# **_Introduction_**

A growing body of quantitative research on public-private partnership (PPP) performance, particularly for long-term infrastructure contracts, attends to factors that influence the level of investments in PPP and PPP performance over time. With respect to performance, one line of enquiry questions how project-level and contextual factors affect the likelihood that a PPP will survive to its intended contract term. While PPP ‘success’ involves multiple aspects of performance (e.g., service outcomes, attainment of sector goals, profitability, etc.), contract survival is undoubtedly important due to the high costs of early termination and renegotiation. Moreover, cancellation is a clear sign that significant and insurmountable problems between parties to the contract could not be overcome via intra-contractual adjustments, renegotiation, or at extremis, arbitration.

Because the transaction costs of contract cancellation and renegotiation are high (Guasch, Laffont, & Straub, 2003; Bitran, Nieto-Parra, & Robledo, 2013), the question of how PPPs can be sustained is important. In addition to legal, regulatory, and contractual factors (i.e., the realm of institutions), the role of agency in PPP success is also of interest. Key participants include contract-granting government units, private operators and sponsors, regulators, and financiers. Each of these parties plays a different role in the PPP and brings a different set of interests, resources, and strategies to the management, oversight, financing, and overall execution of the PPP. In the context of developing regions, another important set of stakeholders includes the multilateral development institutions that are engaged in supporting PPPs through sector reform, technical assistance and financial support.

The survival of a contract to its intended term implicitly recognizes that all parties to the contract are sufficiently satisfied with the PPP outcomes, such that they wish to remain in the contractual relationship enshrined within the PPP arrangement. In this study, the analysis aims to offer clarity to whether projects with multilateral support (MLS) have greater likelihood of succeeding than those without.<sup>2</sup> Some qualitative PPP studies argue that multilaterals have supported PPPs as a global solution with too little regard for local context, thus promoting its uptake in inappropriate circumstances and leading to costly contract cancellations (e.g., Bayer, 2009). On the other hand, other studies have suggested that multilaterals can play important convening and knowledge-sharing roles that increase a PPP’s likelihood of improved performance and contract sustenance (Jandhyala, 2015; House, 2014).

> 2. Multilateral support refers to financial support from international financial institutions including Asian Development Bank (ADB), African Development Bank (AfDb), Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE), West African Development Bank (BOAD), Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB), Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), Caribbean Development Bank (Caribank), East African Development Bank (EADB), European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), European Investment Bank (EIB), Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), Inter American Investment Corporation (IAIC), International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), International Development Association (IDA), International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and North American Development Bank (NADB).

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