Building innovative models of territorial governance

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine public-private partnerships with a particular focus on the impact that such partnerships have on territorial governance. These organizations are spread all over the world with the goal of promoting community participation and sustainable development, and engaging citizens and organizations in the decision making of local governance. This situation underlines important changes in governance and territorial governance models. Design/methodology/approach - A mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches are used. Analysing the existing literature, the paper focuses on specific type of public-private partnership: the Local Action Group (LAG). Specifically, this study focuses on 63 Italian LAGs, in order to highlight their role in the challenges that local governance has to face. Findings - Findings suggest that public-private partnerships can represent a new model of governance - the Partnership Governance -with features that differentiate this form from other models. Originality/value - Through a relatively novel statistical technique, combined with interviews, document analysis and direct observations, on the one hand the public-private partnership phenomenon is observed, and on the other hand, a new mode of governance that is affecting the worldwide scenario in a current era and that is introducing ethical principles in governance systems is conceived.