Building public trust through public-private partnerships

Collaborative working through public-private partnerships, though not new, has become more common. Strong partnerships are built and sustained by norms of reliability consistent with the high levels of systemic trust that the principles of good governance encourage. This article examines two public-private partnerships in Hong Kong in which government actions have severely undermined the trust necessary for the public-private partnership model to work effectively. In the first case, the trust established through a long-standing government/civil society partnership in the delivery of school-based education has been dissipated by acrimonious public wrangling over the autonomy of the service providers. The second case focuses on a large-scale infrastructure project to build an arts hub on redeveloped land. Policy inconsistencies by the Hong Kong government together with deep suspicions about the extent to which large, well-connected businesses have influenced the project's development, have seriously undermined the trust of arts community stakeholders and the general public. Copyright © 2005 IIAS.