Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are a popular concept in international policy making circles. Since the 1970s they have been increasingly advocated as a way to address a range of public service issues, as part of a global proliferation of neoliberal governance methods. PPPs have recently been presented as a solution to worsening global sustainability problems such as climate change, especially in low and middle-income countries. Of the body of literature that examines
PPPs in low and middle-income countries, there are relatively few empirical studies that look at how PPPs in sustainability are implemented. This thesis aims to address this gap in the literature by analysing the application of partnerships in the Niger Delta, using qualitative research methods. The thesis presents a brief political history of the Niger Delta, followed by four empirical chapters that apply distinct conceptual approaches. First, I use stakeholder mapping to study an
international partnership based in the Niger Delta. This approach serves to introduce important actors and highlight power relations between them but fails to capture some of the influences on these power dynamics that were expressed in the data collected for the study. To delve further into these influences, I build an analytical framework from concepts of structure, agency,and structuration, adapted to fit the empirical organisational context of the partnership. This ap-
proach allows for a novel analysis that accommodates influences on the partnership at multiple scales, including the individual scale, however the approach is not without limitations. In a second case study, I investigate the application of a partnership model of community engagement developed by International Oil Companies operating in The Delta. For this analysis I use concepts of governmentality, which serve to foreground processes of power formation, including subject formation, at multiple scales. This approach allows for an exploration of the motivations of individuals and organisations and the formation of power through the implementation of the
model, giving some insight into potential mechanisms behind the model’s outcomes. Through their application, the above analytical frameworks fail to fully capture the role of the state in the Niger Delta, which an integral conceptual component of PPPs. The role of the state in the two
case studies is subsequently brought into focus in the final empirical chapter using an approach that aims to visualise the role of the state in the Niger Delta from differing perspectives. This exercise highlights some characteristics of the relationship between the state and the extractives
industry in the Niger Delta. It also allows the analysis to consider how the relationship between the state and the extractives industry may influence the application of PPPs in the Delta more generally, relating findings back to the context of global sustainability issues. Each of these conceptual approaches have not yet been used to investigate PPPs in sustainability and have not been used in the context of the Niger Delta. Together these approaches aim to answer calls in
social science literature for a new approach to the analysis of global, market-inspired governance methods that foregrounds power and processes within the institutions that enact these methods. This study therefore presents a range of novel perspectives on PPPs as a tool central to future global sustainability policy, developed from a context where this governance method is designed to be applied.
