گفتگوی رقابتی در همکاری های دولتی و خصوصی: ظهور جستجوی قابلیت ها

The path from policy to service delivery is not always clear. The technology, including engineering and management, may not be known. Consequently, the public sector invites the private sector to participate in devising the specification. That is the essence of competitive dialogue (CD), which is associated with public-private partnerships (PPP). The contracts of PPP are long, lasting decades. Consequently, they engulf many variables, resulting in complexity. However, CD is anchored on competition in an environment that protects intellectual rights, which means a platform of state strength. The paper takes a vantage point built on three countries – Sierra Leone, Somalia and Uganda – to interrogate CD from a perspective of state structures strained by institutional tension. The paper buttresses on case study, as epistemology and methodology, and uses institutional rational choice (IRC) as lens. The paper shows that, applied in the three jurisdictions, projects developed from CD would lack structures of adaptation when faced with distress. Such situations could be fatal. Consequently, the paper develops capability search (CS) as a more adapting procurement strategy. Unlike CD, CS is a search for intellectual tools - not for specification. The joint public-private entity hinged on CS incrementally adjusts the delivery path as the reality unfolds. Therefore, CS appreciates the non-ergodicity of the PPP space. That is, the state space - the trajectory at a project onset - changes along the project life in an unpredictable way. Yet, CS faces a challenge of inadmissibility of agreement-to-agree in common law, and the rigidity of the mainstream financing structures that rely on long-term forecasts.