The rise and fall (?) of public-private partnerships in Israel’s local government

Abstract

ABSTRACT Municipal-private partnerships (MPP), including BOT concessions, joint municipal-private corporations, and leveraging municipally owned land to promote private investment, have become major tools of urban development, but the 2008 global crisis seemed to have changed attitudes towards their application. Based on documents and open-ended interviews, our study examines the apparent retreat from MPP in Israel. Results show that BOT lost appeal in the 2010s, particularly among fiscally sound cities and water and sewage municipal corporations, not because of an ideological rejection, but largely due to low interest rates that eliminated its financial motivation. Regulatory hurdles also played a role in luring municipalities away from MPP in the centralised Israeli context. However, BOT remains in the municipal development toolbox and the study points at ‘maturation’, moving away from the financial motive to the capacity motive, mainly in fields out of municipal core tasks and in projects sufficiently isolated from external uncertainties.