in other parts of the world in an attempt to better secure critical infrastructures [1], [2].¹ One of the key challenges for such protection efforts arises from the privatization and deregulation of many parts of the public sector since the 1980s and the globalization processes of the 1990s, which have put a large part of the critical infrastructure in the hands of private enterprize. This creates a situation in which market forces alone are not sufficient to provide security in most of the CI ‘sectors’ [3]. At the same time, the state is incapable of providing the public good of security on its own, since an overly intrusive market intervention is not a valid option either; the same infrastructures that the state aims to protect due to national security considerations are also the foundation of the competitiveness and prosperity of a nation. Therefore, any policy for CIP must absorb the negative outcomes of liberalization, privatization, and globalization, without canceling out the positive effects.

Public–Private Partnerships (PPP), a form of cooperation between the state and the private sector, are widely seen as a panacea for this problem in the policy community—and cooperation programs that follow the PPP idea are part of all existing initiatives in the field of CIP today [1]. A large number of them is geared towards facilitating information exchange. While some of these arrangements are successful, others have scarcely generated more than joint statements of intent of the actors involved. In recent years, therefore, increasing criticism has been heard condemning the lack of efficiency in existing arrangements or even questioning the validity of the entire cooperation concept [4], [5]. However, if we take into account the origins of the PPP-idea, it comes as no big surprise that the initial high expectations have been lowered somewhat: The PPP concept was originally conceived in a completely different context, namely in the field of administrative reform and the concept of New Public Management in the 1980s. The aim of PPPs in this context was the debureaucratization of public services and the promotion of privatization. In his article “Conceptualizing the Use of Public–Private Partnerships as a Regulatory Arrangement in Critical Information Infrastructure Protection”, Dan Assaf highlights that the PPP concept was adopted rather uncritically by the US for its CIP policy at the end of the 1990s [6]. The PPPs in CIP were in line with the neoliberal conceptualization of PPPs as an instrument of outsourcing of public services from the state to private companies (in this case the owners and operators of CIs). Assaf criticizes this approach and discusses the normative problems of accountability, transparency and legitimacy of a “de facto privatization” in the field of CIP which is highly relevant for national security. He concludes that a greater role of government is needed to ensure the provision of the public good of security in CIP [6].

But for all the legitimate critique on the concept PPPs and its use in the field of CIP, we should not risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Clearly, cooperation between the state and private enterprize on CIP is not only sensible, but simply essential. The question is not whether Public–Private collaboration is necessary, but how it should be organized. Therefore, this article examines the following (timely) questions: What is the benefit of the PPP concept and what are the limitations as far as CIP is concerned? What other approaches are conceivably (more) suitable? And what exactly is the role of the government with regard to the collaboration with the private sector?

We will first trace the provenance of the term “PPP” and how it is embedded in a larger (economic policy) context. We then analyze the specific characteristics of PPP in the field of CIP and elicit the practical problems arising in connection with the concept. It is important to note that this article does not question the notion of cooperation in general, but only the way in which it has been organized and conceptualized so far. Specifically, we point out that direct partnerships between public and private actors do not constitute the only possible form of cooperation, but rather are one of several instruments that can be deployed for governance in the field of CIP [7]. In order to develop a new and broader understanding of public–private cooperation, we will therefore take recourse to governance theory. We argue that CIP policy should be based as far as possible on self-regulating and self-organizing networks. The potential of self-regulating networks for the provision of security of infrastructures has already been highlighted by Amitai Aviram [8]. While he is focusing on the aspect of self-regulation within these networks, we will discuss the role of the government with regard to these self-regulating networks. We argue that the government’s role no longer consists of close supervision and immediate control, but of coordinating networks and selecting instruments that can be used to motivate these networks for CIP tasks. In this, the article stays on a fairly theoretical level, though some examples are provided. We believe that the debate needs a theoretical infusion at this stage to move out of the deadlock—though more detailed studies should follow later.