| Summary: | Ever since it was introduced in France in 2004, the “Partnership Contract” has been promoted as a very innovative way of managing the interface between public and private sectors. Encouraged by government because it was supposed to represent an ideal-type, Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) are generally designed as tools aimed at improving the economic efficiency of public projects. This new kind of contract, called the “Partnership Contract” is signed between different private sector actors and the state authority. It enables long-term relationships (up to 30 years) focusing both on projects’ construction and maintenance and on funding for public buildings. The text questions partnership contracts’ scope and technical innovation, as well as the new relationship they posit between the private and public sectors. A description of PPP-related sectors and social networks in France is used to examine the embeddedness of the business relations that are part of this new way of building connections between the public and private sectors, and the meso-level structures thereof. Above all, the PPP project seems to be particularly fruitful at an institutional level, due to the fact that the new relational structures identified through our analyses culminate in a greater role for banks.
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