PERFORMANCE OF THE CONTRACTUAL ARRANGEMENTS OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS: CASE OF RAILWAY CONCESSION IN TANZANIA.

Abstract: This thesis analyzes dynamics of Public-Private Partnership contractual arrangements and focuses on uncovering reasons of the disintegration (renegotiation and/or cancellation) of such contracts. It looks in detail at a specific case of a contractual arrangement of concessioning of the Tanzania Railway Corporation (TRC), a backbone of the corridor that links the landlocked Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, as well as the eastern DRC and the hinterland of Tanzania, to the port of Dar es Salaam. This research first concludes that such widely acknowledged causes as information incompleteness and asymmetry (contract-related explanations) and opportunistic behavior and strategic alliance-making (non-contractual explanations) cannot fully explain disintegration of a particular contractual arrangement. It then builds upon a case study to extend existing explanations of contract failure and renegotiation by drawing on organizational and alliance theories and explains which characteristics of the institutional context make the detrimental effects of particular causes possible.