Politics of Public–Private Partnerships and International Development

Jon Harald Sande Lie is a social anthropologist and research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) in Oslo, where he also heads the Research group for Peace, Conflict and Development. Through his research focus on the international development apparatus and its effects and articulations in Ethiopia, Uganda and the World Bank, he explores issues related to state formation, politics, power and resistance, and partnerships and public-private relations. He is the project manager and principal investigator of the ‘Public-private development interfaces in Ethiopia’-project, funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant no. 315356).Paul Beaumont is a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and leads the ERC-funded research project Navigating the Era of Indicators (2025-2030) His research interests include the (dis)functioning of international institutions, dubious quantified performance indicators, and hierarchies in world politics. Paul has published two monographs: Performing Nuclear Weapons: How Britain Made its Bomb Make Sense (2021) and The Grammar of Status Competition: International Hierarchies and Domestic Politics (OUP, 2024).Marit Tolo Østebø is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. Her focal point of interest is anthropology of policy, international development and critical global health. Her work explores the relationship between the normative frameworks, policies, models, and stories that circulate within the policy world and the complex realities that exist “on the ground.” She integrates perspectives from multiple specialties including anthropology of policy, anthropology of religion, gender studies, digital anthropology, medical anthropology, and Science and Technology Studies (STS), and has focused on policy models and modeling communities, translations of gender equality, the interplay between religion and development, the relationship between politics and health research, and—more recently— global oncology and public-private partnerships (PPP). Her research is usually multi-sited and transnational in nature, with a primary geographical focus in Ethiopia, where she has conducted anthropological fieldwork since 2005.

• 1: Unravelling the Ps in public–private partnerships for development 2: Tracing the travels of a development model: Public–private partnerships and Ethiopia’s selective learning 3: The ‘private’ in Ethiopia’s public–private partnerships: A history of the present 4: In search of alternative development funding: Public–private partnerships in between technocratic restraint and political urgency 5: Theorising points of convergence and divergence: Perspectives on public–private partnerships (PPPs) and other types of public–private collaborations (PPCs) in Ethiopia 6: The virus is good to think with: Reimagining public–private partnerships in Ethiopia and beyond 7: From synergy to subsidy: The cultural problem of public-private partnerships in international development 8: Industrialisation and industrial development policies in Ethiopia: The unfinished search for alternatives 9: Productive boundaries: The public–private divide in Ethiopia’s Special Economic Zones 10: Conclusion: Public-Private Relations in the Wild