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Английский язык для магистратуры
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riting a Research Proposal
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2. On the emergence of transnational public-private partnerships
The emergence of transnational PPPs has been examined from several well-known theoretical 
perspectives within the discipline of IR. By applying a neo-Gramscian approach, one group of au-
thors asserts that partnerships are a political strategy through which business aims to secure cor-
porate hegemony (Levy/Newell 2002: 84; Utting 2002: 2 6; Blowfield 2005). Partnerships emerge 
because corporations want to respond to the pressure from the anti-globalization movement by 
proactively accommodating oppositional claims, whereas this behavior occurs out of the interest 
to stabilize the hegemonic capitalist worldview and to reproduce a corporate-friendly global gov-
ernance system (Utting 2002: 5). Constructivist authors, on the contrary, argue that a new ‘global 
public domain’ is emerging, which is constituted by the interaction of state and non-state actors 
(Ruggie 2004: 519). The production of public goods is, from this angle, no longer the responsibil-
ity of state actors alone but is increasingly accomplished within this new institutional arena in 
which non-state actors — NGOs and companies — have accepted responsibility for the provision 
of public goods. Although constructivist and neo-Gramscian approaches are increasingly debated 
in order to account for the emergence of transnational partnerships, systematic studies that sup-
port these arguments are very limited. 
At the moment, the majority of work in the PPP literature refers either to a functionalist expla-
nation, or explains the formation of partnerships through incentives of individual actors. A func-
tionalist argument in the IR literature claims that new forms of governance generally, and transna-
tional PPPs in particular, emerge because there is a functional demand for them. Authors purport 
that contemporary globalization processes cause complex transboundary problems, which 
create a demand for effective governance tools to tackle these issues (Reinicke/Deng 2000: 7; 
Rosenau 2002). Since state actors have failed to address these challenges, partnerships emerge 
as an innovative instrument better suited to target them. One author, for example, asserts that 
against the backdrop of globalization, state actors are overburdened and “can no longer do it 
alone” (Nelson 2002: 15). Another study predicates that state-actors encounter an “operational 
gap”, and are incapable of effectively implementing policies (Reinicke/Deng 2000: 2). These au-
thors suggest that state actors form transnational PPPs, because changing socio-economic struc-
tures force them to explore alternative instruments of policy making (Peters/Pierre 1998: 227). 
Apart from this functional explanation, much of the work in the literature applies a different 
perspective and explains the emergence of partnerships with reference to incentives (Witte/Re-
inicke 2005: 23). Partnerships are understood as institutions through which rational actors try to 
maximize their utilities and strive for an exchange of resources that they would not have access 
to otherwise. In contrast to functionalist explanations, “incentive-“ or “interest-based“ approaches 
are actor-centered in that they explain the emergence of institutions through the intentional be-
havior of actors. Instead of claiming that changing global governance structures create the neces-
sity for actors to form alternative governance instruments, the starting point for interest-based 
approaches is the rational actor that strives for benefits. 
Many writings on transnational PPPs have referred to this argument, sketching out the interests 
of international organizations, TNCs, NGOs, and governments to participate in PPPs. With regard to 
international organizations, studies typically highlight that international organizations enter part-
nerships for additional resources (Bull et al. 2004: 483; Tesner 2000: 150). The crisis of publicly funded 
development cooperation, particularly the perceived financial crisis of the United Nations, has ag-
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