This paper is a thematic review of the corpus of literature on Public Private Partnerships. I begin with the objectives of the review (Hart, 2008); and move to the process followed and difficulties encountered on the way. Constructing a map of extant literature(Creswell, 1994) as comprising of Conceptual, Empirical, Policy and Journalistic work, I use this map first to situate my research (Blaxter, Hughes, & Tight, 2002) (Hart, 2008); next to critique the available literature (Hart, 2008). The critique guides us into the research gap that I aspire to fill (Locke & Golden-Biddle, 1997) (Locke & Golden-Biddle, 2007). One of my contributions is a comprehensive conceptual framework of Public Interest and Accountability, Private Profit and Efficiency and Organizational Design aspects for the analysis and evaluation of PPPs. I demonstrate its utility by reviewing extant literature using this framework.

PPPs are a field where ‘theory has still to catch up with practice’ (Allan, 2001). Politicians policymakers, financiers and corporate managers have already gone ahead and implemented PPPs, even as scholarship is grappling with preliminary questions. The causes and manifestations of this divide are several. First, there is a paucity of empirical work, despite the recent increase in case studies, mostly theses and dissertations. “The pace of experience with the partnership is rapid. Partnerships between the public and private for-profit sector to fulfil public functions are on the increase. But to date, organized assessments of partnering performance have been piecemeal and incomplete. Until scholarly research catches up, evidence will remain anecdotal and spotty (Linder & Rosenau, 2000, pp. 1-2). Second, the available work is mostly developed country oriented. Third, theory and practice seem to be following different trajectories. Up to a point, they share similar concerns, for example, funding arrangements, regulations, and so on. Nevertheless, at some point theory and practice appear to part ways, and the field-level concerns of practitioners – land acquisition, public accountability status of PPPs, political risk, managing the political-business nexus- are ignored in research.