No. 79 (2020): Post-COVID-19 Public Management: Public-Private Partnerships as a tool for improving services and infrastructure

"The transformation of the public and public-private partnerships".

The crisis generated by the pandemic meant a breaking point in global structures, a challenge to the traditional schemes from where all activities are developed; work, study, health, tourism, mobility, nine months after experiencing changes, some radical, most of the dynamics have been retaken, transformed, but understanding how the stillness of confinement is not an option for systems (economic and social) that have also found in digital spaces an opportunity for adaptation.

That is why the analyses begin to denote how, in the face of this projected changing future, there is a real opportunity to transform all spaces, including the management of the public; "The new normality post COVID-19 should aim for a balance between the environmental dimension, the human dimension and the economic dimension, reconciling current needs with the needs of future generations" (Lopez, 2020)1 , especially, a reflection from this area is necessary, because although in most cases, the response to the health crisis and the following economic and social tensions has been as good as possible, in reality, it does not seem that there is a strategic logic in the response that allows taking advantage of the new dynamics, although in certain issues, as a result of the push and urgency, convergences and advances have occurred (for example with the implementation of teleworking or virtual lessons), these are complex processes and cannot be transformed from one moment to another.

In the same way, the uncertainty of the future and the urgent solutions required by citizens have brought back into the conversation the traditional conception of the State as a provider -or protector- of basic services; For François Heisbourg (2020)2 , the pandemic has reinforced the role of "protector" of external threats, in this vision the State tends to assume internal commitments, and therefore it is demanded prompt solutions that it may not be able to assume.

The point is that many times state responses may be late, so it is essential to take advantage of the conjunctures to update this reading of public management and how it can be constantly improved, in this case, a tool increasingly implemented as a catalyst for improvement, is the application of public-private partnership (PPP) models to provide solutions to the new and transformed needs of citizens.

As the World Bank emphasizes, "healthy cooperation with the private sector will be more important than ever as countries emerge from this crisis with even more fiscal constraints. "3 Public-private collaboration was already important, but in the post-pandemic landscape it is a key mechanism for creating solutions and increasing levels of public services.

However, this type of collaboration, implemented in different ways and with results ranging from successful to unsuccessful, finds a factor of change in the immediacy with which current responses must be generated, so if PPPs offer a faster, more concentrated and efficient way to manage the public sector, their qualities and weaknesses must be studied and evaluated, with a vision put into practice, allowing to learn from these dynamics and their application mechanisms.

Because in many cases, this type of association is a way of coping with budgetary, human resources or any other type of constraints faced by public administrations, but it also requires a high level of commitment from the actors involved and cannot be taken lightly, but rather as a complex formula, which requires a suitable technical and interdisciplinary combination. This leads to the analysis of regulatory frameworks, as some countries have shown to have enabled the framework of reference for the development of such schemes, but even so it is not enough for the number of actors and interests involved and the specificity of each intervention, added to the fact that the current crisis may result in downward trends in the profitability of projects, probably generating negative impacts on infrastructure development or deployment of services, so it is relevant to maintain an almost permanent debate on this issue.

The general interest of this approach is to propose analyses and document the way in which these collaboration schemes can be developed in a more continuous manner in the midst of a changing global dynamic, which is committed to innovation and where the role of the State has also been transformed, for the sake of an application that favors the generation of public value.

This edition of the Central American Journal of Public Administration offers a first approach to some of the theoretical and practical elements of public-private partnerships in the region and the sectors where they can have the greatest impact, such as infrastructure or transportation, proposing this issue as a meeting point between the theoretical, the normative and the practical.