Mixed companies as local utilities

The use of public–private partnership arrangements by public authorities has been a hot topic in recent literature. Both practitioners and academics stress the need to expose best practices and develop guidelines to cope with these complex governance structures. Nonetheless, research on the specific case of mixed companies (institutionalised public–private partnerships) has been somewhat neglected. This paper discusses the rationale behind the use of these arrangements by local governments. Although theoretically the model has some merits, in practice it usually fails in protecting the public interest.