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The purpose of this paper is to survey various meanings attached to a public–private partnership (PPP) and related aspects in Western literature and to identify commonalities and differences between them. Additionally, the article intends to critically assess conflicting and overlapping views on contractual and institutional PPPs, their forms and models and to draw insights for transitional economies.

The article contrasts and compares views on PPP meanings, forms and models within Western PPP literature and also draws comparisons with understanding of partnership aspects in the Russian language sources. The paper examines theories underpinning PPPs, builds connections to PPP advantages and drawbacks and provides critical assessment of net benefits that PPPs may bring along to the society.

The article concludes that future PPP research in transitional countries such as Kazakhstan and Russia, particularly in the area of organisational and power arrangements in partnerships, may delineate new concepts such as government as a guarantor of a PPP project, social significance of a PPP project and risk management in a country’s contextual environment.

Research in the field of PPPs in transitional countries such as Russia and Kazakhstan is in its infancy. The paper intends to contribute to the body of knowledge about PPPs by providing detailed account and categorisation of their principal meanings, forms, models and underpinning theories and by drawing insights for future research in transitional countries.

Israel is characterised by economic growth that is accompanied not only by prosperity but also by increasing poverty. This paper aims to conceptualise the role of Israel’s social enterprises in reducing the gap between prosperous and disadvantaged populations.

This qualitative study is based on 23 in-depth interviews. It makes use of a theoretical framework that incorporates two elements: cosmopolitanism and social entrepreneurship. Cosmopolitanism, together with government policies that aim to develop free enterprise and international trade, support entrepreneurship and advance education, accompanies and facilitates prosperity. Whilst prosperity increases inequality, social entrepreneurship develops as a tool to mitigate the side effects of economic growth in the form of the increasing gap between the rich and the poor.

This paper argues that the principal reason why the gap evolved and is increasing is in the discrepancy between rapidly rising requirements presented by the innovation-focussed economy and the workers’ skills. Based on interviews with social entrepreneurs who are (co)founders or managers of businesses with a social purpose, findings show that the gap between prosperity and social deprivation could be bridged by increasing workers’ capacity to align their skills with employers’ requirements, which is the area to which Israeli social enterprises contribute.

The paper argues that cosmopolitan orientation is one of the contributors to economic growth and innovation, whilst prosperity increases the gap between high- and low-income groups. The paper contributes to the body of knowledge about social entrepreneurs by applying the framework that makes use of cosmopolitanism as an important driver of Israeli social entrepreneurship, which helps to explain the role that social business enterprises play in reducing the gap between prosperous and disadvantaged populations.

The paper aims to conceptualise cosmopolitanism drivers from the third-level power perspective by drawing on the Steven Lukes’ (1974; 2005) theory of power. Additionally, the paper aims to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurs’ cosmopolitan dispositions and habitus, i.e. a pattern of an individual’s demeanour, as it was understood by Pierre Bourdieu.

This conceptual paper makes use of Bourdieu’s framework (habitus) by extending it to the urban cosmopolitan environment and linking habitus to the three-dimensional theory of power and, importantly, to the power’s third dimension – preference-shaping.

Once cosmopolitanism is embedded in the urban area’s values, this creates multiple endless rounds of mutual influence (by power holders onto entrepreneurs via political and business elites and by entrepreneurs onto power holders via the same channels), with mutual benefit. Therefore, mutually beneficial influence that transpires in continuous support of a cosmopolitan city’s environment may be viewed as one of the factors that enhances cosmopolitan cities’ resilience to changes in macroeconomic conditions.

The paper offers a theoretical model that allows to enrich the understanding of the power–cosmopolitanism–entrepreneurship link by emphasising the preference-shaping capacity of power, which leads to embedding cosmopolitanism in societal values. As a value shared by political and business elites, cosmopolitanism is also actively promoted by entrepreneurs through their disposition and habitus. This ensures not only their willing compliance with power and the environment but also their enhancement of favourable business conditions. Entrepreneurs depart from mere acquiescence (to power and its explicit dominance) to practicing their cosmopolitan influence by active preference-shaping.

This paper aims to investigate the influence of public-private partnerships (PPPs) on social and economic conditions in Kazakhstan and Russia from a public economics perspective, namely, through the lens of a market failure and PPPs’ negative externalities.

Drawing on the concept of a market failure and using the externalities perspective, the paper investigates whether partnerships are instrumental in solving market problems, which is illustrated by the evidence from ongoing PPP projects in Kazakhstan and Russia.

Results show that citizens face expansion of monopolistic trends in the service provision and decreased availability of public services. Additionally, the government support to partnerships recreates a negative externality in the form of a higher risk premium on loan interest rates that banks use to finance PPPs. The partnerships’ impact on sustainable development often appears detrimental, as they significantly intensify the struggle between sub-national governments for increased transfers from the national budget.

The government agencies must incorporate the appraisal of the PPP externalities and their effects on the society in the decision-making regarding the PPP formation.

The authors suggest that, although government is interested in PPPs’ positive externalities, in reality many negative externalities may offset the positive spillover effects. As a result, the partnerships’ contributions to economic and social sustainability remain controversial. Extending the value-for-money concept to incorporate the assessment of PPP externalities might significantly enhance the partnership conceptualisation by more comprehensive and accurate assessment of PPPs’ economic and social value.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical assessment of legal and regulatory impediments to effective governance of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in Kazakhstan.

The qualitative study develops propositions from the PPP literature and then tests them against findings from in-depth interviews. Interviewees have been selected by a purposeful sampling from PPP projects in Kazakhstan as well as from national and regional PPP centres.

The identified barriers to effective PPP management include irregularities in the PPP legal framework, such as lack of legal definition of a PPP and controversy with the government guarantee’s legal status for its long-term payments to partnerships; bureaucratic tariff setting for partnership services; non-existent opportunity for private asset ownership; and excessive government regulation of PPP workers’ wage rates.

The partners’ opposing perspectives on a number of PPP issues show that management needs to identify and carefully reconcile stakeholder values in a partnership in order to achieve more effective PPP governance. Practitioners, particularly those in the public agencies, have to be concerned with ways to reduce the government overregulation of the private operators, which is likely to result in greater PPP flexibility in management and, ultimately, higher efficiency in delivering the public services.

By elucidating multiple examples of overregulation and PPPs’ inefficiency, the paper demonstrates that the government dominance in PPP management is conceptually inappropriate. Instead, the government should adopt the concept of co-production and manage its relations with the private sector partner in a collaborative fashion.